After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the outside world summarized the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were both internal and external causes, but most of the data explained the internal factors in detail, that is, some problems within the Soviet Union, but rarely said external factors, and some ignored the past. Gorbachev later said that there were 5 mistakes in the collapse of the Soviet Union, but all of them were internal factors. The so-called external factor is how the Western countries disintegrated the Soviet Union.
Although the Soviet Union disintegrated when Bush Sr. was president, it was Reagan who really played a key role when he was president
Why? Let's understand this history according to the historical data.
01 The post-war reconstruction of the Soviet Union frightened the West
The reason why the United States is strong is actually very simple, because when the United States established itself as a country, the War of Independence was not fierce, and the Civil War did not suffer much damage, and in the more than a hundred years since then, the United States has not had any war or been invaded by foreign enemies. Even after the outbreak of World War II, the United States did not forget to make war money. Pearl Harbor in World War II was a dime a dozen and not worth mentioning. Do you think such a United States can be strong?
The Soviet Union, which competed with the United States for hegemony during the Cold War, did not have such good luck, and the Soviet Union was inferior to the United States in both the early days of its founding and the comprehensive strength of the Soviet Union. In particular, the Soviet Union was severely damaged in World War II. Although the Soviet Union eventually defeated Hitler, Germany, the war caused serious damage to the Soviet economy. According to the data,
In World War II, more than 20 million people died in the Soviet Union, more than 30,000 enterprises were destroyed, more than 1,000 towns were severely damaged, and one-third of the Soviet Union's assets were reduced to ashes.
How can such a country fight with the United States after World War II?
The post-war reconstruction of the Soviet Union, like World War II, is also a national force, what the United States did not expect was that the Soviet Union was rebuilt very quickly, and the Soviet Union quickly realized the recovery of national strength. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite. Later, it was the first country to send people into space.
When Khrushchev put the missiles on the doorstep of the United States, the United States realized that the Soviet Union had become so powerful that they could not imagine.
In February 1946, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union sent a telegram back to Truman, which detailed the postwar reconstruction of the Soviet Union and provided the corresponding theoretical basis for Truman's containment of the Soviet Union. On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a speech in missouri, titled "The Pillar of Peace," in which Churchill said: "
From Szczecin in the Baltic Sea to Trieste in the Adriatic Sea, an Iron Curtain that stretches east and west has landed.
This is the famous "Iron Curtain Speech" in history, and it is also considered to be the beginning of the Cold War between East and West. Churchill called on the West, relying on the United States, to oppose the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.
02 The arms race has allowed the United States to find its way
After Churchill fired the first shot of the Cold War, the United States actually took many detours in how to disintegrate the Soviet Union, but these detours were not in vain, at least laying the foundation for the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
After World War II, successive U.S. administrations tried to contain the Soviet Union, and as long as the Soviet Union made mistakes in policy, the United States would use these mistakes to further attack the disintegration. According to a book written by Schweir, a former CIA employee, "How Reagan Brought Down the Soviet Union," Reagan's tactics for the collapse of the Soviet Union were revealed. According to him, as soon as Reagan entered the White House in 1981, he immediately began to formulate a strategy and specific countermeasures to bring down the Soviet Union.
Of These responses by Reagan, an arms race was a major instrument.
In fact, the arms race was implemented as early as Reagan's previous presidents, but later the United States found that this move did not lead to the weakening of the Soviet Union's strength, but let the Soviet Military Equipment walk in the forefront of the world. Because the United States was too busy with the Vietnam War to take care of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's military strength surpassed that of the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
Since the early armaments race was not easy to use, why did Reagan use it again?
In fact, when Reagan analyzed the Soviet Union, he believed that the Soviet Union must be held back by an arms race in order to form a "catalyst" effect.
Brzezinski, a former U.S. security adviser, wrote in his 1989 book The Great Failure:
By 1970, the Soviet Union had surpassed half the size of the United States. In the face of this gap, an arms race continues. By 1980, the Soviet Union's seven-year military spending had reached $981 billion, more than $200 billion more than the U.S. military spending.
In March 1983, Reagan proposed the "Star Wars" program, and the Soviet Union responded with national strength.
From 1986 to 1990, Soviet military spending grew by 8 percent, twice the national income. It is said that this ratio is an unbearable proportion of Soviet GDP.
Former Soviet Foreign Minister Besmeltnekh once said that the arms race accelerated the weakening of the Soviet Union, and General Kalugain of the Soviet Union said,
The arms race waged by the United States was the "catalyst" for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
03 The deadliest trick was used
But the arms race alone was not enough, the United States saw that the Soviet Union had obtained a large amount of foreign exchange in oil, which was a factor that the Soviet Union did not suffer much in the arms race. Therefore, oil prices must be suppressed and the Soviet Union completely weakened. On March 26, 1981, Reagan wrote in his diary, "
The Soviet economy was terrible, and if they didn't give credit to them, they had to be called 'uncles', or they would starve to death."
In April 1981, U.S. CIA Director Casey walked around from the Middle East to the oil-producing countries of Western Europe, on the pretext of aiding their weapons, so that oil production could increase horsepower to increase oil production, and only when production increased, oil prices were lowered.
It was precisely because the price of oil was too high that the Soviet Union made a lot of money from the international oil market.
In 1986, the international oil value price fell from $57.17 per barrel to $7.9, and the decline in oil prices reduced soviet revenues, causing economic difficulties in the Soviet Union and social contradictions. The Soviet Union was originally an exporter of grain, but became an importer from 1973. Even half of the military-industrial technology in the arms race with the United States is imported from the West. In this situation, as long as the United States cut off the Soviet Union's financial resources, the Soviet Union will collapse.
On August 17, 2011, in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, Gorbachev listed five mistakes in the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the arms race. But Gorbachev did not know how much force Reagan had used to break up the Soviet Union.
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