Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Offensive Strategy - Sun Tzu's Art of War #3 - Revisited" video.

  1. +It_lolcat "The US defeated the USSR without fighting it. We got them stuck in a war that bankrupted them." +Serdiuk Paul "USSR collapsed because its socialist economy was not sustainable, especially under the strain of the Cold War." There were many reasons why the Soviet economy declined. In the end though, it actually survived for 70 years and contrary to popular belief, it did not collapse but it did go into serious decline. Of that there is no question. But to say it failed for such simple reasons doesn't explain it even a little bit. Forgive me for saying it but I can't understand how people still believe this but the internet is in love with the idea that there are simple answers to complex problems. The inefficiencies in the Soviet economy are more than balanced out by the excesses of Western economies. Western economies are every bit as corrupt and inefficient. The difference is in their industrial base, their client base and their resource base. All of that is Grand Strategy. The Cold War was not a battle of ideologies as much as it was a battle for spheres of influence. The Soviet Union could never number very many wealthy countries among its client states. Their ventures into Africa failed catastrophically, not because of socialist economics but because the Africans really did not speak the same economic language. They ended up giving away billions of Roubles in hardware of all kinds and getting nothing in return for it. In Eastern Europe the situation was similar but with a slightly different flavour. Towards the end, the Eastern Europeans were still getting Soviet oil but kept defaulting in their payments. Part of this was because they were dealing both directly and indirectly with Western economies with which their currency was less competitive, creating local inflationary pressures and causing balance of payment problems which might not have happened had they elected to stay isolated. As a result, these Eastern European countries continually defaulted and the Soviet Union ended up indirectly lining the pockets of Western industrialists while getting nothing in return. In the end, the West had a strong base of wealthy client states and always got their money. The USSR had a client base of economically weak states, who they hoped would grow with time but they never got their money back. Without a reliable revenue stream, maintaining a strong economy was much more difficult. Backing poorer countries was about the only point where it was ideologically based but there was an awful lot of enlightened self-interest involved too. This was a direct result of the end of the war when people started talking of "emerging economies". They were simply chasing business. Add to that the inefficiencies of running the largest nation by land mass on the planet and you will find that the economic challenges for them were very complex indeed and go way beyond any issues of one system or another. The proof of this is in what happened when the Soviet Union broke up. The economy was not well in 1989/90 but was much worse by 1992/93. The transition to capitalism was a far greater failure for them and that is why modern Russians are so sceptical about it. Furthermore, the Soviet Union did not collapse as such. It broke apart. There was no economic collapse, characterised by hyperinflation, etc. There was no social collapse, marked by civil unrest and there was no political collapse, though they only just dodged that one. The Soviet Union was actually broken up by Boris Yeltsin and a bunch of like-minded confederates from places like the Ukraine. Any collapse was in their international influence. An excellent book to read on this is "A Failed Empire" by Vladislav Zubok. He explains all of this very well. "Had there been no US imperialism and aggression USSR would have collapsed less then a decade afferent Stalin's death, during 50s or 60s." Not at all. The Soviet economy had to endure far more than the US economy. Remember that the USSR was invaded during WWII and lost about 15% of its population dead. No country or nation suffered more than they did. It was estimated that the war cost them seven years of growth. Yet in the Khrushchev era - a mere ten years later - the Soviet economy grew at a rate three times that of the United States (see "The Russian Revolution 1891-1991" by Orlando Figes). That is how they were able to afford their space program. The real problem with spending came in the Brezhnev era- the late 60's and early 70's - when defence spending absorbed about 40% of GDP. That was clearly unsustainable and it was curtailed around 1977. So the argument that the US "won" the Cold War by outspending the Soviet Union is fallacious at best. They had moved on by then and had other things to contend with (Afghanistan, falling trade revenues, etc.).
    1