Quote:
Originally Posted by Draq
I only ask because IRL the main reason the Soviet union collapsed was failing economy. The cold war kept them afloat. Either being directly involved in conflict, or supporting it somehow. Since Stalins restructuring and the industrial proliferation, the ussr was pretty much run as a war economy.
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The main reason why the Soviet Union collapsed was due to a loss of massive earning from oil exports in the mid-1980's, and this was engineered by Saudi Arabia. In the Cold War the Soviets only made a profit from the exports of arms and oil, but mostly from oil. In 1985 Saudi Arabia ramped up its oil production and into 1986 the cost of a barrel of oil fell from US $23 to under $12 and wiped out US $20 billion in Soviet oil export profits (that's about $60 billion in todays money).
There are two theories why the Saudi's did this. The first is that Saudi Arabia increased oil production to punish fellow OPEC members Iran and Iraq who kept exceeding their oil quotas for years because of the Iran-Iraq war.
Another theory is that the Saudi's made a secret deal with Ronald Reagan to kill Soviet earnings from oil exports, while America simultaneously embarked on a massive rearmament programme. The result would be the Soviet economy would go bankrupt as they would be crushed by loss of earnings and trying to compete with America. This is basically what did happen and it led to Gorbachev coming to power to reform the Soviet economy and system.
I'd like to believe it was the latter reason, and it is no coincidence that the Saudi's have become very reliant on America to under write their security since that time, while America has been very reluctant to punish Saudi Arabia for exporting Islamic extremists or criticise its medieval laws and social structure.
Win one for the Gipper!!