Tillerson Out

Having studied this in college... real time. I vaguely recalled what moynihan had to say because my professor who briefed Congress on these issues sort of supported in part what Moynihan predicted. I would not be surprised if Moynihan got some of his intel from my professor because my professor edited the yearly Soviet Union report that Congress received.

My professor said that the Soviet Union was spending about one third of its gdp on the military already. He predicted that with the Reagan stepping up our spending on Star Wars Soviet Union could not keep up and the Generals would have to give up power... or (worse things could have also happened so the journal made it very clear the US should not be aggressive or antagonistic as it broke apart)

Therefore Moynihan was correct when he said they would eventually breakup for economic or ethnic reasons. There relative overspending on the their military was leaving them with major internal economic problems. Their economy was weak and falling apart.
Their people were in one place the food and resources in others and their infrastructure to keep it all together had been neglected.

Hence Reagan's military spending and the threat of Star Wars and the Catholic Church's spending in Poland coupled with Gorbachev's desire for peace caused the USSR to collapse when it did. The generals realized they could not keep it together.



Did I mention, ever sin ce the 1960s the record is not good.

In regard to the Soviet Union collapse :
There are many policy experts, mostly non-politicians, that would disagree in varying degrees with your statement, some strongly, some less so. The chief expert, Daniel Patrick Mohnihan, unfortunately died a few years ago. Moynihan was both a Ph.D. sociologist, an expert on the Soviet Union, a member of Ford's cabinet, our Ambassador to the United Nations, a U.S. Senator, a personal confidant of President Kennedy, and had a comprehensive grasp of world affairs. His writing indicates that were he alive today he would strongly disagree with your above assertion. He disagreed so strongly that he left Ford's cabinet (he said he was fired, but of course it was a mutual agreement) over this very issue.

If you're going to vote , you owe it to the rest of us to acquire an education. It is not enough merely to have an opinion.
Did I mention, ever sin ce the 1960s the record is not good.

In regard to the Soviet Union collapse :
There are many policy experts, mostly non-politicians, that would disagree in varying degrees with your statement, some strongly, some less so. The chief expert, Daniel Patrick Mohnihan, unfortunately died a few years ago. Moynihan was both a Ph.D. sociologist, an expert on the Soviet Union, a member of Ford's cabinet, our Ambassador to the United Nations, a U.S. Senator, a personal confidant of President Kennedy, and had a comprehensive grasp of world affairs. His writing indicates that were he alive today he would strongly disagree with your above assertion. He disagreed so strongly that he left Ford's cabinet (he said he was fired, but of course it was a mutual agreement) over this very issue.

If you're going to vote , you owe it to the rest of us to acquire an education. It is not enough merely to have an opinion.
 
...
Hence Reagan's military spending and the threat of Star Wars and the Catholic Church's spending in Poland coupled with Gorbachev's desire for peace caused the USSR to collapse when it did. The generals realized they could not keep it together.
Nothing could be further from the truth than the above statement,

Recall that Moynihan insisted that the Soviet Union would fail on its own, for internal political and economic reasons, and this was long before Reagan was on the scene. Moynihan's view was a minority viewpoint at the time, and remains a prevailing viewpoint among Republicans and other poorly informed Americans to this day, nevertheless Moynihan's opinion expressed in the 1970s remains consistent with the majority, expert opinion today.

Naturally the reasons for the breakup of the Soviet Union have been thoroughly visited by Historians on the European and American Continents, and there is now general agreement among them.

Even Gorbachev has weighed in on this topic and expressed an opinion not inconsistent with the opinion of most historians today.

I think this statement nicely summarizes the opinion of experts:

The stunning collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989-91 has often been heralded in the West as a triumph of capitalism and democracy, as though this event were obviously a direct result of the policies of the Reagan and Thatcher governments. This self-congratulatory analysis has little relation to measurable facts, circumstances, and internal political dynamics that were the real historical causes of the deterioration of the Soviet empire and ultimately the Soviet state itself.

jem, the literature on this topic is voluminous. Much of it available free on the net. Your thinking is merely a regurgitation of political rhetoric and "truthiness". Politicians thrive on "alternative truth" (lies) and "truthiness" -- a feature or property of misleading or false statements that appeal to our biases and therefore have the ring of truth about them, but are nevertheless untrue.
 
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