CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION: USSR COLOSSUS WITH CLAY FEET
The end of the Soviet Union, which occurred way back in 1991, undoubtedly represented one of the key events of the 20th century. It was an event full of geopolitical and economic consequences,given the role of world superpower that the USSR had after 1945, following the victory over the Wermacht in the Second World War. But what were the real causes that led to the end of the greatest nation in the world? It is important to focus on the real reasons that led to the collapse of the Eurasian giant and in doing this it is important to analyze not only the economic model of the Soviet Union but also its immense resources of raw materials (from which its economic power derived) as well as the geostrategic comparison with the United States of America and the Western bloc as a whole. To understand how, on balance, the collapse of the USSR was determined precisely by the impossibility of being able to continue a military confrontation with the latter due to the economic disruption (caused by the increase in oil output on the markets during starting from the end of the ’70s with the consequent collapse of raw material prices and an endless war effort which increased dramatically following the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979) which hit the country, dramatically, in during the 80s.
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION: THE COLLAPSE OF THE PRICE OF OIL ORGANIZED BY THE USA IN AGREEMENT WITH SAUDI ARABIA
The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 represented a very significant geopolitical triumph for the Soviet Union. Which strengthened its influence in the Middle Eastern region following the closure of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran and the resulting alliance (and which still lasts today) between Moscow and the Islamic Republic. The Iranian revolution was followed by a sharp increase in oil prices from which the Soviet Union benefited greatly. The revenue of the Eurasian giant was in fact based on the export of raw materials and among these hydrocarbons were certainly the most important. Khomeini’s advent was the last act of the energy crisis that shocked the world economy during the 1970s (and in particular following the Yom Kippur War in 1973) and which created profound social tensions throughout the West . After the defeat suffered in Iran, Washington’s strategy against Moscow was aimed at the collapse of the price of oil (on which the Kremlin’s coffers were heavily dependent) to diminish the military capabilities of the USSR and to drive the latter into bankruptcy. The operation began at the end of 1979 with massive exploration and the discovery of new deposits which began to reduce the price of the raw material. But this was not enough to demolish Soviet finances. Something more incisive and with a devastating effect for the Kremlin’s coffers was needed. This was how the agreement was reached with the Saudis (at the time the largest oil producers in the world and great allies of the USA), in the second half of 1985, for a massive increase in oil output. This led to a real collapse in the price of crude oil which put the finances and the war machine of the Soviet Union in serious difficulty. And which definitively undermined its economic power. It was a devastating move for a country that lived off the export of raw materials (and hydrocarbons first and foremost) and which, at the same time, was bogged down in a war, the one in Afghanistan, in which it was unable to prevail and which always proved more expensive. The geostrategic challenge launched by Reagan following the “star wars” project (i.e. the creation of an anti-missile shield which was supposed to make the Russian nuclear retaliation device ineffective) which forced Moscow to make massive new investments also contributed to the increase in military spending. military and for which, given the economic situation of the country which matured during the 1980s, the USSR did not enjoy sufficient economic resources.
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION: REAGAN’S STAR WARS PROGRAM AND THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
In March 1983, US President Reagan launched the so-called “Star Wars” program with the aim of neutralizing the Soviet nuclear reaction device which guaranteed strategic parity between the two world superpowers. It involved the development of a complex anti-missile system capable of detecting and destroying Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles before they could reach the USA. Even if today we know that this program was never fully developed and did not achieve the objectives set (it was therefore more of a propaganda action than a military one in the strict sense) there is no doubt that the US president achieved a certain success since in Moscow they were forced to develop countermeasures to the US device with a consequent increase in military spending. In a period in which Russian troops were mired in the war in Afghanistan with no end in sight. The war against Kabul was made more difficult by the massive support that the West gave to the Afghan resistance which put up a fierce resistance also favored by a morphology of the territory that was problematic for the invading army. As the years passed, the economic cost of the war became unsustainable for Moscow which in 1989 was forced to withdraw from the Afghan theater of war without having been able to bring the Asian country back into the geopolitical orbit of the Soviet Union. In the same year the social situation in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe progressively deteriorated, favoring the popular uprising in Romania and Eastern Germany where Moscow’s influence ceased almost immediately. The USSR survived until the end of 1991 but the situation of the country’s public finances (and the push that Western countries gave to the dissolution of the country) made its survival impossible. The consequences of this event were immense. The world suddenly found itself with one less superpower and the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon empire reached its apogee in this historical phase. Russia lost not only control over all the satellite countries of Eastern Europe (obtained thanks to the victory over Hitler’s Germany in the Second World War) but also over that of the former Soviet republics in which Anglo-Saxon economic and military penetration was very strong (which contravened to the guarantees of non-expansion in the former Soviet zone of influence that he gave to the Soviet political leadership). Moscow lost influence on every geopolitical stage in the world and its economic-financial situation made military interventions impossible even close to its own borders. Even if apparently destroyed, Russian power achieved, with the end of the USSR and its economic model, the liberation of the country’s immense energy and resources from a substantially sterile economic-production system. Allowing the birth of an even more powerful nation than the Soviet Union had been. So powerful that it can today challenge, together with its Chinese ally, Anglo-Saxon hegemony over the world.