Soviet Collapse Ruined the U.S.

[unhappycamper]

Soviet Collapse Ruined the U.S.
04 October 2010
By Alexei Bayer

In 2005, then-President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. As time passes, I find myself agreeing with him more and more.

To be sure, my regrets are fundamentally different from Putin’s. I’ve been a U.S. citizen for three decades, and my son is as American as they come. The United States is clearly my home, and I consider myself a patriotic American. This is why I decry the disappearance of the Soviet empire. Its demise may have dealt a potentially mortal blow to the United States.

The Soviet Union strained its resources and pauperized, exploited and oppressed its own people in order to compete with the United States, the embodiment of the bitterly adversarial capitalist system. Most Soviets didn’t believe the authorities who told them that they were living and working in a “workers’ paradise.” It was a struggle that its leaders believed would prove the supremacy of communism. It was bad for the Soviet Union but a godsend for the United States.

~snip~

Finally, the Soviet Union strained its dysfunctional economic system to create a first-rate scientific and military complex. Sputnik, launched in 1957, galvanized the United States into action. A huge government effort to improve math, science and engineering followed. Funding for education and research was increased sharply, and the government and private universities expanded programs for the brightest students to go to the best universities, regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. The space race did little for the average Russian, but it did create a broad infrastructure for science and technology in the United States that set the foundation for U.S. supremacy in innovation, which the United States enjoys to this day.

After the Soviet collapse, Washington found a different adversary: al-Qaida. As a result, the leading 21st-century military and economic power is wasting its resources on a medieval war, gradually descending to the level of its new foe.

[apocalypsehow]

1. LOL - satire at its finest. Well done. n/t.

Edit: typo

[howard112211]

2. And today: "Whut is thum space rockets good 'fer anyway? No more o' mah taxes 'fer them NASA nurds"

[DailyGrind51]

3. With the Soviets, it was a game understood by both players.

With Al Qaeda, only the United States understands that this is a game to ramp up defense spending, Al Qaeda is dead serious!

[malaise]

4. A lot of truth here

It sure collapsed workers' rights across the globe.

[political_Dem]

5. That's quite a fascinating premise.

However, I still trace America's nadir to W. and his cronies. W. was a mental lightweight in charge of the country when we needed true, committed thinkers. His penchant for exploitation and ruthlessness brought America to its knees. We could have rehabilitated our infrastructure if we had the right
leader in office. Instead, we have souless people who robbed the government of its money and ran when the jig was up. The sad thing is that we have yet to recover from the ramifications of W.'s actions.

He made this country into a hell on earth. :(

[Swamp Rat]

6. k&r

[pampango]

7. Some truth to that, but Reagan got started ruining the US when the Soviet Union was alive and

kicking. While Bush may not have invaded Iraq if it still has the support of the USSR, I imagine he would have ruined the US in some other way continuing and exacerbating Reagan's economic policies.

[KharmaTrain]

8. The Soviet Union Was Never Quite "Kicking"

In its zeal for military power the USSR totally ignored its people. While we got color TVs and rock 'n roll, they got long lines for toilet paper and an ever more regressive society. By the time Raygun showed up the signs of erosion were apparent and if Raygun is to be given any credit it was in speeding up the inevitable collapse of that system by forcing even more money to be spent on missile rather than consumer goods. The internal corruption and demoralized society were long in place and when the cards finally did begin to fall there was no popular support and that's what brought down the walls.

The rise of international communications in the 70s and 80s also had a big role. In Iran the Ayatollah first became famous through the distribution of cassette tapes...in the former Soviet Bloc many watched TV from West Germany and saw a life they didn't have. The advent of the computer, cellphones and fax made instant communications even easier and harder for the government to control. As late friend, who was journalist roving Eastern Europe in those days says it was the Fax machine that brought down the Berlin Wall more than any other tool cause it was used to help organize resistance. For example, when Hungary opened their borders to West Germany in 1989 a flood of East Germans came across. Now how did they find out???

The US never figured out what happened...and in many ways the end of the Cold War created a dilemma for a Military Industrial complex that made billions from the fear of "mutually assured destruction". Once that threat was gone, the hunt was on to find a new threat...a new boogieman. Poppy bush quickly found one in Saddam Hussein and Ivan was replaced with Abdul. The beat goes on. Should Abdul not be a good enough target, then they'll look at the Chinese or another "theat". The gravy train is too long to stop now. Trying to trade swords for plough shares just isn't profitable.

[nebenaube]

10. yeah,

I was going to call bullshit and state that Reagan ruined this country but he did have plenty of help.

[MadHound]

9. There was nothing good about the Cold War,

Men, fortune, lives, reputations all were wasted on this collossal fuck up known as the Cold War.

And the sad thing is, it all could have been prevented if we had either turned one Nazi war criminal over to the Soviets, or at least prosecuted him ourselves. Instead, we made him the head of our Eastern European intelligence, a vantage from where he constantly, grossly overestimated Soviet strength.

[WhiteTara]

11. name the bast*rd!

I don't know my history on that as well as I should, I see.

[MadHound]

12. Reinhardt Gehlen,

He was originally head of the the Nazi's Eastern European intelligence unit, and was responsible for millions of dead innocents during WWII. Knowing that he would probably be summarily shot by the Soviets if he was caught, he cut a deal with the US. Shortly after WWII he was able to reform the core of his wartime intelligence unit, a unit that contained other war criminals, and started working for the US.

Since we didn't have a functioning intelligence operation in the USSR, we relied heavily upon Gehlen. Being a fascist, he virulently despised communists. He grossly exaggerated the threat that the Soviets posed. For instance he kept hammering on the fact that the USSR had hundreds of nuclear missiles throughout the fifties(they really only had a few dozen), and we took those reports at face value. We acted on that "intelligence" and thus started the Cold War arms race, which was really one sided.

The interesting thing is that even when U2 overflights of the Soviet Union proved Gehlen wrong, we still continued to act as though his information was accurate, we didn't discipline him, nothing. We just kept pumping up that arms race. Of course by that the time, the MIC, which Ike warned us about, had the whip-hand and nothing could stop them.

Nor was Gehlen able to pull this off without some homegrown help, people like George Kennan, the originator and author of US containment foreign policy during the Cold War, and Allan Dulles, head of the CIA. These men, and others in top government positions, actually admired the Nazis and fascism.

If you want more information on this, I suggest that you read a book called "Blowback" by Christopher Sims. He did some excellent research on this back in the mid-'80's.

If you want

[WhiteTara]

13. Thanks MadHound

Dulles was the only name I recognized in your post! Thanks for the book tip. I'll put it on my library list!

[Doctor_J]

16. Unlikely that his reports were "mistaken"

Either he was juicing them himself, or the US Cold Warriors wanted the Big Bear threat to justify their existence, or both. Were Colin Powell's reports in 2001-2003 errors, or lies? Probably the same thing.

[Javaman]

14. the collapse was a good thing...for about 3 or 4 months...

during that very brief period of time, the US started reflecting upon itself and didn't like what it saw. But more so, the government didn't like how the people were reacting. Asking questions, wanting answers.

So the US government created one false flag after another to distract the American population from actually asking questions.

Instead, the propaganda machine was cranked up. Hyped up media based on nothing passed as news and information blanketed the public. It was delivered to us daily via the US government/MSM.

During the cold war, the threat of Nuclear war, real or imagined, was enough to keep the people supporting the Military Industrial War complex year after year. But when the cold war ended, those in on the know (read pentagon), were freaked out that the gravy train was going to end. And along with that ending of endless money was the end of many a political career based on fear and jobs through the war industry.

Can't have that now, can we?

So in steps poppy bush, willing to sell to the people the new brand of fear. Basically, we can have "peace" but we have to bomb some poor schmuck to get it. Aka Money to the highest military arms dealer to keep the gravy train going.

Once pals of the repubs, Saddam Hussein, suddenly became persona non grata. A fly wanna be world player nation that squabbled with it's neighbors over "territorial rights" based on imaginary concepts as told to us by the US media. (even though Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraq's oil fields, means nothing).

So poppy cranked up the war wagon and we were off to permanent economy sucking war profiteering forever!

(ray-guns half-witted economic theories just laid out the ground work for what was to come.)

Ever since the end of WWII the US has used one puppet nation after another as their new theme for fear. This was done all in a race to "maintain our way of life" aka "the american way of life is non-negotiable)- dickhead chaney aka keep the Industrial war machine going.

But in reality, the cranking up of the economic war machine is nothing more than a snake eating its tail.

We live large even though we have record setting poverty, we spend our selves deep into debt while our rate of pay drops to record levels, we can't save because we are all just doing what we can to stay ahead of the bills.

This is the American dream that is non-negotiable? No. This is the republican dream that is non-negotiable. The race to the bottom while the top continues to reap profits.

All the collapse of the soviet union did was allow the repubs to think outside the box. Instead of using the Soviets as the big bad meanies all the time, they now can create new bad guys from whole cloth.

That short time of reflection that the US experienced was nothing more than a wake up call for the right wing. They looked into the abyss of peace and ran screaming.

[Doctor_J]

15. Not for those who own and run it

While "Communism" was a viable alternative, the disaster capitalists had to put a kind, smiling face on their ideology, so they could say, "See? Ours is way better". Once the USSR collapsed, and their brand of communism was shown to be untenable, no such restrictions were necessary. The capitalist proletariat had nowhere to run, so there was no need to hide the predatory nature of raw, unregulated capitalism. the purveyors of this form of misery are now content to hold the masses in fear & poverty, since their media apparatus keeps the hoi polloi from oiling up the guillotine.

BTW Michael Parenti calls this "Rollback" - read "Dirty Truths" for a horrifyingly detailed explanation

[ThomWV]

17. So, if I read it correctly the hypothesis is that you're only as good as the enemy you fight?

[suston96]

18. China is not our enemy but with China doing lunar probes and such....

...and making all our clothes and almost everything else we buy.....

I believe the article's premise must indeed be satire at its finest.