What if the US did nothing?

[Blind groper]

It would not have resulted in Europe becoming communist. The USA discovered the hard way, in Viet Nam, that simply invading a country does not mean defeating it. Western Europe has always had more resources than Viet Nam, and more allies, and any invasion by the USSR would have been very, very costly.

However, if the USA did not get involved in overseas theatres, there would have been a lot fewer wars, and a lot more development by those nations that have been held back.

In addition, we would almost certainly have seen Israel capitulating, and permitting the Palestinians their own sovereign nation. By now they might even be on friendly terms (said tongue in cheek).

[Jason]

One thing's certain. We'd have a lot less porn.

[cronus]

One thing's certain. We'd have a lot less porn.

Only America would have less porn. And that would make for better porn elsewhere given how unimaginative US porn is.

[Clinton Huxley]

If the USA just sat back and did nothing, it would get really obese.

[Jason]

I've never been much for porn that has a plot. Porn writers suck at dialogue and porn actors suck at acting. As far as I know, there's no modern kamasutra porn producer.

[cronus]

Plot is neither here nor there but using the same camera angles and lighting for every shoot makes for a boring predictability.

[Clinton Huxley]

I read one analysis that suggested the UK should have withdrawn from the Empire around 1870/1880, as this was when the cost of protecting it started to outweigh the benefits of having it. The money saved could have been invested in education, research, whatever and the UK would have been wealthier now. Speculation and hindsight, of course, but I guess the key to the game is recognising the start of imperial over-stretch and re-aligning at just the right moment.

The USA could sit tight within its borders, maintain a navy strong enough to keep trade routes open, slash the Army and general expeditionary capability and invest the money saved in R&D. They could be on Mars in a decade or so.

[cronus]

I read one analysis that suggested the UK should have withdrawn from the Empire around 1870/1880, as this was when the cost of protecting it started to outweigh the benefits of having it. The money saved could have been invested in education, research, whatever and the UK would have been wealthier now. Speculation and hindsight, of course, but I guess the key to the game is recognising the start of imperial over-stretch and re-aligning at just the right moment.

The USA could sit tight within its borders, maintain a navy strong enough to keep trade routes open, slash the Army and general expeditionary capability and invest the money saved in R&D. They could be on Mars in a decade or so.

The key to eternal youth is dying young but who wants to do that willingly?

[mistermack]

I don't go in for long debates here these days but I feel pretty confident about my position on this one so I will dive in with pone of my very few (honest) walls of text posts.

Reagan was convinced that the Soviet Union was a collapsing economic system and his policies undermined what was a rotting system. The high oil prices you refer to resulted in Soviet leadership avoiding serious economic reforms and instead, it relied on oil revenues as a means of keeping its decrepit economy going. By the 80s the USSR was almost a hollow shell and its unreformed and increasingly backward industries was producing outdated armaments.

Reagan’s massively increased defense spending from $1.3 billion in 1980 to $2.5 billion in 1989. This raised American defense spending to 7 percent of GDP. To try to keep up the Soviet Union was ‘forced’ in the first half of the 1980s to raise the share of its defense spending from 22 percent to 27 percent of GDP. It also froze the production of civilian goods at 1980 levels (which may have done a huge amount to make the government even more unpopular than it often was).

The SDA project (missile shield) was the final straw and it convinced Gorby in my view to throw in the towel and bid for a de-escalation of the arms race, which is what he did.

In addition the war in Afghanistan the USSR was fighting was costing then a huge amount - I read an estimate of about 8 billion a year. The USA supporting the opposition was forking out about a billion one reads (that coming back to bite them is another story of course).

At the same time the USA reduced the flow of Western technology to the Soviet Union and also negotiated a limit Soviet natural gas exports to Western Europe. A big factor was also a policy which resulted in a drastic fall in the price of oil in the 1980s, reducing income to the USSR significantly.

America was more resilient, flexible, lighter on its feet that the USSR could ever have been. It beat them hands down. There was never much doubt in my mind that if we avoided global catastrophe how it would end.

Rum, I have no doubt in my mind, that it all would have happened without any action by the USA.
And if you look at the Wikipedia analysis on the fall of the Soviet Union, you will find no mention of the US as an agent of the fall, or even as a contributor to it. Not one mention. Unless I missed it.

If what you say is true, that's an amazing omission.

I don't think that the Wikipedia author has any axe to grind on the subject. The truth is, the system was rotten, and would have collapsed anyway.

This myth that it was the US arms race that did it suits the various factions in the US, who try to take some credit for it, so they keep repeating it. But it's not true.
The collapse might have happened fractionally earlier, due to the arms race. But only a tiny fraction.

[Audley Strange]

Reagan Doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Doctrine

[mistermack]

Fall of the Soviet Union :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Soviet_Union

[Cormac]

I read one analysis that suggested the UK should have withdrawn from the Empire around 1870/1880, as this was when the cost of protecting it started to outweigh the benefits of having it. The money saved could have been invested in education, research, whatever and the UK would have been wealthier now. Speculation and hindsight, of course, but I guess the key to the game is recognising the start of imperial over-stretch and re-aligning at just the right moment.

The USA could sit tight within its borders, maintain a navy strong enough to keep trade routes open, slash the Army and general expeditionary capability and invest the money saved in R&D. They could be on Mars in a decade or so.

Britain is still spectacularly wealthy compared to most.

[Cormac]

Ooooh. Wikipedia Top Trumps!



Who'll win? I'm on tenterhooks!




(I think that is the first time I've used either of those smilies!).

:mischievous:

[Audley Strange]

No. MisterMack is correct. The wikipedia article does not mention any external influence at all and makes it out as if it was a "will of the people" thing.

Which itself is very interesting, but also raises a valid point. How much had it over-extended itself anyway? did it fall or was it pushed?

I'd say that without having to spend so much money on "keeping up with the yankies" during a cold war, because the U.S. was not a threat, the Union would have had much more money. I'd further suggest that since most of Western Europe's sympathies at the time were on the left, if not outrright communism, we might have been part of some kind of early socialist Euro state without actual invasion. Since China and Russia and Western Europe were all still in charge of most of the Globe, America would have probably become an increasingly isolated Capitalist Economy. The money would have all been flowing to Moscow.

So America doing nothing would have still ended up with the Soviet Union being the Superpower.


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[Tyrannical]

Oh, and this reminds me of one of my favorite highbrow meeting slams when someone won't compromise.

Listen Stalin, this isn't Yalta. You can't have everything

Ka-pow!