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It is not at all implausible that competition with the US made the USSR spend more on arms. The reason empires throughout history spend money on arms, as you ri
by dash2 5y ago
It is not at all implausible that competition with the US made the USSR spend more on arms. The reason empires throughout history spend money on arms, as you rightly say, is to compete with their neighbours. The US upped the ante.
I'm not arguing either for or against Reagan. I merely point out that he was right about the USSR.
- pmoriarty 5y agoThe USSR suffered a bloody revolution at the turn of the 20th Century which upended its social order. Then tens of millions of its people dies in WW2 and the country was devastated, tens of millions more died of famine or were killed, imprisoned, and/or enslaved by a totalitarian regime which terrorized its people. Much of its intelligencia (the creative lifeblood of any society) were themselves oppressed or exiled. None of this had anything to do with the United States, but it did contribute greatly to just how broken the USSR was by the time it collapsed. The collapse wasn't only about this, but it certainly wasn't simply a defeat by the US either.