Did the USA win the cold war?

[AK84]

@Shagnasty

I am not sure what there is to debate. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore as much as Putin would like to think otherwise. That is the only measure that you can use. One side collapsed and the other is still around and in fairly good shape. I am not sure how you twist that into a ‘Draw’ unless you are playing by Soviet rules.

The Romans thought they had won the Rome-Persian wars when Septimus Severus took Mesopotamia and sold the population of Ctesiphon into slavery. Two generations later…

[andros]

@RivkahChaya

Yeah. It’s kinda like we stood around and watched a tree rot, and when it fell over, yelled “We won!”

Well, we were also standing on one side of the tree ensuring it fell away from us and did not knock us down in return.
(Also, goddamn, Stranger, great post. Thank you!)

[BrainGlutton]

@Shakester

The US only “won” by default. The Soviets destroyed their own country/empire by being enthralled to a stupid system that eventually became unworkable and collapsed. The US didn’t make that happen in any way.

Well, there is a theory that Reagan’s defense buildup speeded the USSR’s demise by forcing them to spend more than they could afford to keep up. I don’t buy it, though. I think the USSR’s money troubles were more due to the cost of the occupation of Afghanistan (to which cost U.S. action added very little) plus declining global oil prices (the USSR being an exporter of oil).

[Gorsnak]

Everyone won, as is evidenced by the lack of smoking, radioactive craters peppering Northern hemisphere landscapes.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

Clearly, you haven’t been to Russia, lately. Sans actual nuclear blasts and mutants riding around on dune buggies, it is basically the kind of post-apochalypic dystopian hell-hole that is imagined in the minds of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, only far less colorful or interesting. When you have PhDs in high energy physics, virology, and computational mathematics flocking from your country in droves while would-be leaders talk bombastically about bogus foreign threats and encourage anti-intellectualism, you have a big problem.

Oh, sorry, that’s the United States; never mind.

Stranger

[guizot]

@PatrickLondon

The West didn’t collapse, but it didn’t get to re-order the world to its liking (particularly, say, in the Middle East).

Right–some of the things done to “win” the cold war only contributed to problems we’re dealing with now. (Such backing the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan who turned their sights on the U.S. after the USSR fell.)

[BrainGlutton]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

What did the United States win in the post-Cold War world? It won the opportunity to befriend former opponents, forge strong political and commercial ties across Europe to assure a free exchange of technology, coherent and viable long-term energy strategies, isolate and marginalize radicalized ethnic conflicts that the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact members had long been suppressing by force, and generally assure unimpeded and historic growth of liberty and social justice, as well as overcoming the political and sociological hurdles that keep half of the world population living in desperate poverty. It could have meant a long term plan for the exploration and use of space resources that was not based on comparing penis length, an honest exchange of cultures from East to West to overcome the misunderstandings that have plague a European understanding of the Asiatic-influenced Russian culture for centuries, and a global focus on protecting and preserving the world environment rather than just dumping waste and producing toxic byproducts wherever nobody important lives. Most importantly, we could have disassembled nuclear arsenals to a minimal size; although we’ll never be free of them completely, we could have ensured by treaty and cooperation that the number of weapons and total yield on immediate standby were insufficient to destroy nations or kill hundreds of millions of people.

N.B.: Not all of those missed opportunities are lost opportunities. It’s too late to prevent, e.g., the ethnic cleansing in ex-Yugoslavia. But we could still do all the rest of it if we had the political will.

[AK84]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

.* When you have PhDs in high energy physics, virology, and computational mathematics flocking from your country in droves while would-be leaders talk bombastically about bogus foreign threats and encourage anti-intellectualism, you have a big problem*.

Oh, sorry, that’s the United States; never mind.

Stranger

:dubious:
This would be the fact that many U.S physicists have ended up in Switzerland because of the LHC (and the cancellation of the SSC) right? Cause, frankly besides some research in the former USSR, post Tizard mission cutting edge research has taken place in the U.S AFAIK.

Or am I missing something.

[John_Mace]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Clearly, you haven’t been to Russia, lately. Sans actual nuclear blasts and mutants riding around on dune buggies, it is basically the kind of post-apochalypic dystopian hell-hole that is imagined in the minds of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, only far less colorful or interesting. When you have PhDs in high energy physics, virology, and computational mathematics flocking from your country in droves while would-be leaders talk bombastically about bogus foreign threats and encourage anti-intellectualism, you have a big problem.

Oh, sorry, that’s the United States; never mind.

Stranger

You are seriously suggesting that the US is a “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole”? Seriously? Even half-seriously? Even one quarter-seriously?

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Mace

You are seriously suggesting that the US is a “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole”? Seriously? Even half-seriously? Even one quarter-seriously?

Quite a few urban areas are exactly that, and some rural areas too.

[cmkeller]

Yes, the USA (and its allies) won the Cold War. The nations that formerly belonged to the Warsaw Pact, and some former constituent republics of the USSR, are now members of NATO, and not a single NATO member has gone in the other direction. How can that be spun as anything less than a resounding victory?

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

Quite a few urban areas are exactly that, and some rural areas too.

You either don’t know what “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole” is, or you don’t make a very persuasive argument with such absurd hyperbole.

[XT]

@cmkeller

Yes, the USA (and its allies) won the Cold War. The nations that formerly belonged to the Warsaw Pact, and some former constituent republics of the USSR, are now members of NATO, and not a single NATO member has gone in the other direction. How can that be spun as anything less than a resounding victory?

By saying it was inevitable and that we (and you are right, it was a collective effort on the part of the West) didn’t really do anything anyway.

[cmkeller]

XT:

By saying it was inevitable and that we (and you are right, it was a collective effort on the part of the West) didn’t really do anything anyway.

Even if that’s true (and I don’t believe it is), merely being prosperous as non-totalitarian, capitalist countries and thereby demonstrating that it is a superior governmental/economic system than communist dictatorship to the degree that the nations who lived under that system jumped ship as soon as they were able, is still a victory of sorts. Without that prosperity, communism might not have seemed like the worse option. Just ask Venezuela.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@BrainGlutton

N.B.: Not all of those missed opportunities are lost opportunities. It’s too late to prevent, e.g., the ethnic cleansing in ex-Yugoslavia. But we could still do all the rest of it if we had the political will.

And the international goodwill which we’ve squander over the past decade of being the world’s raging haemorrhoid.

@AK84

:dubious:
This would be the fact that many U.S physicists have ended up in Switzerland because of the LHC (and the cancellation of the SSC) right? Cause, frankly besides some research in the former USSR, post Tizard mission cutting edge research has taken place in the U.S AFAIK.

Or am I missing something.

True, but we’ve also been hemorrhaging talent in biosciences as fundamental research (especially involving cloning and stem cell research), and just a general brain drain as nations send their best and brightest here for education and then entice them to come back home to exercise their skills.

@John_Mace

You are seriously suggesting that the US is a “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole”? Seriously? Even half-seriously? Even one quarter-seriously?

Well, Detroit, anyway, and some parts of the Inland Empire that haven’t been paved over to make warehouses.

Stranger

[Quartz]

The West most certainly won, but so did Russia.

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Mace

You either don’t know what “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole” is, or you don’t make a very persuasive argument with such absurd hyperbole.

Nobody knows what a “post-apocalyptic, dystopian hell-hole” is because nobody has ever seen one outside the movies. Which does not mean the phrase cannot legitimately be used as a hyperbolic figure of speech, and in that sense I am using it perfectly right and so is Stranger.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ultimately failed largely on its own merits. The economic system, never sustainable, collapsed under the weight of its own failings to produce even adequate amounts of basic goods, forcing the Soviets to sell natural resources at pennies on the dollar to buy grain from Canada, manufactured goods from Yugoslavia, and public goodwill from Africa.

Though arguably it could have limped along indefinitely if the leaders and elite had not lost their nerve. Though Cuba and North Korea have non-sustainable economies in very different ways, they do exemplify the scope for kicking the can down the road.

If anything accelerated the decay of the Soviet system it was the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan (fomented by the Carter administration’s Zbignew Brzezinski, later expanded under the Reagan administration), the costly competition to build a winged spacecraft analogous two the American STS ‘Shuttle’, and the explosion of Chernobyl reactor #4, the delayed admission of which until discovered by atmospheric sampling completely undermined confidence in the Soviet Union as a legitimate, responsible nation and required a massive and costly containment effort.

Also the hamfisted response to the Armenian earthquake, along with the shoddy building construction leading up to it. Along with Chernobyl, that convinced Gorbachev’s crew that incremental reform wasn’t going to prove adequate.

Regarding the OP’s acquaintances, I’d say some of them demonstrate that cynicism can be naive.

[JohnT]

general brain drain as nations send their best and brightest here for education and then entice them to come back home to exercise their skills.

That’s not a brain drain. A brain drain is when your own citizens leave for better opportunities, circa Germany in the 1930s.

To quote Wiki on how this phenomenon affects the US:

The country as a whole does not experience a large-scale brain drain as compared with other countries, with an emigration rate of only 0.7 per 1,000 educated people,[141] but it is often the destination of skilled workers migrating from elsewhere in the world.[142] However, the United States has been experiencing widespread rural depopulation in the past few decades, which have seen many young rural graduates moving to urban/suburban areas. This has negatively impacted US rural communities.[143]

[Stringbean]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

In the view of future historians, the American response in the post-Cold War and early 21st Century is going to be one of massive disappointment in opportunity squandered and basic principles of liberty and justice abandoned in the service of making a quick buck.

Stranger

Or it will be seen as a period of unprecedented global peace & prosperity foreshadowing the rise (and spectacular fall) of a nation run by the sort of technocrats who would describe the Land of the Free as a “dystopian hell-hole” to push a sinister agenda in the ill-begotten guise of “progress.”

Be careful what you wish for; we didn’t solve the world’s problems for them but the blueprint exists if they want it and that blueprint is Us. For those that have embraced it, Poland and the like, we see the possibilities. It is curious to both chastise the United States for reckless intervention in global affairs and then lament we haven’t solved all the world’s problems. Shall we wave our magic wand, then?

(By the way, I enjoyed your post. I hear the disillusionment that I hope to avoid as an aged man. Call me naive.)