Reagan yielded oil without a fightyears let the USSR collapse.
In 1981, California Governor Ronald Reagan was elected to the United States, and his predecessor Carter took office with a new hardline stance, especially toward the Soviet Union.
At this time, the "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union had reached a white-hot level, but this **, who was born in the entertainment industry, accurately hit the economic key points of the Soviet Union during his administration, which contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union to a certain extent.
In 1947, Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech" opened the curtain of the Cold War. For the decades that followed, the world was shrouded in a confrontation between two camps.
These two groups of different ideologies have developed separately and confronted each other for half a century. The stalemate in this war without gunpowder did not turn around until 1981, when Ronald Reagan was elected as the new United States.
All along, every American ** wanted to crush the Soviet Union, but no one succeeded. As the "big brother" of the socialist camp at that time, the Soviet Union had huge advantages in politics and military affairs, and with the leadership of outstanding politicians such as Lenin and Stalin, the strength of the Soviet Union was not easy to shake.
So why was Reagan able to do what his predecessors couldn't? In fact, the reason is simple, Reagan found the weakness of the Soviet Union. Reagan took office in 1982, when the Soviet Union was facing a very passive economy.
During the reign of Brezhnev, the military power of the Soviet Union increased significantly, and the number of nuclear weapons surpassed that of the United States, becoming a military superpower. However, Brezhnev's conservative economic reforms brought the Soviet economy to a standstill, which was the Soviet Union's greatest weakness.
The shortcomings of the Soviet Union's economic backwardness have always existed, but in the later years of Brezhnev's administration, this drawback was even more prominent. Reagan seized this with precision and succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union.
In 1981, just two days after Ronald Reagan took office, he invited CIA Director William Casey, with whom he had longtime friends and shared political views, to the White House. Although we can't know exactly what the two discussed during their meeting that day, it can be inferred from a series of subsequent initiatives that their topic was related to"Sniping"USSR related.
With Reagan's support, Casey expanded the CIA's powers, and from 1981 onwards, he began to strengthen his collection and research on the Soviet economy, employing many experts to study the Soviet Union's economic problems.
By the spring of 1982, Casey had a good grasp of the actual state of the Soviet economy, and he believed that the only way for the Soviet Union to accumulate foreign exchange was to export oil, which, although effective, also had many fatal holes.
As long as the United States can exploit these loopholes, the fall of the USSR is only a matter of time. Through the information collected by the CIA, Casey pointed out that since the 70s, the industry and economy of the Soviet Union have been in a state of stagnation, and there is a shortage of many products.
In addition, the war in Afghanistan and the problems of Eastern Europe and Poland also placed an even greater burden on the Soviet economy. Reagan was very sympathetic to Casey. In May 1982, Reagan signed a decision-making memorandum, an eight-page document that was summed up in one sentence: The Soviet Union paid for their economic weakness.
The U.S. strategy towards the Soviet Union shifted from a passive encirclement to an active offensive. That is why Reagan took a tough stance towards the USSR when he came to power. He has mastered the greatest weakness of the USSR.
Soon after, Reagan developed a series of active offensive policies against the Soviet Union, all but a few of which were basically economic.
And just like that, a war against the USSR"Economic warfare"The curtain was raised. Reagan's original idea was to inflict a heavy economic blow on the Soviet Union, but he did not expect that this would eventually lead indirectly to the demise of the Soviet Union.
This has to be said to be a kind of fateful arrangement.
The movement of oil ** had a profound effect on the Soviet economy. In the 70s of the 20th century, the Soviet Union benefited from the continuous international oil market, earning a large amount of foreign exchange, accounting for 80% of its foreign exports.
Oil *** made the Soviet economy temporarily appear to be prosperous, but it also concealed the reality that its industrial exhaustion was exhausted and its economic problems were never completely solved.
The Soviet Union relied on the large amount of money earned by exporting oil, which gave it an upgrade in terms of both military power and people's lives. However, for the United States and other Western countries, the oil crisis has brought serious economic recession and social problems.
However, through reforms, Western countries have finally succeeded in industrial upgrading and economic transformation. In contrast, the Soviet Union failed to seize the opportunity for reform, and its aging, energy-intensive industrial structure led to a serious imbalance in economic development and a toll on national health.
Brezhnev's death unraveled the illusion of prosperity in the Soviet Union, plunging the Soviet Union into a period of turmoil. Faced with the challenge of the completion of the economic transformation of the West and the recession of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was ordered to change the situation.
However, the United States has strengthened its relationship with Saudi Arabia by protecting the Saudi royal family and oil fields, as well as **advanced** equipment. In addition, the United States has also expressed the hope that Saudi Arabia will increase oil production to lower international oil prices.
In 1985, Reagan of the United States met with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In gratitude for U.S. assistance, the Saudis agreed to increase oil production in order to regain lost market share.
In the second half of that year, Saudi Arabia's oil production soared from less than 2 million barrels to 9 million barrels, resulting in a significant reduction in international oil prices, from $30 per barrel to $12 and even as low as $8.
Although other countries were happy about this, it was a disaster for the USSR. Due to the sharp decline in oil revenues, the economic situation in the USSR deteriorated rapidly, and foreign exchange earnings were significantly reduced.
In order to maintain the economy and buy industrial equipment and grain from the West, the Soviet Union had to borrow from Western countries, which led to a lot of debt. Despite the various measures taken by the Soviet Union to solve the debt problem, the decline in oil revenues put great pressure on debt repayment, which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet economy.
Although there were many reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, economic problems were one of the main ones. And Reagan's economic policies only made matters worse at a critical moment, and finally broke the camel's last straw.