Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble: Entering the Soviet Era in America

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble
Entering the Soviet Era in America

By Tom Engelhardt


Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.” In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant.

The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official Washington had a clue. At the moment it happened, Soviet “experts” like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected the Cold War to go on and on. In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military, which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s) was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained. Not even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot, especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.

Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military -- and its military adventure in Afghanistan -- when it was already going bankrupt and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. In the end, its aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation. They mistook military power for power on this planet. Armed to the teeth and possessing a nuclear force capable of destroying the Earth many times over, the Soviets nonetheless remained the vastly poorer, weaker, and (except when it came to the arms race) far less technologically innovative of the two superpowers. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175261/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_washington_drunk_on_war/ (the story follows a brief intro)

[Th1onein]

1. Great article

Yes, we are bound for the same fate as the USSR met.

[izquierdista]

2. So easy to see

Except for the power hungry. Anyone with enough thirst for power to win the White House would be blind to these truths.

[truth2power]

3. Gore Vidal once said, "anyone who can get elected

under our present system, ought not be allowed to serve." The idea being that anyone who can reach that level would be so lacking in basic human values that they're not competent to lead.

[izquierdista]

4. I like the Lewis Black method

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuD1zKtyHak&feature=related

[indepat]

5. Those who fail...are doomed to repeat it. The analogies are too numerous

for even the blind not to see, the deaf not to hear, the ignorant not to notice. :P

[MisterP]

6. at least we don't have a major ecocatastrophe and are in Afgh-- oh...

however, some have noted that Soviet military spending managed to shrink in the 80s; other factors included the Brezhnev coup against the reformist roustabout Khrushchev, the predominance of "conservatives" (i.e., ortho-Marxists) in the CPSU, Andropov's crackdown on vodka and alcoholism (which ended up with people in line for vodka all day instead of working), the 1980-83 global crash, and even Gorbachev's neoliberal tendencies; on top of this are the meatheaded special forces opening fire in the non-Russian SSRs' capitals, wrecking most legitimacy. Moscow then underwent two coups--a failed one in 1991 against Gorby that everyone knows about, and the 1993 one by Yeltsin that killed at least 200