Brezhnev Comes to Washington - Moscow Times

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Unnecessary wars, moral turpitude, dreams of empire, ideology imposed by bayonet, and the end game of...we're broke.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1039/42/371463.htm

I have repeatedly drawn parallels in this column between President George W. Bush's United States and the Soviet Union during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. The similarities between the two regimes are uncanny, ranging from the messianic drive to spread ideology abroad -- at the point of a bayonet if need be -- to tight surveillance at home. Now comes the U.S. financial debacle to complete the list.

But the main similarity with the Soviet Union is not the nationalization of bad banking debt via the $700 billion rescue package signed by Bush on Friday. Rather, it is the nexus between an unnecessary war abroad and economic collapse at home.

Whether moral turpitude or the economic impact of the war will be more damaging in the long run is for historians to decide. In many ways, the current economic crisis is the result of the Iraq war. Iraq -- and more broadly, the misguided war on terror -- has cost the United States trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs. It is the money the country didn't have and had to borrow from foreign investors.

Uncle Sam faces the financial crisis bereft of resources and heavily in debt. The congressional debate about the $700 billion bailout package ignored the fact that the country simply doesn't have this money. The Kremlin faced severe challenges in the 1980s -- when oil revenues declined and Ronald Reagan unleashed a costly arms race -- with an economy badly weakened by the Afghan misadventure.

If Americans emerge from this crisis much poorer and far less secure, they could ask the Russians what it felt like living in the Soviet Union circa 1990.