That conflicts with claims that Soviet communism was doomed to failure. To now claim that "they could have easily reallocated resources" is a contrivance, black market or not. (How do you "reallocate" a black market to defense expenditures? Even in a controlled economy? That requires a great imagination.) The best they could have done to maintain their totalitarian state would have been to declare war on the US, and that would have completely destroyed them. Other wars drained their resources and brought closer the day of reckoning.
Statements by those who lived there left no doubt it would not last much longer, as much for political as economic reasons, none of which had anything to do with Mr. Reagan, or any other sainted individual:
Here's what even the ex-pres of the Ukraine said:
english.pravda.ru
"Leonid Kravchuk, a former president of the independent Ukraine, insisted on the Soviet Union's collapse having been pre-determined by history. "It had been a wreck as a geopolitical structure as early as ten years before the official breakup,"
Kissinger said:"- the communists could not turn themselves into democrats without ceasing to be communists, an equation Gorbachev never understood"
Some other links
wws.princeton.edu
I can agree that Reagan didn't make it any easier.
I dispute, however, like in Afghanistan, that it would not have fallen hard and fast, anyway, saving the US $4 trillion or so, and lots of rhetoric.
It's more accurate to say that the US might have attempted to save the Soviet Union, and declined to do so. Had Gorbachev succeeded in normalizing relations with the US, there might have been some chance their system would have lasted long enough to morph into something more democratic. But not likely. The old Bear couldn't learn new tricks.
Your comments about WWII are a disconnect. I dind't "attributing everything to cynical manipulation" I criticized the cynical regime of secrecy, which opens the way for manipulation. If WWII was an honorable war, it was because we had less justification at the highest levels to secretly take advantage of the American people. The OSS was only just being formed, and Wild Bill Donovan started out under semblance of civilian control.
His successors are not. |
