Fascinating opening by the Soviet player. Thailand is perhaps the most valuable battleground in the game, because it scores early, and scores again for Southeast Asia Scoring. The combination of Vietnam War +1 in SE Asia and the China Card is a fearsome deterrent. Still, I think the right response was to move into the Pakistan. He can coup it, sure, but without the +1 bonus, and you get the last coup in Asia.
As for your own opening, I did not like it. You made a decent argument for taking the points, sure, but ops are never as precious as they are in Turn 1, and 4 op cards look boring but often functions as double threats. Grab Pakistan and South Korea, for example. So, you probably should have risked just throwing the Asia scoring card out as your headline. Because as it was, if he played Vietnam War you were going to struggle to stop Domination in Europe Anyways. Which is exactly what happened.
Looking ahead to turn 3, why’d you play the China Card! OK, yeah Thailand is important, but… Headline Duck and Cover, and follow up with Five Year Plan, and you’d have great odds of forcing Defcon Suicide. Well, what’s done is done, and a Headline of Duck and Cover still looks good. Get 3 VP, take away his coup and maybe get a difference of 2 VP there as well. Maybe Mr. Yakov gets risky and headlines CIA and you win that way. HOWEVER, this is a lower ops hand, and getting European scoring out of the way isn’t bad. I do believe his obvious headline, though, is Nasser. He knows you have Middle East scoring, and he can follow up with a Turn 1 coup of Egypt or just put 3 ops in Libyan and Egypt (really attractive if you lower defcon).
Alternatively, a more aggressive Soviet player might headline Socialist Government, which goes so far as to deny you presence in Europe. Or, he can “pay the iron price” (I don’t think you are using that expression correctly, but off topic) to keep breaking your presence in Europe. So, maybe don’t headline Europe, but be thinking at how you might change that. Note, a headline of Nasser won’t give give him domination in the Middle East, so maybe that is the preferred scoring card to headline.
Well, those are my thoughts.