# Did the Saudis Win the Cold War? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 13, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891 "2007-06-13T19:15:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/1 "2007-06-13T19:15:56Z")
Thanks to [Kevin Drum](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_06/011480.php), I’ve just finished reading a [fascinating article on the AEI website](http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_detail.asp). Written by Yegor Gaidar, a big-shot in the Russian government in the early 1990s, the thesis is that the fall of the Soviet Empire was a story of grain, oil, and Afghanistan. The quick summary: ever since socialization of agricultural production, the USSR, a pre-WWI grain exporter, had a chronic problem producing enough grain to feed its increasingly urban population. For awhile, various temporary fixes sufficed, but the USSR began importing grain from the West in a big way in the 1960s. The problem was, how to pay for the grain. At first, the USSR spent a good chunk of its gold reserves, spending 1/3 of its reserves in 1963 for 12 million tons of grain, but that obviously wasn’t very repeatable. The USSR didn’t build anything that Westerners wanted to buy, so it had to sell raw materials. Fortunately for them, at about this time they discovered oil in western Siberia, and from then on, the need to pay for grain drove the rate of Russian oil production. Then along came the Afghan war, with its added expense - and in the middle of that war, in late 1985, the Saudis decided to drastically increase oil production, shortly causing oil prices to plummet. As a result, the USSR couldn’t pump enough oil to pay for both guns and grain. For a few years, the USSR borrowed heavily on the commercial market to plug the gap, but by 1989, the banks decided they’d risked enough, and the USSR wouldn’t be able to borrow money without the involvement of Western governments. Clearly the prospect of help of the West would disappear if there was a repeat of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. So in 1989, there was no such repeat. And the rest, as they say, is history. So, the debate: did the House of Saud have more to do with the end of the Evil Empire than Ronald Reagan did? It sounds plausible to me. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/2 "2007-06-13T20:31:13Z")
The Saudis were reacting to world events, not driving them. The high oil prices of the late 1970s and early 1980s hit a peak with the Iranian crisis. This drove consumers of oil worldwide to cultivate new sources of the stuff - this is when North Sea crude came into play in a big way, as well as Siberian production and many other smaller sources. As a result of this, the vertical price integration of OPEC began to collapse. The Saudis tried to keep the structure together as long as they could in the face of widespread overpumping by the other member states, but this meant that they were selling less and less oil. This is why they ramped up production and drove down prices even more in the mid-1980s - not any great desire to help us. They were simply reacting to a market that had drastically changed. Eventually, new targets were negotiated, but the price per barrel was now considerably lower and the Soviets were in trouble. If they had an economy that was developed to any considerable degree, rather than one that relied as much on raw materials sales as that of a Third World country, they might have been OK. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/3 "2007-06-13T20:41:29Z")
It was the Reagan administration that pushed the House of Saud into increasing oil production, precisely to put the squeeze on the Soviets. [This article](http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:ws8ysTO-B7gJ:www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-15454458.html+http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-15454458.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us) is worth reading. It was published in National Review, but it’s a compendium of facts easily researched (you can look up the various national security directives yourself to verify it, or search the archives - I’ve posted them before). From the article: > [@](#): > > In tandem with the geopolitical counteroffensive in Eastern Europe, the Administration fired the first volleys of what would become a secret economic war against the Kremlin. Using Poland as a justification, the Administration in 1982 imposed sanctions on Moscow, intended to cut off most of the technologies needed for a massive new natural-gas pipeline from Siberia, and for an energy program on the Sakhalin Islands being co-developed with Japan. The sanctions went to the heart of Soviet income: energy exports, which accounted for 80 per cent of Sovict hard-currency earnings. U.S. sanctions, which Western Europe resisted, did not stop construction of the pipeline, but delayed it two years, and cut it back in size. The Kremlin was out $15 to $20 billion. > > Meanwhile, the Administration realized that if international oil prices could be brought down, the U.S. economy, the world’s largest importer of crude, would be the beneficiary, while the Kremlin, as a large exporter, could only be hurt. > > The easiest means of bringing down prices was by raising world production, and the key to that was Saudi Arabia, the “swing producer” for the OPEC cartel. The Saudis had historically changed their production rates to ensure stable and high oil prices; they could just as easily change them to cause prices to drop. > > The Saudi Operation > > TO MAKE the Saudis hospitable to Western interests, the Reagan Administration provided unprecedented security commitments to the Saudi royal family. There were of course arms sales (the AWACS deal in 1981 and the 1984 sale of Stinger missiles) in which the President used extraordinary powers to sidestep Congress. But the U.S. commitment went even deeper. Bill Casey’s CIA helped modernize Saudi internal security to help protect the regime from its domestic opponents. And the U.S. flexed its military muscle by establishing in 1983 a U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) for the Persian Gulf region, boasting an ability to mobilize 300,000 U.S. troops. In 1985 the U.S. began construction on “Peace Shield,” a high-tech system manned by U.S. personnel to coordinate the defense of Saudi Arabia in case of attack. In addition, President Reagan himself expressed publicly (in 1981) and privately to King Fahd (in early 1985) his guarantee that so long as he was Commander-in-Chief, the royal family would not meet the same fate as the Shah of Iran. > > Saudi Arabia, surrounded by multiple threats–South Yemen, Syria, the raging Iran-Iraq war-was clearly pleased, and the Administration hoped that this would lead to a change in Saudi oil-pricing policies. However, senior Administration officials insist that there was never any quid pro quo presented to the Saudis. > > In the late summer of 1985, senior Saudi officials alerted the Administration that prices would soon drop. The Saudi decision to alert Washington to its production plans stands in stark contrast with the swings in Saudi policy that took America by surprise during the 1970s. > > As production rose, prices plunged, from $30 a barrel in November 1985 to $12 a barrel five months later. And it cost the Kremlin dearly. “The drop in oil prices was devastating, just devastating,” says Yevgeny Novikov. “Tens of billions were wiped away.” A secret May 1986 CIA report noted that for every dollar-per-barrel drop in the price of oil, the Kremlin would lose a half-billion to a billion dollars per year. The report concluded that the price drop “will substantially reduce the Soviets’ ability to import Western equipment, agricultural goods, and industrial materials … [This]…comes at a time when Gorbachev probably is counting on increased inputs from the West to assist his program of economic revitalization.” See, the idea that Reagan had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Empire (or no more than any other president) does not stand up in light of what we know now from declassified documents. The Reagan Administration wasn’t a passive observer of the fall of the Soviet Union. It was actively destabilizing and defunding the regime. For instance, in 1982 Reagan ordered the [covert sabotage of the USSR’s Siberian natural gas pipeline](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10432-2004Feb26?language=printer). Not only did it cripple natural gas distribution and hurt the economy directly, but it notified the Soviets that the U.S. knew they were stealing western technology, and that the Reagan Administration had been booby-trapping some of it. So now they couldn’t trust their stolen hardware and software, which caused even more economic damage. SDI was also intended to ratchet up the cost of competing militarily with the west, as was the American arming of resistance fighters in Afghanistan and Central America. Then there was deployment of theater nukes in Europe, various trade tariffs, and other measures meant to break the back of the Soviet Economy. It’s all documented in now-declassified National Security Directives. The Reagan administration brought the Soviet Union down. Would it have collapsed eventually anyway? Most likely. But it could have lasted much, much longer. So far from your cite showing Reagan wasn’t responsible, it actually supports the case that the Reagan Administration deserves a lot of the credit. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/4 "2007-06-14T05:56:36Z")
> [@](#): > > The Reagan administration brought the Soviet Union down. Would it have collapsed eventually anyway? Most likely. But it could have lasted much, much longer. So, because the Reagan administration continued the same Cold War that every president since Truman had carried on, Reagan gets credit for “bringing down” the U.S.S.R. during the term of his successor? It could have lasted “much, much longer”? Says who? All the intelligence analyses beginning around 1977 pointed to a collapse between 1988 and 1995. That Andropov got sick when he did had at least as much to do with the timing of the fall as any wild expenditures on the silly Star Wars waste of funds or the ludicrous “600 ship Navy.” Supporting the Afghan resistance and engaging in sabotage was the sort of thing that went on through the entire 40 year Cold War. Reagan should get justified credit for those actions, but he did not “cause” the U.S.S.R. to fall any more than Carter or Ford or Bush senior or Nixon. ETA: Sam, do you have the original _National Review_ article available? I’ve gotten a couple of complaints about the [Encyclopedia.com](http://Encyclopedia.com) site throwing up spyware that is crashing some browsers. It appeared that it tried it on me, although my security software seems to have kept most of it out. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/5 "2007-06-14T06:31:10Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] So, because the Reagan administration continued the same Cold War that every president since Truman had carried on, Reagan gets credit for “bringing down” the U.S.S.R. during the term of his successor? It could have lasted “much, much longer”? Says who? All the intelligence analyses beginning around 1977 pointed to a collapse between 1988 and 1995. That Andropov got sick when he did had at least as much to do with the timing of the fall as any wild expenditures on the silly Star Wars waste of funds or the ludicrous “600 ship Navy.” Supporting the Afghan resistance and engaging in sabotage was the sort of thing that went on through the entire 40 year Cold War. Reagan should get justified credit for those actions, but he did not “cause” the U.S.S.R. to fall any more than Carter or Ford or Bush senior or Nixon. ETA: Sam, do you have the original _National Review_ article available? I’ve gotten a couple of complaints about the [Encyclopedia.com](http://Encyclopedia.com) site throwing up spyware that is crashing some browsers. It appeared that it tried it on me, although my security software seems to have kept most of it out. [/QUOTE] The Reagan Administration did NOT ‘continue the same Cold War that every president since Truman had carried on’. The Reagan Administration explicitly changed U.S. policy from one of detente and coexistance to one of specifically attempting to bring the regime down through various covert and overt means. I’ve spelled out how they did that. You can read the strategic change order in NSDD-75. They forced sanctions on the Soviets. They sabotaged their Siberian pipeline. They convinced the Saudis to help lower the price of oil to wreck the Soviet oil revenue stream. They forced the Soviets into a new round of arms expenditures. They helped create a quagmire for the Soviets in Afghanistan. They started arming and supporting anti-communist groups throughout the world. They helped Lech Walesa and Solidarity pressure the Soviets. And the list goes on. No one thought this was ‘the cold war as usual’ at the time. I remember it well - Reagan was a monster, a warmonger who kept pressuring the Soviets when all the Soviets wanted was peace and cooperation. He was risking WWIII. That was the spin at the time. But even then, the extent of what the U.S. was doing to Russia was unknown, and we didn’t learn it all until various documents were declassified in the U.S. and corroborating information came out of the ex-Soviet Union archives. It wasn’t just Reagan. Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and others worked together to hit the Soviet Union from many sides. The ramifications of that deal with the Saudis are still being felt, and not all of it is good. Reagan did manage to turn the Saudis into strong allies. And interestingly, it was George Bush who led that initiative. This explains a lot about the relationship the Bushes have with the Saudis, and why the U.S. has seemingly inexplicably given the Saudis a pass on a lot of things. Helping to bring down a friend’s mortal enemy buys you a lot of street cred. And don’t forget, the Saudis did the same thing for the U.S. in the first Gulf War - they promised to keep the price of oil stable by raising production if Saddam torched his wells. That too was brokered by George Bush. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/6 "2007-06-14T07:15:02Z")
> [@](#): > > It wasn’t just Reagan. Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and others worked together to hit the Soviet Union from many sides. You’re much closer, here, (although you forgot Gorbachev and his failure to understand historical precedent). Reagan’s overblown rhetoric was a change and there were a few minor tactical differences (that were played up enormously by people like Pipes in the years just after the fall when they were trying to make political hay out of it), but no serious analysis by anyone who was not a Reagan partisan credits him with accomplishing more than, at most, a couple of years’ difference in the inevitable. The Afghan quagmire was going to happen without any help from the U.S.; the arming of the mujahideen began under Carter, not Reagan. The U.S. had been arming anti-Soviet forces throughout the Cold War. The change under Reagan was that we elevated the number of terrorists and anti-democratic forces we supported. (Rather than just killing off Guatemalans, we began killing off Salvadorans and Nicaraguans–none of which had any effect on the U.S.S.R. which was providing little to no funding (despite Reagan’s claims) for the indigenous efforts to reform their governments.) (I don’t buy the claim about the Saudis in the OP, either, but there is no reason to substitute Reagan for Saudis as the particular agents of change.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/7 "2007-06-14T07:44:53Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] You’re much closer, here, (although you forgot Gorbachev and his failure to understand historical precedent). Reagan’s overblown rhetoric was a change and there were a few minor tactical differences (that were played up enormously by people like Pipes in the years just after the fall when they were trying to make political hay out of it), but no serious analysis by anyone who was not a Reagan partisan credits him with accomplishing more than, at most, a couple of years’ difference in the inevitable. [/QUOTE] Do you have a link to such a serious analysis? Non-partisan, since you’re willing to dismiss evidence to the contrary as being spin by Reagan partisans? Your claim that it was just ‘the cold war as usual’ under Reagan just doesn’t hold up. You can go look at the various national security directives yourself - they are available online. The Reagan administration changed the fundamental U.S. policy towards the Soviets, and then backed it up with numerous actions. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call blowing up the Soviet’s major natural gas pipeline, causing the largest non-nuclear explosion ever seen from space, to be a trivial change in policy. Nor would I consider working with a foreign government to manipulate oil supplies and change the world price of oil to be a trivial detail. Nor would I consider deploying Pershing II missiles in Europe to be trivial. Or organizing sanctions to prevent the Soviets from building up their oil infrastructure. Those actions were not typical of previous administrations’ behaviour towards the Soviets. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/8 "2007-06-14T08:16:41Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Those actions were not typical of previous administrations’ behaviour towards the Soviets. [/QUOTE] Active sabotage _might_ have been new,but quoting a Reagan partisan does not establish that. Do we have a record of all U.S. sabotage in the U.S.S.R. against which we can compare the Reagan record? Manipulation of prices was constant. They tried the same thing on us. The fight in Angola, (where they supported free enterprise and we supported controlled economy\*) was more of the same. Deployment of Pershings (plus Star Wars, etc.) had no effect on bringing down the U.S.S.R. unless we are counting the difference in weeks between when it would have happened and when it did happen. I agree that Reagan tried a few new tactics. However, the analysis to which you linked overstates the effect most of them had. Reagan happened to get lucky in picking the moment when they were already crumbling to start rattling his sabre. - (An exaggeration to make a point, but much closer to reality than many would expect.) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/9 "2007-06-14T12:51:11Z")
I don’t think there is much question that the Cold War was ramped up in the Reagan Administration, and that it was done so on many different fronts. Right now there are serious proposals to both erect Ronald Reagan statues in a couple of Polish cities and name streets after him. **tomndebb** , even if it were true that Reagan chose the moment when they were crumbling to start rattling the sword - isn’t that enough? Consider that the record of previous administrations had been to pursue detente and largely consider other issues with the Soviets, (like expansionism, the Jewish problem, and the rights of people in the countries of the Warsaw Pact) as very secondary. The Reagan Administration did not consider these matters secondary in the least, and by ramping up the pressure on the Soviets in this way and largely abandoning detente, they made life very difficult for the Soviet regime. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/10 "2007-06-14T13:42:19Z")
Russia was in creaky financial shap since the days of kruschev: while cosmonauts were being launched into orbit, there were food riots in Moscow! Kruschev had to sell gold to buy grain from the West-his “virgin lands” fiasco 9trying to grow corn in Siberia0 bankrupted the treasury and lead to food shortages. I would argue the reverse; the huge run-up in crude oil prices kept the Soviet corpse alive through the 1970’s-and brezhneve was able to indulge in quite a few foreign adventures, due to his new-found oil wealth. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/11 "2007-06-14T14:03:18Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] they made life very difficult for the Soviet regime. [/QUOTE] Which does not translate to Reagan caused the collapse. The OP asked whether the Saudis had more to do with the collapse than did Reagan. **Sam** responded to the claim (that had not been posted, here), that Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse with a claim that made it sound as though he engineered it. Had the OP claimed that Reagan had nothing to do with the fall, I could see **Sam** ’s response. As it is, it is just one more misleading claim about Reagan (that was pretty much off topic, anyway). I do not question that Reagan made life difficult for the U.S.S.R. Based on the fact that the U.S.S.R. collapsed pretty much when it was predicted it would, I see no reason to canonize Reagan for “accomplishing” an ongoing process. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/12 "2007-06-14T14:58:28Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Based on the fact that the U.S.S.R. collapsed pretty much when it was predicted it would, I see no reason to canonize Reagan for “accomplishing” an ongoing process. [/QUOTE] Who the hell made that prediction? I don’t recall hearing them at the time from anybody but the most optimistic of right wingers, and they were largely dismissed as kooks. Nearly everybody, _including Reagan_, expected the Soviets to hang on a good bit longer than they did - he thought he was setting up a framework for future administrations to use to bring about the eventual defeat of Communism. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/13 "2007-06-14T23:54:21Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Which does not translate to Reagan caused the collapse. The OP asked whether the Saudis had more to do with the collapse than did Reagan. **Sam** responded to the claim (that had not been posted, here), that Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse with a claim that made it sound as though he engineered it. Had the OP claimed that Reagan had nothing to do with the fall, I could see **Sam** ’s response. As it is, it is just one more misleading claim about Reagan (that was pretty much off topic, anyway). [/quote] You must be slipping in your old age. A more accurate reading of the exchange was that the OP asked if the Saudis caused the collapse of the Soviet Union because they depressed the price of oil, and then asked if the Saudis had more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than did Ronald Reagan. I responded precisely to the OP by pointing out that, A) it was the Reagan Administration who convinced the Saudis to lower the price of oil, therefore if the price collapse of oil caused the downfall of the Soviet Union, the credit should go largely to the Reagan Administration, and B) I listed the other ways in which the Reagan Administration put economic pressure on the Soviets to answer the question of whether the Saudis did more than Reagan. > [@](#): > > I do not question that Reagan made life difficult for the U.S.S.R. > Based on the fact that the U.S.S.R. collapsed pretty much when it was predicted it would, I see no reason to canonize Reagan for “accomplishing” an ongoing process. I was there at the time, and I don’t recall _anyone_ predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, I remember a lot of Liberals championing the superiority of the Soviet Way, especially here in Canada. I heard endless tedious arguments about the superiority of Soviet health care, education, equality for women, yada yada yada. Here’s what the intelligentsia were saying at the time (from my link in my first message): > [@](#): > > “The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a ture systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability…” - Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University opined in Foreign Affairs (1982) > > “Those in the U.S. who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse” are “only kidding themselves.” - Arthur Schlesinger, 1981 > > “Though some second-echelon hardliners in the Reagan Administration …espouse the early Fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the U.S. simply does not have the military or political power to do that.” - Strobe Talbot And what do the former Soviets think about who’s responsible? > [@](#): > > “American policy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union,” is the blunt assessment of former KGB General Oleg Kalugin. He adds, “Reagan and his views disturbed the Soviet government so much they bordered on hysteria. There were cables about an imminent crisis. He was seen as a very serious threat.” Note that this doesn’t sound much like ‘the cold war as usual’, or trivial changes to U.S. policy. > [@](#): > > Yevgeny Novikov, who served on the senior staff of the Communist Party Central Committee, recalls, “There was a widespread concern and actual fear of Reagan on the Central Committee. He was the last thing they wanted to see in Washington.” > > Former Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh has said publicly that programs such as the Strategic Defense Initiative accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union. So, there we have quotes from a KGB general, a member of the CPSC, and the ex-Soviet Foreign Minister, all claiming that the Reagan Doctrine was a dramatic change and scared the crap out of them. One of them said Reagan’s policies accelerated their decline, and other said Reagan’s policies were a catalyst that caused the collapse. Do you have some cites for your claim that the Soviet Union collapse was predicted long before it happened? Because as I recall, it actually caught people totally by surprise. Sure, the spinning that ‘everyone knew’ the collapse was coming started AFTER the fact, but I’d like some quotes from serious policy people in the 1980’s who predicted that the Soviet Union would cease to exist by 1991. Also, let’s say the left had gotten what it wanted in the 1980’s - a nuclear freeze, better economic relations with the Soviets, direct aid to the Soviet Union, no SDI, no Pershing missiles, no blustery rhetoric, no sabotage, no manipulating oil prices… Do you still think the Soviet Union would have been on schedule for collapse by 1991? Or consider this - even if the economic situation had been as bad, but the Soviets saw the west weakening in their resolve to oppose them, do you think they might not have kept that creaky ship afloat for a lot longer? North Korea is an economic basket case, but it survives quite handily. Part of the reason the Soviet Union collapsed is because not only was their current situation dire, but the political winds seriously shifted against them and their hopes of winning the cold war were dashed by Reagan. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/14 "2007-06-15T01:26:09Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] You must be slipping in your old age. A more accurate reading of the exchange was that the OP asked if the Saudis caused the collapse of the Soviet Union because they depressed the price of oil, and then asked if the Saudis had more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than did Ronald Reagan. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Sam Stone] See, \*\*the idea that Reagan had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Empire \*\* (or no more than any other president) does not stand up in light of what we know now from declassified documents. [/QUOTE] Bolding mine. You are the one who raised the strawman of anyone claiming that Reagan had nothing to do with it. In this thread, that claim had not been made and there is no evidence that it would have been. The OP only asked whether the Saudis had “more to do” with it (a claim that I agree is incorrect). [QUOTE=Sam Stone] I was there at the time, and I don’t recall anyone predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, I remember a lot of Liberals championing the superiority of the Soviet Way, especially here in Canada. I heard endless tedious arguments about the superiority of Soviet health care, education, equality for women, yada yada yada. [/QUOTE] You were in the War College of the Air Force or the CIA between 1978 and 1989? The War College report was first created around 1979 (and not made public). Those agencies–not ivory tower, left-leaning Canadian intelligentsia–would seem to be better equipped to make such analyses. There were a lot of people with a lot of different beliefs running around in those days. For a lot of different reasons, actual professionals were not always permitted to publish their findings in open media. My statement was not that it was a widely known projection (or that _hoi polloi_ would have even believed it if it had been published). > [@](#): > > So, there we have quotes from a KGB general, a member of the CPSC, and the ex-Soviet Foreign Minister, all claiming that the Reagan Doctrine was a dramatic change and scared the crap out of them. One of them said Reagan’s policies accelerated their decline, and other said Reagan’s policies were a catalyst that caused the collapse. No, what we have are excerpts lacking context from three officials who state that Reagan, the person, was considered scary. The only claim that an actual policy resulted in a change in the Soviet Union came from a guy (Bessmertnykh) who was not even in the Soviet Union when such changes were supposedly occurring (he was posted as a subordinate in Canada and the U.S. throughout Reagan’s presidency) and who has demonstrated a capacity for saying what his audience wanted to hear or avoiding saying anything, even to the point of avoiding any action during the attempted coup in '91. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] Do you have some cites for your claim that the Soviet Union collapse was predicted long before it happened? Because as I recall, it actually caught people totally by surprise. Sure, the spinning that ‘everyone knew’ the collapse was coming started AFTER the fact, but I’d like some quotes from serious policy people in the 1980’s who predicted that the Soviet Union would cease to exist by 1991. [/QUOTE] The War College position papers were first publicly revealed around 1992 and I did not save the newspaper in which I read them. They are purportedly on-line, but they appear to be behind some sort of firewall, even though they are supposed to be declassified and public. Here is an article discussing the CIA: [The CIA vindicated: the Soviet collapse was predicted](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n41/ai_17426424/pg_1). This article does not support my contention that it had provided before 1980 a collpase date between 1990 and 1995. It does note that by 1985, they predicted a collapse within five years (scraping by to beat the 1991 actual collapse). I am still looking for a published account of the earlier analysis. It does address your memory that many people claimed that the CIA had been caught by surprise. In fact, the only surprise (to the CIA, not the people who were ignoring the CIA) was in regards to the Gorbachev/Yeltsin turnover. I would, of course, have enjoyed seeing the article begin a few years earlier, but I will take what I can get on pre-internet sources. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] Also, let’s say the left had gotten what it wanted in the 1980’s - a nuclear freeze, better economic relations with the Soviets, direct aid to the Soviet Union, no SDI, no Pershing missiles, no blustery rhetoric, no sabotage, no manipulating oil prices… Do you still think the Soviet Union would have been on schedule for collapse by 1991? [/QUOTE] By 199 **5** (which is my memory of the date proposed)? Sure. They would still have had Afghanistan with thousands of body bags and no consumer economy to offset the government spending as the U.S. did during Vietnam. (I’m not sure why you are throwing some vague “left” into the discussion at this point. Carter was hardly a “leftist” and he relied hevily on Moynihan and others who were decidedly anti-Soviet. (Several sources make the claim that Carter engineered the Afghan debacle by arming and funding _mujadiheen_ to keep threatening the Afghan government that the U.S.S.R. had put in place, promoting the internecine warfare between the two ruling tribes/parties that forced the Soviets to intervene.) Your “left” comment also appears to be aimed at some other discussion in that I have expressed no serious opposition to Reagan’s overall actions (although I generally condemn his stupid atrocities in Central America and wasteful spending on the Navy and Star Wars) . It was his job to keep the Soviet Union off balance and his oil deals and other acts were legitimate efforts. Bully for him. Congratulations for those tasks. However, I see no reason to give him excessive credit that he did not earn–particularly when offset by his Central American escapades and wasteful military programs that had no effect on the U.S.S.R. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/15 "2007-06-15T02:23:55Z")
It’s worth noting that despite all the noise made about Reagan getting tough, Reagan actually DID play pretty nice with them, especially in the second half of his term, and a lot of his “making nice” diplomacy could be credited with helping along the reformers in the USSR proceed with liberalizations that eventually made the regime as it was untenable. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/16 "2007-06-15T04:35:55Z")
There’s a pretty good article on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-War_groups_which_predicted_the_collapse_of_the_USSR) about predictions for a Soviet Collapse. Basically, there were a handful of individuals out there, mostly conservative, who were saying the Soviet system wouldn’t survive. But they were far out of the mainstream. There were lots of people predicting the Soviet Union would ultimately fail because of its poor governmental system (including Reagan), but there was no solid case for predicting the demise of the Soviet Union by any specific date. And many of the people who thought it would ultimately fail still thought it would take a few generations. From the cite: > [@](#): > > Analyst Jeffrey W. Knopf has explained why Reagan went beyond everyone else: > > “Reagan stands out in part because he believed the Soviet Union could be defeated. For most of the Cold War, Republican and Democratic administrations alike had assumed the Soviet Union would prove durable for the foreseeable future. The bipartisan policy of containment aimed to keep the Soviet Union in check while trying to avoid nuclear war; it did not seek to force the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Ronald Reagan, in contrast, believed that the Soviet economy was so weak that increased pressure could bring the Soviet Union to the brink of failure. He therefore periodically expressed confidence that the forces of democracy ‘will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history’.”[2] And the academic view was overwhelmingly for the belief that the Soviet Union was stable and would last for a long time. > [@](#): > > Brzezinski’s 1969 collection, Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics demonstrates this point, of "the fourteen contributors…Two-thirds (four out of six) of those who foresaw a serious possibility of breakdown were, like Levin, Moynihan, and Reagan, nonacademics. Three quarters (six out of eight) of those who could not look beyond system continuity were scholars. [14] ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/17 "2007-06-15T17:58:42Z")
> [@Jeffrey Knopf](#): > > “Reagan stands out in part because he believed the Soviet Union could be defeated. For most of the Cold War, Republican and Democratic administrations alike had assumed the Soviet Union would prove durable for the foreseeable future. The bipartisan policy of containment aimed to keep the Soviet Union in check while trying to avoid nuclear war; it did not seek to force the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Ronald Reagan, in contrast, believed that the Soviet economy was so weak that increased pressure could bring the Soviet Union to the brink of failure. He therefore periodically expressed confidence that the forces of democracy ‘will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history’.” Except for the last five months of Reagan’s Presidency, when I’d moved to South Carolina, I was reading the WaPo pretty much daily throughout his term in office. Reagan said a great many things about the Soviet Union and Communism, and the fight we were waging against them. He may have, at some point, said something that can be quoted to show that he thought the Soviets were vulnerable economically. But the record doesn’t support the notion that Reagan thought this was how the Soviets would be defeated. He said a great many things, but he sure didn’t harp about their economic weakness. In fact, if Reagan _had_ believed that, then the broad sweep of his response to the ‘evil Empire’ makes no sense at all. If he thought the Soviets could be brought down economically, then the nuclear brinkmanship of Reagan’s first couple of years in office would have been an absurdly needless risk. The 600-ship navy, totally irrelevant. Ditto the nuclear buildup. And only a proxy war such as Afghanistan where the Russians were investing serious resources made sense; Soviet client states and Soviet-sponsored proxies around the world would likely fall with the Soviet Union, so why seek needless bloodshed elsewhere? It was one thing among many they were trying, and (quite seriously and non-facetiously) good for them that they were trying a bunch of things. But I don’t see any real evidence that they expected to bring about the downfall of the Soviets through economic measures, any more than they expected to bring about their downfall via Jonas Savimbi’s marching an army of Angolan rebels all the way to Moscow. I have no doubt that the conservatives in Reagan’s Administration overestimated the Soviet regime’s economic resilience to about the same degree that they overestimated its military strength; if they believed the USSR had an Achilles’ heel, then they would have been trumpeting an opportunity rather than flogging the “Present Danger.” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/18 "2007-06-15T18:10:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Brzezinski’s **1969** collection, Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics demonstrates this point, of "the fourteen contributors…Two-thirds (four out of six) of those who foresaw a serious possibility of breakdown were, like Levin, Moynihan, and Reagan, nonacademics. Three quarters (six out of eight) of those who could not look beyond system continuity were scholars. Bolding mine. The Soviet Union lasted for another two decades. Tell me how many people predicted, during the 1985-88 period, when the USSR was in fact on the verge of breakdown, that its demise was less than a decade away. And show me that any of those 1969 prognosticators knew _why_ the USSR was sufficiently vulnerable that it wouldn’t last another 25 years. I’ve graded too many math tests to let anyone get away with credit for the right answer for the wrong reasons. If someone had predicted in 1980 that secretaries would be obsolete in 25 years, but their reasoning was that the proletarian revolution would triumph, making the more servile positions in the modern office environment a thing of the past, they’d still be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/19 "2007-06-15T18:21:23Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] He may have, at some point, said something that can be quoted to show that he thought the Soviets were vulnerable economically. But the record doesn’t support the notion that Reagan thought this was how the Soviets would be defeated. He said a great many things, but he sure didn’t harp about their economic weakness. In fact, if Reagan _had_ believed that, then the broad sweep of his response to the ‘evil Empire’ makes no sense at all. If he thought the Soviets could be brought down economically, then the nuclear brinkmanship of Reagan’s first couple of years in office would have been an absurdly needless risk. The 600-ship navy, totally irrelevant. Ditto the nuclear buildup. And only a proxy war such as Afghanistan where the Russians were investing serious resources made sense; Soviet client states and Soviet-sponsored proxies around the world would likely fall with the Soviet Union, so why seek needless bloodshed elsewhere? It was one thing among many they were trying, and (quite seriously and non-facetiously) good for them that they were trying a bunch of things. But I don’t see any real evidence that they expected to bring about the downfall of the Soviets through economic measures, any more than they expected to bring about their downfall via Jonas Savimbi’s marching an army of Angolan rebels all the way to Moscow. [/QUOTE] You are ignoring a few basic facts, much as you did in your OP. First of all, ramping up your defense spending and such is perfectly rational if your opponent is spending far more of his GDP on defense, and his economy cannot handle any more. That was certainly the case in the 1980s. At the height of the Reagan defense buildup, we were spending about 6.5% of our GDP on defense, while the Soviets were spending probably 15-25% of theirs. [Anyway, I’m linking to NSDD-32.](http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-032.htm) This document, from 1982, explicitly lays out the Reagan strategy, which operates on many different fronts. Raising the economic costs to the Soviets of their actions was an explicit and important part of the strategy. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891/20 "2007-06-16T00:38:52Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Bolding mine. The Soviet Union lasted for another two decades. Tell me how many people predicted, during the 1985-88 period, when the USSR was in fact on the verge of breakdown, that its demise was less than a decade away. [/quote] Well, as I said, the professional Sovietologists in academia thought it would last forever. The people who were predicting its demise were the people like Reagan. > [@](#): > > And show me that any of those 1969 prognosticators knew _why_ the USSR was sufficiently vulnerable that it wouldn’t last another 25 years. I’ve graded too many math tests to let anyone get away with credit for the right answer for the wrong reasons. If someone had predicted in 1980 that secretaries would be obsolete in 25 years, but their reasoning was that the proletarian revolution would triumph, making the more servile positions in the modern office environment a thing of the past, they’d still be wrong. Give me a few minutes and I’ll find you some. I don’t have time at the moment for more in-depth research, but among conservatives, discussions of the economic failures of the Soviet Union were common - and right. > [@](#): > > Except for the last five months of Reagan’s Presidency, when I’d moved to South Carolina, I was reading the WaPo pretty much daily throughout his term in office. Reagan said a great many things about the Soviet Union and Communism, and the fight we were waging against them. > > He may have, at some point, said something that can be quoted to show that he thought the Soviets were vulnerable economically. But the record doesn’t support the notion that Reagan thought this was how the Soviets would be defeated. He said a great many things, but he sure didn’t harp about their economic weakness. Are you just coming up with this stuff off the top of your head? Reagan talked about the economic failures of the Soviet Union repeatedly and often, and had done so since the 1950’s. Here’s a sample, from 1982. You may remember it: > [@](#): > > It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then. The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. …Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones. …In the Communist world as well, man’s instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. To be sure, there are grim reminders of how brutally the police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule – 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1981 in Poland. But the struggle continues in Poland. And we know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. … **What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term – the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history** as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. And that’s why we must continue our efforts to strengthen NATO even as we move forward with our Zero-Option initiative in the negotiations on intermediate-range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads." I can provide more examples if you’d like. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-saudis-win-the-cold-war/407891.md?page=2)