We Lost The Cold War

I am sick and tired to hearing Right Wing Republicans babble away about Ronald Reagan and how he stood up to the Soviets and won the Cold War. They trot out that catchy Reagan phrase, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Everyone cheers! We won! We won! The wall came down. The Soviet Union broke apart. Communism lost and democracy won. While that may be true, that is only a part of the story.

History is best told from a distance. The interesting thing about history is yesterday's loser can become today's winner. It depends on one's vantage point. With perspective, a win can turn into a loss.

Filled with hubris and run by neo-con nitwits who possessed a bizarre notion of a Pax Americana focused on bringing democracy to the far reaches of the globe, the United States proceeded, in the 20 short years since the wall fell, to be eclipsed in the global geopolitical and economic landscape.

Our hubris caused us to stretch ourselves too thin. We didn't pay attention to our knitting.
So what happened? We spent a trillion dollars on a silly, bogus war and exhausted and depleted our fighting forces. We created massive budget deficits. We created huge trade surpluses. We acted like a bully on the global playground. The dollar began a relentless slide in value (amazingly, a Loonie is worth more than a dollar).

The weakness in the dollar caused the price of oil to increase. The oil isn't marginally more expensive, the dollar is just increasing worth less. U. S. assets, pegged to dollars make this entire country look like the Dollar Store.

The result, Russian oligarchs and sovereign funds (or quasi sovereign funds, ie, Gazprom) are buying up U. S. assets. They bail out Citibank. They buy steel mills in the heartland. So, at the end of the day, I have to ask, did we really win the Cold War? We might have occupied center stage for a brief moment, but history, I am afraid, will see the victory as very short lived and ephemeral.

Quickly, the great American empire over-extended itself and fell into decline.