On the evening of March 23, 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in which he proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the "Star Wars Program".
"We are embarking on a program of defensive measures against the terrible Soviet missile threat. We can intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our territory or those of our allies. I know that this is a difficult technical task that may not be completed before the end of the century. My fellow Americans, tonight we are launching a project that promises to change the course of human history. I ask for your prayers and support. ”
Reagan promised the Americans that the anti-missile defense system would protect the United States and make it an "impregnable fortress."
Billions of dollars were allocated to this project.
It was in the middle of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union and the United States were facing each other.
The Soviet Union used up about 40 percent of its defense budget in its arms race with the United States. Soviet supreme leader Nikita Khrushchev once said: "It is as easy for the Soviet Union to build missiles as it is to make sausages." ”
At that time, the firepower of the two countries was enough to blow up the earth a hundred times, so no one supported the war. If the Earth is destroyed, there will be no winners. Through the counterbalance of fear, the world is able to keep the peace. The nuclear arms race seems to have come to an end, but the United States and the Soviet Union still need to decide whether they will win or lose.
Richard Pearl
U.S. Secretary of Defense and Advisor (1981-1987)
Reagan intended to destroy the USSR, not physically, but politically and militarily, which was his goal.
Robert Bell
Intelligence Officer, CIA (1976-1995)
When I first heard about Project Star Wars, I thought it was crazy. We're talking about the CIA's advanced weapons, but all of them don't align with what we know about weapons or other things. Looking back today, that initiative was nothing more than a scare. I don't know if Regan himself believes it, but we don't believe it.
However, the Soviets believed. For the Kremlin, it is unacceptable to be left far behind by the Americans.
Richard Pearl
U.S. Secretary of Defense and Advisor (1981-1987)
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) posed a threat to one of the things that the Soviet Union had been clinging to: enormous military power – nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles. This plan, which suddenly popped up, could suppress their offensive weapons.
Sergey Oznobychev
Director of the Military and Political Department of the Primakov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Reagan said: "We are going to make your weapons meaningless and obsolete", we ordered to study whether this was possible, the answer was clearly no, but the Soviet military took the bait.
So Moscow launched its own space research program, unaware that it was stepping into a chess game set by the White House.
However, the "Star Wars program" is only the first step in the careful planning of the United States......
Oil wars
After Reagan announced the "Star Wars Program," he immediately turned his attention to the Soviet Union's "pockets" and demanded that the Soviet Union's access to foreign exchange be reduced.
This time, Reagan's target was oil.
Michael S. T. Clarley
Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
If the Soviets were to be limited in their revenues from the sale of oil and gas to Europe, they would be deprived of the funds they needed to carry out all their activities, whether military activities, support for Third World allies, or to improve the quality of life of their own people, all of which would worsen at the same time.
Reagan turned to Saudi Arabia and dealt a fatal blow to the Soviet economy.
Saudi Arabia's sudden announcement of the sale of crude oil at a low price caused confusion in the market. By the end of 1985, the price of a barrel of crude oil had fallen by nearly 70 percent, an alarming rate of decline. And the Soviet Union, the world's main oil producer, can only watch and worry.
Andrei Grachev
Gorbachev adviser and spokesman
The purpose of this strategy was to destroy the Soviet economy. Reagan made an agreement with the Saudi king to flood the market with Saudi oil, thereby depriving the Soviet Union of its main source of revenue, and he succeeded.
Defeat on the battlefield in Afghanistan
On September 27, 1979, the 40th Corps of the Soviet Red Army was stationed in Afghanistan. Their mission was to support the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and tighten Afghanistan's economic dependence on the Soviet Union.
Unbeknownst to the Soviets, they may be entering the third phase of America's elaborate layout.
Decree No. 166, authorizing the United States to increase its assistance to the Mujahideen
The Soviet intervention was initially victorious, so the Americans chose to support the Mujahideen, including the most radical.
In the eyes of the Americans, the enemies of the USSR were the friends of the United States.
Reagan received Afghan mujahideen at the White House
U.S. President Ronald Reagan not only warmly received a delegation of Afghan fighters at the White House, but also generously sent nearly $5 billion in aid and state-of-the-art weapons to Afghan jihadists.
Robert Bell
Intelligence Officer, CIA (1976-1995)
The Mujahideen could stand on a hill and use the Stinger surface-to-air missile, which beeped as soon as he locked onto the Soviet plane. As long as he could hear the beep, he knew he could hit 100% of the time.
Franz Klintsevich
Chairman of the Russian Union of Afghan War Veterans
Throughout the war, they supplied 300 new Stinger missiles, with which they shot down 112 transport aircraft of the Soviet Air Force.
Hundreds of planes and helicopters were shot down, and twelve thousand Soviet soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.
The Soviet Union was hit by a double whammy of economic catastrophe and a military rout.
On May 15, 1987, at 23:30 local time, the Soviet "Polar" was ignited and lifted off.
The Polar is a huge space station equipped with guns and lasers that can destroy U.S. satellites when launched into space, a "man-eating shark" that chases prey in space, and is the Soviet Union's response to the United States.
However, just a few minutes after ignition, the Polar crashed into the Pacific Ocean due to a technical malfunction.
Billions of rubles sank to the bottom of the sea.
Gorbachev then decided to close the military space program, but it was too late.
Dmitry Trenin
Negotiator for Nuclear and Space Weapons in Geneva
In the end, Gorbachev managed to avoid being drawn into the arms race, but fell into another trap: the Soviet Union's finances became increasingly dependent on the West. Since 1988, the USSR has been heavily indebted to the West, which has never been done before. Until the end of the Gorbachev era, the Kremlin's greatest task was to find money from abroad.
With empty shelves in stores, unpaid wages, and growing discontent, the Soviet Union was already in deep economic and political trouble.
The Star Wars program, the suppression of oil prices, and the war in Afghanistan forced the Soviet Union to decay step by step......
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"A Thousand Lies - The Secret of America's Operation of the Century"
Source: "Phoenix Vision"
Editors: Yii, Yi Ning