Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> Oh, I'm sure it would have failed eventually as well, but
> there's the question of _how_. It could have failed slowly, in
> a gradual collapse that gave its leaders time to realize what
> was happening and take drastic measures - or quickly, as it
> did. It could have failed but, at the point of failure,
> maintained a conventional superiority in Europe that tempted it
> to invade and prop itself up off the spoils of conquest. But
> that too did not happen, because of the Reagan defense buildup.
> History suggests that negotiating the collapse of a Great
> Power and the realignment of the new power structure is one of
> the most difficult feats in all of diplomacy - the European
> powers botched it so badly in the early 20th century that it
> lead to the First World War. Communism was a catastrophically
> bad idea, of course - although it's easy to forget that when
> Reagan said things like that in the early 1980s it was treated
> like a controversial statement - but there were many ways for
> it to fail, and Reagan managed to negotiate it in such a way
> that the world got something that fairly closely resembled the
> best possible outcome. The failures in the economic
> restructuring of the post-Soviet states that came _after_ his
> term were certainly not his fault, and were probably
> unavoidable in any case.
You say he authored the push but in no way was responsible for the
injuries that resulted from the fall?
I maintain that the push needn't have been so hard and that the
upheaval in Eastern Europe and Russia's economic problems wouldn't
have been as severe had the process been more gradual. I also
believe that we came closer to a world wide conflict as the result
of our meddling than we would have had we allowed events to proceed
more naturally.
Of course we probably wouldn't be as dominant as we now are....
--
Doug
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.zo.com/~brighto
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the
higher consideration." A. Lincoln's First Annual Message to
Congress, December 3, 1861.
