The Role of the United States in the Fall of the Soviet Union
Amman, Jordan
“The friend of my friend, he is my friend.
The friend of my enemy, he is my enemy.
But the enemy of my enemy, he is my friend.”
old Arab proverb
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was so short-lived that some who witnessed its birth lived to see its fall. Undoubtedly, Russia itself had an important part to play in this. The following, however, will analyze the role that the United States of America played.
Outspending the Reds in Africa
In the decades following the end of World War II, British and French influence in Africa began to decline. Russia played a pivotal role in the downfall of French rule in Morocco and Algeria. This was done by the arming of nationalist forces with the newest Russian weapons(Murray). For forty years, Africa was inundated by a rain of American and Russian weaponry.
“Percipient Africans recognized a new ‘scramble’ for their continent, undertaken as part of a global struggle between democratic capitalism and Communism.”
Lawrence James
Due to Washington’s support of Moscow’s rivals, the communists were never able to get the upper hand.
In one such example, an American orchestrated coup of the first President of Congo (shown above), denied Russia a new Communist ally as well as vast amounts of uranium deposits (Atomic Heritage Foundation).
“According to the United States Agency for International Development, between 1946 and 1992…Washington sent just under $20.2 billion dollars to sub-Saharan Africa…”
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Washington’s Support of Tel-Aviv in the Arab-Israeli Wars
When Israel declared its independence in 1948, both the United States and Soviet Union supported the move but for drastically different reasons. For Stalin, it was a chance to weaken the tottering British Empire. For the United States, it was an opportunity to support a democratic regime that was anti-communist. It is naïveté to think that either Super Power cared about the Arabs or the Jews. Starting in the 1950’s, Russia switched its support to the Arab regimes of Iraq, Syria Jordan, and Egypt. Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and the supplying of countless pieces of equipment, i.e. MIGS, tanks, and artillery, Moscow’s Arab allies repeatedly found themselves beaten or fought to a standstill my much smaller Israeli forces. Washington’s support in terms of money, equipment, and intelligence, was undeniable.
“Washington sent five times as much aid to the Middle East during the Cold War as it did to sub-Saharan Africa and over three times as much as it sent to Latin America.”
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
American Support for the Shah of Iran
From 1945 until 1979, the United States supported the Shah of Iran. He was a dictator-a tyrant. His secret police, SAVAK, imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of Iranians. He was, however, rabidly anti-Communist. American oil companies, like the British before them, lined their pockets with the profits from Iranian oil, keeping as much as 90%. This parasitic relationship, however, denied the Soviet Union vast amounts of oil as well as a powerful ally in central Asia. The relationship between Washington and Tehran, from 1945–1979, succeeded in keeping Moscow at bay (Ghazvinian).
American Support of the Afghan Insurgents
The Soviet Union was able to occupy Afghanistan for a decade, from 1979–1989. Like the United States in Vietnam, Russia used everything short of nuclear weapons to subdue a tiny peasant population and failed. One of the principle reasons for this failure was American financial and military support. This was designed to make the invasion as painful as possible for the Russians, and to compel them to withdraw (state.gov).
At the time, Moscow was spending a quarter of its GDP on the military (Kenez). By 1989, thousands of Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. The decade old conflict played a large part in leaving the Russian economy in tatters. This, in turn, had a role in Soviet citizens demanding change. Thanks to American support, Afghanistan became the only nation in history to win a war against the Soviet Union .
“Soviet Forces lost 722 soldiers in their 1956 invasion of Hungary and 96 in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia; nearly 15,000 died in the Soviet-Afghan War.”
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Conclusion
With American support, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, and South Vietnam fell to the communists. The USSR was demonized as the master manipulator behind these coups. With American support, however, much of the world was able to resist communist takeovers.
The American stressing of the Soviet economy and military, which occurred on all ends of the compass: Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, could not indefinitely be endured. It was a death of a thousand cuts. Without American support of Soviet rivals, all throughout the planet, it is likely that the Soviet Union would have lasted longer than it did.
Works Cited
Bodansky, Yossef. Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Random House, 2001.
Chamberlin, Paul Thomas. The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace. Harper Collins, 2018 .
Ghazvinian, John. America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present. Knopf, 2021.
Herzog, Chaim. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East. Vintage Books, 1982.
James, Lawrence. Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa. Pegasus Books, 2016 .
Kenez, Peter. Russian History: From Lenin to Putin. Coursera.
McCauley, Martin. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. Routledge, 2008.
Murray, Simon. Legionnaire: An Englishman in the French Foreign Legion. Ballantine Books, 1978.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/proxy-wars-during-cold-war-africa
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan
