The Failed Future of the USSR

I sat down recently with the History Unplugged podcast and talked some thoughts about how competition between the US and the USSR might have gone down differently:

Was it ever possible for the Soviets to win the Cold War? Looking back, its defeat seemed inevitable. The USSR had a political system hated by much of its population, a backwards economy, and harsh geographic conditions that made development challenging. But as late as the 1980s, few thought it would fall apart as catastrophically as it did.

How close was the USSR to victory? Was it structurally doomed to fail, or could better internal management and more strategic blunders from the United States brought it victory? If so, how? To explore this alternate reality and its level of plausibility is Dr. Robert Farley, a professor of security and diplomacy at the University of Kentucky and author of “Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology.”

Few who fought in the Cold War thought American victory was inevitable. Rather, they thought that U.S dominance – or even survival – depended on investments in cutting edge military technologies and extensive interventions across the globe, with Korea and Vietnam being only a couple of examples. We will explore the arguments on each side, and what the Soviet Union would have done if it had in fact won the Cold War.

It was a fun conversation. In less fun news:

• More discussion of a Russian winter offensive.
• The evolving air war…
• Trying to sort out the Russian and Ukrainian death tolls is going to be a struggle…
• Russia shoring up its relations with Belarus and China.
• Looks like Canada has taken the lead on transferring seized Russian assets to Ukraine.