The Decision

Had Patton surged ahead, all it would have done would be to further antagonize Stalin in an already tense situation

Again, people have this strange idea that Stalin was negotiating in good faith.  This is the same thinking that led to Neville Chamberlain handing over Czechoslovakia and declaring peace in our time.

Stalin had no intention of getting along. Just like Hitler his plan was always to seize everything he could.  Negotiation was only employed when he was too weak to attack, and he never lived up to any agreement where it was inconvenient.

The Russians had faced and defeated almost 200. Their armor was vast and infinitely superior to ours

Russian competence is another strangely enduring myth.  It’s true the T-34 was a good tank (probably the best in the world) and they had many of them, but nevertheless even in victory they lost many times more tanks and men than the Germans.  They were poorly led due to Stalin’s purges, poorly disciplined, had little to no unit-level initiative, and their logistics were a nightmare.  Something like 2/3 of their six-wheel trucks were actually made and provided by America.  They had no air force to speak of.

A tank is only useful as long as it can be supplied with fuel and fire at enemies on the ground.

Had it come to war, our attack planes would have decimated their armor and supply lines from the sky while our bombers devastated their industrial base, just as happened in Japan and Germany.  It might have been very difficult, but Russia could not have hoped to win such a conflict — and you can be sure if they thought otherwise they would have tried to march straight to the Atlantic. 

And if all else failed, we had nuclear weapons and they didn’t.

Barbarossa proved the Russians’ only real quality, aside from tanks, was quantity.

We handed them Poland and Czechoslovakia when we probably could have held them without open war. At the very least, we could have forced them to hold free elections, which would have ratified their Western alignment.

Now consider what the last 60 years would look like with no Soviet Union, or at least a very weakened Soviet state. Eastern Europe free, China never falls to Communism, no Vietnam War, no Korean War, no Communist Cuba, no Communist efforts in Central America, no mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan and later becoming Al Qaeda… I don’t know if we should ahve invaded the Soviet Union in 1945, but clealy things might have been a lot better in the 20th if we had.

I find you a bit confused… i.e. Soviet army of 1941 vs Soviet army of 1944…big difference

In neither case did they have any real air force or leadership.  A reference as simple as Wikipedia will make this clear.  For more detail, I would recommend Victor Hanson.

just as a note. USSR industries were beyond the Ural mountains – out of range for any plane of period departing – let say fr Berlin (round trip w/o refuel)

Not insurmountable if we held airfields in Prague, Warsaw or points east.  Also, that distance is a much bigger problem for the Soviets than for the West in our putative war– that’s a hugely extended supply line and our aircraft would have made resupply very, very painful even before they started demolishing their factories.  Their tanks would be immobilized.

Syria is Baas party controlled – secular and semi socialist – definitely anti-fundamentalist, anti Al Qaeda…

Yet strangely enough, not sufficiently anti-AQ to stop the flow of jihadis into Iraq.  They seem to feel the enemy of their enemy is, at least, worthy of turning a blind eye.

I heard the same argument made endlessly re Iraq, but people seem to forget Saddam offered bin Laden asylum.

One thing that I should clear out is that both China and Vietnam were indigenous movements

No, definitely not.  In both cases, as with Korea, there was critical support from other Communists, and of course the philosophy was not native to either country, any more than liberal democracy was to the many places it has spread.  Communism was always an international movement, never indigenous (outside of Russia, of course), and always backed by force, not consent of the governed.  No country has ever voluntarily voted in a Communist majority government, though some elected significant pluralities.