Suggestions that the Soviet Union would intervene in a hypothetical Mediterranean conflict are tested against Stalin's incentives and military readiness. In this interpretation, Stalin was willing to play rival powers against one another but had neither a ready force nor a compelling need to enter the war. Waiting preserved Soviet options while other states bore the immediate costs. The argument cautions against adding a major power to a counterfactual merely because intervention is imaginable.
Notable Point · 1:52:34-1:52:58
Why Stalin would wait out the wider war
A Second World War counterfactual argues that Stalin had stronger incentives to play the combatants against one another than to join a Mediterranean conflict before Soviet forces were ready.