🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3bkh1m$ifo@icebox.mfltd.co.uk> dnh@mfltd.co.uk (Des Herriott) writes:
>Karni06@aol.com (Karni06) wrote:
>>
>>> >* Ended cold war with help of star-wars trump card.   FACT
>>> Crap.  The USSR's economy fell apart.
>>Because we escalated the arms race to the point where they couldn't put in
>>the resources to keep up. FACT. Even Gorby and the old line Commies
>>acknowledge that the prospect of Star Wars arms race scared the hell out
>>of them, because they knew they were going to be goners.
>That's an empty argument.  The USSR already had enough nukes to destroy
>the world many times over; "keeping up" wasn't even necessary, though
>neither the Soviet nor the American military seemed to understand that.

	Uh...right..so the goal of destroying your enemy before they could
send nukes at you-via bombers, subs etc, had absolutely no merit? Kill or be
killed maybe sound familiar?
>
>And Star Wars had already been shown to be too ambitious a project to
>be viable - even a 99% success rate is pretty hopeless when you've got
>several thousand incoming nukes.
	If America, with its bombers&subs, could take out a significant     
fraction of launch sites, the Star Wars could lessen the residual damage to
the U.S.
>
>The U.S. had very little to do with the collapse of communism - it was
>much more a case of popular discontent with the whole economic shambles,
>and the improvement of information spread (I wonder how much effect the
>Internet & computer networks in general had?)

	But you make a biiig mistake because 1)The USSR had been in an
economic shambles for many years.  It often bought grain, depleting its metal
reserves due to agricultural inefficiency.  The year of the fall did not
see people starving, but people starved during Mao's reign in China. I.e.,
bad economic conditions will not necessarily a bad government overthrow;
usually the government just cracks down, as in China etc.
	2)The common person did not have access to the Internet or computer
networks at the time. I think you can find articles about how 'bootleg
American computers' were selling for skyrocket prices.  Physicists I met
from Russia didn't even know how to turn on their MAcs when they came over
in 1990.  I had to slooowly show them.
	I think the original poster was close to the idea.  Imagine you are
fighting with your brother, and he goes nuts; you grab him in a lock and
he squirms and his face turns red.  He gets extremely angry, struggling.
After a while, though, he just gets tired of the whole business.  Then you let
him go and he walks away.  Do you guys ever do this with your siblings? I guess
it helps to have my physique..  Anyway, Russia was put into a no-win situation
like a good-hold or wrestling lock; they could not conquer or expand, which
would have fed them; without attainable goals, i.e. expansion, they simply
collapsed from internal pressures.
	Pre-contained Russia was like a burning fire.  Unless the firefighters
had locked it in, it would have burned round the world, wreaking untold
havock, i.e. visulaize the US as post USSR, at which point it would have 
collapsed or destroyed humanity.  China is a different situation; it has been
dominated by totalitarian systems for a long time and this is not a change
in scene, although under Mao such nice ideologies as removing sexual difference
(can you say, equality between the sexes) was achieved etc. etc. Thus China
is a complicated system.  You will note that they have both had bad economies,
unhappy people, communication methods and finally containment, but I dont think
China is as expansionist so much as self-controlling.

               John Wagner

>
>-- 
>Des Herriott, Systems Programmer  | dnh@mfltd.co.uk
>Micro Focus, Newbury UK.          | +44 1635 565354