MA>DH> Mike, I tend to disagree with you on this, but I must admit, you make
MA>DH> compelling argument. On the subject of having our forces deployed
MA>DH> around the world, this strategy has been listed as one of the causes o
MA>DH> the Soviet implosion.
MA>        Again I am in a minority position, but I beleive the Soviet
MA>Union collapsed because it's ecconimic system was flawed, not because
MA>it fell so far behind the United States in how many times it could
MA>obliterate humanity.  It was in the realm of ecconomics that the
MA>Soviets were destroyed and they destroyed themselves. Their
MA>agricultural system, based on non-productive collectives and inferior
MA>grains simply couldn't feed their populations.
I don't have documentation on this, but some time after the Gulf War,
Colin Powell said that back inthe early 80s they had good intelligence
suggesting that the Soviet Union didn't have long to live.
MA>        When the Soviet Union flew apart it flew apart for the same
MA>reasons any revolution occurs, food, housing, work, and the personal
MA>security of the individual citizens.  Ideological revolutions are for
MA>the elite and ideologies rarly motivate a people to implement even
MA>moderate change, much less radical change.  Change occurs when people
MA>are affected directly not philosophically.
JK Galbraith once said that most revolutions are not the glorious
ideological victories they are claimed to be, but rather "the kicking
in of a rotten door."  The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight.
Back in the early 90s I saw a newspaper item that said we were spending
tens of millions of dollars to buy weapons-grade uranium from Russia.
That was when I knew the cold war was really over.
MA>         If only military spending were the issue, the USSR could have
MA>dramatically reduced overall military forces and still retained a
MA>massive strike capability that even with minimal maintenance would have
MA>held the west at bay for decades, but Soviet security, contrary to
MA>popular beliefs, wasn't the cause for the dismemberment of the USSR.
MA>Failures in crops, failures in production of basic goods, and a dismal
MA>prospect of hope for the individual is what destroyed the Soviet Union
MA>and what caused the satellite nations to reject communism.
Everything that I've read said that the average Russian despised
Communism and the Soviet state, and wanted to be like us.  And as
you say, it wasn't an ideological thing, it was because nobody
could get anything done right.
When the USSR went out of business, one of the Russian treaty
negotiators said something that seems very pertinent to the
factional squabbling that has increasingly divided this country
since then.  I don't recall the exact quote, but he said something
like, "We are about to do a very nasty thing to your country.
We are going to take away your common enemy."
 * SLMR 2.1a *      Atoms are not things.  -- Heisenberg
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