USSR and the "domino principle"
By the standards of human life, many years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For several decades, the states that were part of the Soviet bloc developed together, linked by political, economic, and military ties. There is a lot of information on the topic of the collapse of one of the superpowers - both deceitful and truthful. Perhaps this event, as a historical fact, is still too early to give a final assessment. But, in any case, it is necessary to analyze the methods and technologies that were used to destroy the largest state of Eurasia, in order to be able to give explanations to many subsequent significant world events.
Back in 1954, US President Eisenhower formulated the “domino principle” when predicting the situation in any of the regions. It is known that when creating a piece of dominoes it is worth one of these rectangles to fall - the whole composition collapses. By analogy, if one of the states “falls,” the whole geopolitical structure into which this state belongs is collapsing. A vivid example of this principle is the “velvet” revolutions in the countries of Eastern Europe, which weakened the Soviet bloc. Then the collapse of the USSR occurred, which led not only to a peaceful change in Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, but also caused tragic events in Yugoslavia.
After the destruction of the Soviet bloc of states, the Western world believed that it had put an end to the bipolar world in which two systems constantly competed. Today’s events in the Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific region show that states want to decide their own destiny, rather than dictated by a single superpower. Therefore, they will oppose the unipolar world.
In connection with these circumstances, consideration of the actions taken by the countries of the capitalist bloc to destroy the strongest strategic rival, the USSR, is necessary for understanding the current situation in the world and in each individual country.
Political scientists believe that the implementation of such a complex geopolitical project as the functioning of a bloc of socialist states carried a lot of separate contradictions, which, however, were not a threat capable of destroying the formed system. But these contradictions became deadly when thoughtful and competent measures were taken against the socialist bloc to intensify the mechanisms of destruction.
The blows were inflicted on several areas: the energy industry, in the financial sector and the development of new technologies.
There was no secret that about 80% of USSR currency income was accounted for by oil and gas exports. With an increase in the cost of a barrel of oil by one dollar, the Soviet Union made a profit of one billion dollars annually. For a significant reduction in the foreign exchange reserves of the Soviet Union, the United States of America conducted a company to reduce energy prices. To do this, on a joint US-Saudi project, starting from 1985, Saudi Arabia has significantly increased oil production: from 2 million barrels to 10 million barrels daily. The price fell from 30 dollars per barrel to 12 dollars. In this situation, the Soviet government took measures to increase the sale of gold, and also began to take loans.
Washington also took measures to reduce the export of Soviet natural gas to Western European countries.
Projects to damage the export activities of the Soviet state in the energy sector brought enormous economic benefits to the United States: low oil prices led to incomes for American consumers, which equated to tax cuts for every American. But, most importantly, from the point of view of the experts of the United States, one of the main goals was achieved - the Soviet Union practically ceased to receive hard currency. In addition, as a result, the fall in oil prices led to a decrease in purchases of Soviet weapons, whose main buyers were the countries of the Middle East: Libya, Iran and Iraq. The increase in purchases by these countries of the Soviet weapons in the seventies of the last century was formed against the background of the high cost of oil produced by these countries. The decline in foreign exchange earnings from the sale of Soviet weapons in the 80s was about 20%. It was also a very significant blow to the economy of the USSR.
Another main focus of Washington’s action on the destruction of the Soviet Union was to limit the access of the Soviet Union to Western technologies. To accomplish this task, the United States created a united western front against the USSR with the goal of organizing multilateral export control of the arrival of the latest technologies and products in the countries of the Soviet system. The organization entrusted with the control function was the Coordinating Committee for Export Control (COCOM) established by Western countries in 1949. It was this committee that made up the list of goods, services and technologies that were prohibited to transfer to the countries of the Soviet bloc. Direct members of this organization were 17 countries: USA, Japan, Belgium, Australia, Spain, Italy and others. Another 6 countries collaborated with it in the field of export policy: Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden. In 80, Washington pushed through the COCOM decisions a block of economic measures against the countries of the Soviet Union:
- a ban on the supply of technologies and goods of strategic importance (computers, semiconductors, electronic equipment, equipment for metallurgy);
- limiting the participation of Western investors in the construction of industrial facilities in the Union;
- passing approvals in the COCOM of all contracts with the USSR in the amount of more than 100 million dollars;
- preparation of a list of technologies and products that should under no circumstances be transferred to the countries of Eastern Europe.
The introduction of these measures violated the construction time of the gas pipeline, which planned to supply gas from Urengoy to the Western European gas system, and also deprived the USSR of the annual income from the sale of blue fuel in the amount of 32 billion dollars.
Washington sought to delay the commissioning of the pipeline as much as possible while at the same time increasing the cost of construction. And although the Europeans were vitally interested in the earliest possible supply of gas to their gas transmission system, the Americans managed to create serious problems in purchasing equipment from Western partners and receiving financial assistance from foreign banks. Prior to 80, Western banks credited the construction of a gas pipeline at a rate of less than 7,8%, but after the introduction of sanctions, the rate reached 17%. With damage to their own companies, the Americans declared an embargo on their participation in the construction of the Soviet gas pipeline. The development of new oil and gas fields with the participation of Japanese specialists on Sakhalin was also suspended.
At the same time, the CIA specialists prepared and launched a program of technological disinformation, the essence of which was the transfer to the countries of the Soviet block of erroneous data and false information about new developments. This information was included by Soviet experts in projects for the creation of new technologies. The results of this diversion were obtained fairly quickly: huge branches of the Soviet economic complex, such as chemical, metallurgical, machine-building, electronic and defense, suffered huge financial losses.
At the same time, the operation of Washington to oust the USSR from the external market was quite successfully implemented.
From today's standpoint, it is safe to say that the arms race that the United States provoked did not become fatal for a Soviet country. The Soviet Union successfully coped with this not simple problem. Despite the need to finance equipping the army with new weapons, the Soviet Union managed every year to reduce military spending. The only thing that was a huge lag was in the latest technologies in the field of electro-optical devices, thermolocators, radar and long-distance communication systems. Of particular concern to the Soviet leadership was the SDI program announced by the US President (which later turned out to be a bluff).
Considered the option of a significant increase in military spending in order to prevent the backlog from the level of armaments of NATO countries.
At the same time, the United States annually increased funding for retrofitting its armed forces.
But the main achievement of the Western special services was to conduct a thoughtful and, as it turned out, successful psychological war against the Soviet people. This work began from the time of the Khrushchev leadership of the country. On the territory of the USSR, the special services formed a group that included representatives of the ruling Soviet elite and the media. This "fifth column" participated, under the guidance of highly professional employees of Western intelligence services, in processing the consciousness of the population of the country. The most active phase of the psychological war took place at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika. The struggle was carried out along the main vital directions for the country. Industry, the army, health care and education have come under attack. The country has been plunged into chaos. At the same time, by all possible means, NATO countries carried out military provocations near the borders of the USSR, which served as an additional destabilizing factor in the situation in the country.
After the collapse of the socialist camp, the main focus of the psychological war was on the introduction of disintegrating methods in relation to the regions of Russia. It was planned that this would lead to the final destruction of Russia, as a single state.
Experts determine three main methods of psychological warfare:
- psychological onslaught (repeated repetition of false theses, information, analytical information, etc., by all available informational media);
- advertising of Western values of life;
- presentation of information in violation of the laws of logic.
Already we can say with confidence that the “Arab revolutions” are the result of the Western countries waging psychological warfare against the states of the Arab world (remember the “domino principle”!). This conclusion is a lot of evidence. The facts are the creation of opposition movements on the territory of these states, the implementation of a large number of programs for the Arab population in the field of education, the substitution of cultural values, including through the use of information technologies; Work with different segments of the population - children, women, young people from the wealthy. As part of the “people's diplomacy” program, hundreds of thousands of Arab citizens were trained in US educational institutions in the discipline of “developing democracy”.
On the question of whether it is possible to resist “managed chaos” and avoid getting the country into the chain of “falling dominoes”, there is only one answer so far - you need to know all the information about yourself, even if it is related to meanness and treason nations, regardless of nationality and level of development, as well as strive to independently determine their future in the interests of the entire state.
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