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Then there was the Arab Oil Embargo. I guess the oil embargo is the poster child example of "close your eyes and it'll all get better." Thinking back on it, it's almost incredible that the country did not follow through on Carter's declaration of making energy independence "the moral equivalent of war." But that idea got dropped with the Reagan administration, which convinced the country that worries about Middle East oil dependence was like worrying about global climate change.
There was a different battle for the Reagan administration than worrying about oil. At the time the largest supply of energy for new products and energy for transportation, manufacturing and production was oil. That's still true today. The Reagan administration saw the need for oil as a basic part of the Cold War where its main opponent relied heavily on mineral wealth for its continuity. So the Reagan administration saw it like this:
Undermine the currency of the Soviet Union - Bretton Woods Agreement - Check!
Undermine the income of the SU via a flooding of the world via SA oil markets - Check!
Undermine the authority of the SU over its people by constantly deriding it in the public - Check!
Undermine the technology of the SU by denying it new technologies it couldn't afford - Check!
Undermine its own citizens beliefs in the SU system via propaganda - Check!
Undermine the ability of the SU to feed itself via embargoes - Check!
Create a new challenge (like Sputnik) that the SU couldn't compete with - SDI - Check!
I think the results were even better than what the Reagan administration expected.
There was a different battle for the Reagan administration than worrying about oil. At the time the largest supply of energy for new products and energy for transportation, manufacturing and production was oil. That's still true today. The Reagan administration saw the need for oil as a basic part of the Cold War where its main opponent relied heavily on mineral wealth for its continuity. So the Reagan administration saw it like this:
Undermine the currency of the Soviet Union - Bretton Woods Agreement - Check!
Undermine the income of the SU via a flooding of the world via SA oil markets - Check!
Undermine the authority of the SU over its people by constantly deriding it in the public - Check!
Undermine the technology of the SU by denying it new technologies it couldn't afford - Check!
Undermine its own citizens beliefs in the SU system via propaganda - Check!
Undermine the ability of the SU to feed itself via embargoes - Check!
Create a new challenge (like Sputnik) that the SU couldn't compete with - SDI - Check!
I think the results were even better than what the Reagan administration expected.
Not explaining to me why ignoring independence from Arabs was something to ignore while the American population continued to rely on big iron using lots of oil.
Not explaining to me why ignoring independence from Arabs was something to ignore while the American population continued to rely on big iron using lots of oil.
I suppose you'd rather still be toughing it out in the Cold War?
I didn't think it would take explanation in any sort of extreme detail but I guess I thought wrong. You'll only get oil independence from Arab nations when C. Eurasian states start producing oil and after that you'll still have your oil independence when E. Siberian oil fields start producing oil in large enough quantities.
What would your desire to have changed history have accomplished had there not been an influx of cheap oil on the market in the 80's occurred?
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After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, King Fahd joined with the United States to aid Afghans fighting the Russians. Hume Horan, a former United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote in a 2004 article for the American Enterprise Institute that William J. Casey, then director of central intelligence, visited the king in 1987.
The American brought a shiny, detailed Kalashnikov rifle. Its stock featured a brass plaque saying that the weapon had been taken from the body of a Russian officer.
"Mr. Casey might as well have been giving the keys to the Kingdom of God itself," Mr. Horan wrote. "The king rose, flourished the weapon, and struck a martial pose."
I suppose you'd rather still be toughing it out in the Cold War?
We discovered in the 90s that the Soviets had actually completely lost the Cold War--and Andropov knew it--by 1980.
We could have known it too--I was certainly suspecting it of their military capabilities by 1979, and I knew economists who were preaching earlier in the 70s that the Soviet economic numbers didn't add up. But we made excuses to keep them buffed up as big and bad.
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I didn't think it would take explanation in any sort of extreme detail but I guess I thought wrong. You'll only get oil independence from Arab nations when C. Eurasian states start producing oil and after that you'll still have your oil independence when E. Siberian oil fields start producing oil in large enough quantities.
What would your desire to have changed history have accomplished had there not been an influx of cheap oil on the market in the 80's occurred?
Hard to say what could have been accomplished if the US had attacked oil independence from the Arabs as the moral equivalent of war--the same way the US attacked WWII and the moon race.
Then after year three those states could opt out. Nothing in the law prevents them from doing so.
Dream on, the Republicans get 60 seats in the Senate. That would be your wet dream, wouldn't it? More pissing down on poor folk while ever increasingly enriching the already-wealthy.
No, MOST low-income people don't want a hand-out...they'd RATHER a HAND-UP. But since the wealthy who control business in this country REFUSE to spend decent money to hire people at a livable wage...most folk would prefer a hand-out to DEATH.
Food for thought. It is not about what you or I think about expanding Medicaid or who will control congress it is what the Republican Governors and state legislators think. I may be wrong but I suspect they are planning on winning and are implementing policy accordingly.
We discovered in the 90s that the Soviets had actually completely lost the Cold War--and Andropov knew it--by 1980.
We could have known it too--I was certainly suspecting it of their military capabilities by 1979, and I knew economists who were preaching earlier in the 70s that the Soviet economic numbers didn't add up. But we made excuses to keep them buffed up as big and bad.
So when oil was at its highest and their income was rolling in and Jimmy carter was kissing Brezhnev on the cheeks they had "lost the cold war"?
If the Soviet Union had not faced any opposition in Afghanistan they would have gained control and drawn a line in the sand and had free reign over the ME. Over time that would have allowed them to take control of the resources of the ME and C. Eurasia.
If the SU had not faced in opposition to its military build up or had only faced opposition that amounted to "detente" or peaceful coexistence then there would have been no reforms and no shifting of power.
If the SU had not faced trade embargoes then they would have not had to face up to its food deficits nearly as bad as they eventually had to.
I know it makes you guys feel all warm and fuzzy to rewrite history and all but to deny what happened by claiming it was always going to happen completely dismisses 70 years of Soviet history. In your eyes the SU was always going to collapse because it faced chronic problems. It always faced those same problems.
At this point we've gone off topic. Maybe at some other point in another thread we can discuss further and in more detail.
So when oil was at its highest and their income was rolling in and Jimmy carter was kissing Brezhnev on the cheeks they had "lost the cold war"?
Yes. Read Gorbachev's autobiography. The economic problem of the Soviets rested in the fact that they'd killed off all their real economists and were working with born-and-bread Communist ideologue.
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If the Soviet Union had not faced any opposition in Afghanistan they would have gained control and drawn a line in the sand and had free reign over the ME. Over time that would have allowed them to take control of the resources of the ME and C. Eurasia.
First, Afghanistan is not in the middle east.
Second, nobody else had managed to control Afghanistan (including the US) and there's no real reason to think the Soviets could.
Third, false dilemma. Helping the Afghans opposed the Soviet Union was not an either/or choice with a national effort to become independent of Middle Eastern oil. Supporting the Afghan resistance was cheap (and Pakistan was at that time still a strong Cold War ally to the US).
Quote:
If the SU had not faced in opposition to its military build up or had only faced opposition that amounted to "detente" or peaceful coexistence then there would have been no reforms and no shifting of power.
False dilemma. That's not an either/or choice with a national effort to become independent of Middle Eastern oil.
Quote:
If the SU had not faced trade embargoes then they would have not had to face up to its food deficits nearly as bad as they eventually had to.
False dilemma. That's not an either/or decision with a national effort to become independent of Middle Eastern oil.
I know it makes you guys feel all warm and fuzzy to rewrite history and all but to deny what happened by claiming it was always going to happen completely dismisses 70 years of Soviet history. In your eyes the SU was always going to collapse because it faced chronic problems. It always faced those same problems.
At this point we've gone off topic. Maybe at some other point in another thread we can discuss further and in more detail.[/quote]
I don't know what "you guys" you think you're referring to.
basically nothing has change except Bommers were large group and could support all the programs created. As far young people exist in 40 eyars likely they will see the present generation as greedy in creating a ACA that just adds to burden. Why e blame boomers who provided so much to others because your facing cuts by demographics choices.Its lke nature there just is the food source to fill your belly of wants. because the hurd is thinned.Plus the per centage hunters that provide the feed has gotten fewer and fewer.
I blame Boomers for the complete retardation and political constipation of the American Politik. The same arguments over oil have been going on since the 1970s yet the entire energy market has shifted away from what it was in the 1970s. The US now has year over year reductions in gasoline use since 2010. The number 1 source of foreign crude is Canada and has been since the Clinton Administration. Has this filtered into the American common knowledge?!? No!!! Why, because Boomers have too much pent up anger at OPEC about a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1970s that never got resolved, never will be resolved (to a certain extent), and that they won't move past it. The market has moved on and the US market is no longer a slave to the whims of Vienna.
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