The analysis of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, whether Chinese or foreign, has different angles and levels of interpretation, and some consensus has also been formed. From the perspective of the Americans, although they firmly believed in the "belief" that the Soviet Union would be defeated, they also frankly admitted that they did not expect that the Soviet Union would step down the stage of history in such a tragic form as "disintegration."
Whatever the purpose, the Trump administration is trying to push today's China into the position of the Soviet Union. Therefore, in today's environment, revisiting some of the tactical countermeasures of the United States against the Soviet Union during the Cold War is undoubtedly conducive to knowing oneself and knowing the other.
In addition to the Soviet Union's own factors that led to its defeat, here are some of the methods I summarized by the Americans:
First, from the Nixon era onwards, the United States pursued a policy of "détente" with the Soviet Union.
On the surface, this is a "win-win" policy. Let the Soviet Union gradually open its doors to the West and understand the information of the West. But at a deeper and long-term perspective, the Americans completely dismantled the Soviet Union's ideology and dominance of public opinion.
Beginning in 1972, more and more Western officials, journalists, businessmen, scientific and technological personnel, and cultural groups began to visit the Soviet Union, and contacted Soviet government officials and ordinary people, especially university professors and intellectuals, and the channels of information exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States continued to increase.
By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union began to stop interfering with the normal broadcasting of Western broadcasts such as the BBC and The Voice of America, and the Soviet people began to compare the differences between Soviet and Western life, and to a large extent idealized Western life. At the same time, through covert operations, the CIA gradually infiltrated various books, magazines and audiovisual media into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, so that the Soviet public could understand the speech of political dissidents such as Solnizhenchen, the corruption of the Soviet high-level and the democratic and liberal culture of the West. These clandestine operations and propaganda methods made the Soviet intellectual community and the political and technological elite aware of the differences and gaps between the Soviet Union and the United States, laying the foundation for the so-called "openness" of the Soviet Union, which in the late 1980s had fragmented information control.
Second, beginning with the Ford administration, the United States gradually intensified its attacks on the legitimacy of Soviet government rule.
In 1975, under pressure from arms control negotiations, the Soviet Union was forced to sign the Helsinki Agreement for the protection of human rights. Immediately, with the secret support of the West, organizations such as the Helsinki Observer Group appeared in the Soviet Union, which were independent of the Soviet Republican government and the government, and publicized that the Soviet government did not abide by its treaty commitments and violated international human rights standards. The Carter era further intensified human rights attacks in the Soviet Union.
Reagan took the ideological war against the Soviet Union to a whole new level. He openly denied the legal status of the Soviet government, calling it an "evil empire", saying that he was not willing to recognize it as a country, and the Soviet Union could not enjoy "equal" status with the United States.
Overall, carter and Reagan administrations, with their unanimous policy of open contempt and covert action against the Soviet Union, effectively dealt a blow to an important factor in the Soviet Union's maintenance of power: international prestige and domestic legitimacy. On the contrary, it was a major encouragement to the "dissidents" in the Soviet Union who demanded reform of the existing system.
Third, both carter and Reagan administrations waged "economic warfare" against the Soviet Union.
Before Nixon, the United States had imposed export controls on the Soviet camp, but the effect was not good. The Nixon administration began a policy of "détente", and bilateral trade relations also developed to a certain extent.
During the Carter period, although the business community opposed it, export control over the Soviet Union made a comeback, especially after the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and the United States' agricultural and technological exports to the Soviet Union were basically stagnant.
The Reagan administration further tightened its export embargo on the Soviet Union, but in order to establish a "democratic" image of the West, the food embargo was lifted. In other respects, however, Reagan, through the so-called "democratization of industry," contributed to the deterioration of the Soviet economic situation in every way as possible, and these measures achieved remarkable practical results, leaving the Soviet Union unable to make ends meet.
Fourth, after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States began to challenge the Soviet Union in the global third world.
From Angola to Afghanistan to Central America, the Carter administration, through the military and the C.I.A., conducted a series of covert operations to fight Soviet vassals and nurture U.S. proxies and the opposition to challenge Soviet proxies.
During the Reagan era, these covert operations had become a large-scale CIA activity around the world. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union's power in the Third World continued to grow, but with the implementation of the "economic war" in the United States, these vassal states became the political burden of the Soviet Union and a huge economic and military burden. The balance of power in the Third World is gradually tilting toward the United States and the West.
Fifth, after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States adopted a military competition policy specifically aimed at the characteristics of the Soviet Union, which eventually dragged down the Soviet Union.
The Cuban Missile Crisis gave the Americans their strengths and weaknesses, and beginning with the Johnson administration, the United States began a strategic weapons modernization program to maintain an absolute superiority over the Soviet Union, not just a numerical advantage, in terms of the technological leadership of strategic and tactical new weapons. The rebound weapon was originally developed by the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev period, but in the end it was "carried forward" by the Americans, becoming the "last straw" to contain the Soviet Union and crush it.
The U.S. military modernization programs and large-scale military construction that began in the 1970s put enormous pressure on the Soviet Union, forcing them to continue the arms race, and in the context of the worsening domestic economic crisis, the pressure on the Soviet Union to carry out political and economic reforms was also increasing.
While the Soviet Union was exhausted and breathless, Reagan developed the traditional anti-ballistic defense weapon to the point where the Soviet Union was completely suffocated by the construction of a space ballistic missile defense system, the famous "Star Wars Program" (SDI).
For the Soviet Union, the Star Wars program marked a sweeping military and economic overtaking of the United States, highlighting the Soviet Union's complete disadvantage in this technology-based arms race. Because the Soviet Union had no way to deal with this plan of the Soviet Union, its huge number of nuclear warheads may really become "paper tigers". As a result, getting the United States to abandon this plan through containment and negotiation (from appeal to request) became the focus of Gorbachev's diplomacy, and had to make substantial concessions in many ways.
In fact, judging from the later declassified documents of the United States, Reagan himself did not really let the US Department of Defense formally implement the "Star Wars plan" after making this famous speech, because he himself believed that this was just a "flash in the pan" idea, which was impossible to achieve, but for the attack on the Soviet Union, it may be a wonderful propaganda means. What a great irony!
In short, in the mid-to-late '70s and early '80s, while the Soviet economy and society deteriorated dramatically, the United States adjusted a series of strategic and tactical policies to take full advantage of and attack the most important weaknesses of the Soviet Union in various fields, including: the economy, the technology-based arms race, the legitimacy of the regime and the dissatisfaction of the people, the sentiment of non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union, and the competition in the Third World.
Faced with these pressures, the Soviet Union had to start reforming internally to meet the challenges. And eventually under the joint action of internal and external factors, it will disintegrate.
The internal causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union were of course decisive factors, but the sharp increase in political, military and economic pressure from the United States undoubtedly played an important role.