Post #294,230
10/4/07 10:21:15 PM
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The issue was did Reagan cause the collapse of the USSR
According to [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yegor_Gaidar|Yegor Gaidar] the main cause was Saudi Oil policy: In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet leadership, however, was not intellectually prepared to heed lessons from the School of Salamanca. The shortest quotation about the intellectual capacity of the Soviet leadership came from the Politburo minutes: "Mr. Zasiadko has stopped binge drinking. Resolution: nominate Mr. Zasiadko as a minister to Ukraine."
While intellectual capacity was not the strongest quality of the Soviet leadership, they still understood the need to manipulate the oil market. Excerpts from Politburo materials indicate that the head of the Committee for State Security (KGB), Yury Andropov, facilitated contacts between the KGB and the Arab terrorists, who sought assistance for terrorist attacks on oil fields in order to keep energy prices high.[5] The general resolution was that the Soviet Union should support the Arab terrorists in this battle.[6]
Yet one of the Soviet leadership's biggest blunders was to spend a significant amount of additional oil revenues to start the war in Afghanistan. The war radically changed the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. In 1974, Saudi Arabia decided to impose an embargo on oil supplies to the United States. But in 1979 the Saudis became interested in American protection because they understood that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a first step toward--or at least an attempt to gain--control over the Middle Eastern oil fields.
The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to September 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market. During the next six months, oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms.
As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive. The Soviet leadership was confronted with a difficult decision on how to adjust. There were three options--or a combination of three options--available to the Soviet leadership. From [link|http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_detail.asp|AEI] . If the Reagan administration hadn't tried to force the USSR to keep up with our military build up, maybe his deficits wouldn't have been so big.
Seamus
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Post #294,257
10/5/07 9:17:38 AM
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can you say disinformatsya? probably not
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,261
10/5/07 9:36:19 AM
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I forgot the AEI is all about spreading Russian
disinformation.
The talk was about what the current Russian government is doing to keep from repeating past mistakes, so it has got to be disinformation. Couldn't possibly be anything else.
Seamus
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Post #294,263
10/5/07 9:45:24 AM
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if they are trying not to repeat past mistakes
they are hiding that activity very well while appearing to rebuild the apparachik machine
the invasion of afghanistan had fuck all to do with the price of oil, if you had studies history you would know that. thanx, bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,269
10/5/07 9:55:39 AM
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A fear of Soviet control of the middle east wasn't a
big concern for the Saudis? And they certainly have never used oil prices as a political weapon. Get real. It makes more sense than the arms race made the USR collapse. The USSR had options in the arms race, it didn't when it came to the price of oil and a loss of market share.
The power of the free market causing the collapse of the USR, I would have thought you would have appreciated the irony in that.
Seamus
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Post #294,271
10/5/07 9:59:33 AM
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not for the saudis
the oil options for the Sovs were wasted by refusing to invest in infrastructure and exploration until AFTER the collapse of the communist system. It was the arms race that broke them, not oil prices. thanx, bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,276
10/5/07 10:44:45 AM
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Yeah the huge loss of oil revenue
which they couldn't do anything about didn't cause the collapse, but spending on the arms race which they could choose how to respond to did cause the collapse. Boy, you sold me on that one.
Seamus
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Post #294,278
10/5/07 10:48:01 AM
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hate to break it to you
but in the 70's and 80's russia was a net importer of energy, not a producer, but hey, dont let facts bother your worldview thanx, bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,281
10/5/07 12:31:18 PM
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The idea is that the fall of oil prices
and loss of market share cost them hard currency without which they couldn't buy grain, let alone guns or other forms of energy: The Search for Loans
The money was suddenly gone. The Soviet Union tried to create a consortium of 300 banks to provide a large loan for the Soviet Union in 1989, but was informed that only five of them would participate and, as a result, the loan would be twenty times smaller than needed. The Soviet Union then received a final warning from the Deutsche Bank and from its international partners that the funds would never come from commercial sources. Instead, if the Soviet Union urgently needed the money, it would have to start negotiations directly with Western governments about so-called politically motivated credits.
In 1985 the idea that the Soviet Union would begin bargaining for money in exchange for political concessions would have sounded absolutely preposterous to the Soviet leadership. In 1989 it became a reality, and Gorbachev understood the need for at least $100 billion from the West to prop up the oil-dependent Soviet economy. According to chairman of the State Planning Committee Yury Maslyukov:
We understand that the only source of hard currency is, of course, the source of oil. . . . If we do not make all the necessary decisions now, next year may turn out to be beyond our worst nightmares. . . . As for the socialist countries, they may all end up in a most critical situation. All this will lead us to a veritable collapse, and not only us, but our whole system.[7]
Ryzhkov commented at the same meeting:
The Vneshekonombank's [Soviet Foreign Trade Bank] guarantees are needed, but it cannot provide them. . . . If there is no oil, there will be no national economy.[8]
It is fascinating to hear now the opinion that Eduard Shevardnadze, then foreign minister, "betrayed" the interest of the Soviet Union--especially when documents that were prepared for him at the time are available. In reality, a number of Soviet agencies urged him to secure at any cost these "politically motivated credits."[9]
In the meantime, the Soviet Union started to have severe food shortages, and grain deliveries were not being made to large cities. One of Gorbachev's closest associates, Anatoly Cherniayev, described the situation in Moscow in March 1991:
If [the grain] cannot be obtained somewhere, famine may come by June. . . . Moscow has probably never seen anything like that throughout its history--even in its hungriest years.[10] From the Soviet Collapse article.
Seamus
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