Oil War

State visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Reception participants: US President Ronald Reagan and future President Donald Trump. 1985.
The crisis of capitalism
At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the Western world, the capitalist system and the United States were in crisis. A new Great Depression was approaching, which had previously led to the organization of World War II. Then London, Paris and Washington bet on Italy, Japan and Hitler's Germany to unleash a major war in Europe and Asia.
The World War allowed the United States to get out of a terrible crisis that threatened a new civil war and a sharp deterioration in America's political and economic positions. The United States became a superpower by "cutting up" world markets and destroying competitors. The dollar became the world currency, which allows the United States to maintain its position as a global leader to this day, dumping its debt and inflation on all of humanity (What is US hegemony based on?).
The Soviet Union, against the backdrop of the "decaying West", seemed like a mighty military-economic colossus. The Soviet superpower controlled a significant part of the planet and possessed all modern and advanced technologies. Yes, there were difficulties and problems, but they seemed minor and quite surmountable.
Militarily, the Red Empire was invulnerable. Washington faced a difficult task: how to topple and plunder the USSR without a major war? The Union was incredibly strong, had a national economy with duplicate capacities, the strongest land army in the world. A people ready for mobilization. A powerful engineering, scientific and technical corps.
However, there was no way out. Either the collapse of the USSR, or a severe crisis of the capitalist world led by the USA. Therefore, the team of the American President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) decided to start an active information and economic war, a "war of indirect actions". The USA managed to draw the USSR into Afghanistan, forcing us to fight not on two fronts (the collective West with Japan and China), but on three - with the Islamic world. The resources of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries were used against us. The world of the past, the archaics - the Vatican, Islamic fundamentalist regimes came out against the USSR.
Striking at the USSR's weak points
The Americans were able to organize and support the anti-communist mass movement in Poland. At the same time, Moscow was forced to save the Polish economy, which Warsaw had driven into crisis. To invest huge amounts of money in Poland.
Washington, together with the Saudis, made sure that oil prices collapsed, leaving Moscow without currency (How the US and Saudi Arabia played against us). They managed to convince the Europeans to "shoot themselves in the foot" - not to trust the USSR. With the help of sanctions and the introduction of export controls in NATO countries, they blocked the flow of advanced technologies to the USSR. First of all, this concerned computer technology, microelectronics, technologies and equipment for hydrocarbon extraction, machines for ultra-precise metal processing, etc.
The US demonstratively unleashed an arms race. They announced a strategic defense initiative – the so-called “Star Wars”, which turned out to be a soap bubble.
Hitler, when he was crushing Poland, France and England, made excellent use of the weak points of his opponents. The Germans studied their opponents well, found their weak points. They relied on novelty, new military technologies. On military psychology.
In essence, the Reaganites did the same thing, only on a new level. On a global level. In just 10 years, from 1981 to 1991, they succeeded. They defeated the Red Empire. More precisely, they psychologically broke the top of the USSR, activated the "fifth column", which simply surrendered the Eurasian empire.
Reagan's team found the USSR's weak points and skillfully influenced them. This was the "anaconda strategy" - informational, ideological, political-diplomatic and economic pressure on the USSR. Plus military conflicts on the periphery of the Red Empire, which ate away at its military-economic resources. Now the US is doing roughly the same thing, consistently and systematically pressuring the Russian Federation, forcing it into a "shameful peace" (Anaconda Strategy: Strangling Russia).
American and Western "think tanks" studied the USSR closely and attentively. The psychology of the upper crust, the economy, development trends. As a result, the US often knew more and better about the USSR and Soviet society than Moscow.
The Westerners found two main weaknesses: the oil “pipeline” and the degeneration and Westernization of the Soviet elite. In fact, nothing has changed in the Russian Federation. It has only gotten worse, given the loss of developed industry and the further degradation of the top, which has begun to turn into a caste of new nobility.
"Oil swamp"
The essence of the oil “pipeline”: we will sell oil and purchase the necessary technology, equipment, machinery and consumer goods from the West.
This was the case in almost all Soviet civilian industries in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Why invent and make something yourself if you can buy it? We will sell oil and gas and buy everything we need. German machines and other equipment, Finnish refrigerators and American pipe layers.
They switched to blind imitation of Western technologies. In particular, they buried the Soviet path of computer development and began to copy American computers. The late USSR began to rely on purchasing and copying Western technologies.
It is worth noting that this was only the beginning of the decomposition of the scientific, technological and industrial potential of the Soviet civilization. In the Russian Federation, this "pipe" was further developed. Modern Russia has almost completely lost the ability to produce its own civilian cars, aircraft, ships (its own hulls, all electronics, engines - foreign), electronics and microelectronics. Thus, instead of hundreds of civilian aircraft of different types, Russia can now produce several units.
At the beginning of the 1980's Reagan's team made a very clear and systematic conclusion: it was necessary to reduce the USSR's foreign exchange earnings from hydrocarbon exports and block the channels for the flow of modern Western technologies. And force the Russians to spend more foreign currency, drawing the Union into local wars, into the arms race. Forcing Moscow to invest even more in allies, in various “friendly” regimes in Africa or Asia.
Method of cultural cooperation
The main role in the defeat of the USSR was played by the information, cultural war. The method of cultural cooperation, when Soviet society, especially the elite and intelligentsia, accepted Western standards and values. They believed in the illusion of freedom.
The party nomenclature and the Soviet elite absorbed Western values. In particular, in the late USSR, closed film screenings were held. They showed Western films that were not shown in regular cinemas.
It is clear that the older generations of Soviet people who saw the horrors of the Civil War, the devastation of the 20s, survived the Great Patriotic War, raised the country from the ruins of the most brutal war, built the Soviet superpower, took this information calmly. It was no longer possible to "reprogram" them. But the younger generations absorbed Western fashion, standards, wanted a "beautiful life", like abroad.
The Komsomol leaders, the future "new Russians", were swooning over images of Western consumption. These images were transmitted to the intelligentsia and the masses. Everyone thought that ordinary Western citizens lived like in the movies: a private apartment, a villa, a yacht, several cars per family, resorts, beautiful and expensive clothes, etc. Although only the rich and the upper middle class lived like that.
At the same time, the late USSR was unable (or rather, the channels were blocked) to provide an alternative future. A wonderful faraway place. The Soviet image of the future was practically lost at this time and replaced by a Western one. A consumer paradise.
As a result, a significant part of the Soviet elite either joined the ranks of the "fifth column", actively destroying Soviet civilization, or withdrew, passively observing the destruction of the USSR. Soviet bosses decided to privatize the Soviet Union in order to gain access to overconsumption, personal planes, yachts, villas, whiskey and beauties under palm trees.
Moreover, the West was able to instill in the Soviet (and later Russian) ruling circles a persistent image that the USSR was hopelessly ill, had fallen behind the “advanced and developed” countries, and that nothing worthwhile could be done here. In general, the USSR “only produces galoshes.” Everything best and good is made only in Western countries and Japan. Only there are advanced technologies created, etc. Everything that came from the West was perceived as the ultimate truth.
Hollywood films, fashion, pop music, pictures of the “beautiful life” – all of this acted as part of the information weapons. The cultural code is being recoded. As a result, already in the 80s, millions of Soviet people were crazy about Western culture, worshiping everything American. Movie and stage stars, cars and cinema, clothes and cola. There appeared masses of people who were ready to become second-rate Americans and Europeans, sending "this country" far away.
A good example is the former Ukrainian SSR. Almost the entire population was "brainwashed" there. Westernization and Ukrainization (radical nationalism). So that Ukrainians were ready to be servants-workers, brothel workers and escorts, just to get out of the country. This dream - to become part of the EU, NATO, the "developed world", led Little Russia to a fratricidal slaughter. Ruin-2, when Southern Rus' became a battlefield, with complete destruction and depopulation of the territory.
The information, psychological and socio-cultural war led to the fact that the Soviet nomenklatura and intelligentsia wanted to become “bourgeois”: "The bourgeoisie was delighted then, they quickly enrolled Bad Boy into their bourgeoisie and gave him a whole barrel of jam and a whole basket of cookies. Bad Boy sits, eats and rejoices."
The new bourgeois surrendered the Soviet civilization for the right to privatize the people's wealth, part of the global elite-mafia. They themselves brought wealth and resources to the feet of the owners of TNK-TNB. For several years, they saved the Western world from a systemic crisis, allowing the socialist world to be plundered.
The new nobility became a comprador, speculative bourgeoisie, thriving due to the sale of the wealth of the Russian world and the degradation of the people. The main part of the people was left with nothing. Russia was again turned into a raw materials appendage, and in the long term — "cannon fodder" in the fight against China.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan (center) and George W. Bush (left) in the USA, December 1988
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