What a cool word!

It was not the arms race that brought the USSR to an abrupt end. The Russions themselves will tell you that it was the introduction of American culture into Russion that changed the USSR. Same thing happened in China, and Vietnam, and everywhere else it has been tried. Wherever our culture is introduced, they become more like us.

It is a big reason why terrorists in the Middle East hate us. They fear losing their “way of life” in favor of Americanization which is the inevitable result of our culture being introduced there.

The contrast of seeing that wave of new culture their own countries is what makes the people of those contries want a different lifestyle, our lifestyle. And so the desire for change has to erupte from the people up, like it did in the USSR, China, Vietnam and the like, forcing the government to change.

The tactic is as hold as the Trojan Horse. And it works. You don’t have to go to Yale to follow the logic.

In particular I was very interested in the Russian Revolution.

I am one of the leading experts concerning the Allied Intervention into the Soviet Union in 1918. You probably did not even know that he United States invaded the Soviet Union in the Baltic and through Vladivostok.

Those are just a taste of my credentials. What are yours?

Let me further disabuse you of the notion that the Reagan buildup bankrupted the Soviet Union.

That presumption is at odds with publications such as the The Current Threat of the Soviet Union which was a Defense Department publication.

It showed that as a percentage of GNP the Soviets were actually spending less in 1989 then 1981

If you read DOD Sect Carlucci’s 1988 analysis of the Soviet Threat it is clear he did not have a clue that the Warsaw pact and the USSR were about to implode.

Along with Pearl Harbor, it was one of the great intelligence failures of the past 150 years. I have list of the others if you interested in reading it.

The rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe, which was no doubt boosted by the election of a Polish Pope, along with the failed Afghani War [which demoralized the Soviet army in the same way Vietnam did that to our army] were two of the three reasons causing the failure of the Soviet Union.

The third and most important was the corruption under Brezhnev whose twenty year reign was a monument to cronyism and incompetence.

I have always thought that his daughter–who had the misfortune of looking like him–was symbolic of the failure. An obese alcoholic whose numerous lovers [if you could call them that] were given the kind of no show jobs that would have embarrassed Chicago.

People will tolerate a dictator as long as the streets are safe and the trains run on time. By the time of Brezhnev’s death government was delivering neither.

Like most empires the inner rotting, not the foreign threat, is the main reason for collapse. The foreign threat is just a distraction to keep the populace from complaining about the rot. But even that can only last so long.

Russians met the millions of american tourists which only further emphasized how bad their lives were and how good they could be.

She is saying what most intellegent people have said for years except on Calle Ocho.

The only way to bring democracy to Cuba is for there to be greater interaction between the Cubans there and the Americans here. Less interaction leads to status quo. More interaction leads to more reforms.

It is not the threat of nuclear war that brought an end to the USSR. It was McDonalds, Levi Jeans and Rock albums that did that. It was not the threat of continued distance that brought China into the new world economy. It was the catching on of the capitalist concept of profit that did that.

Once communism understands that capitalism is not so evil as they say, they convert.

The embargo served the purpose of containing communism to Cuba within the hemisphere during the nuclear age. 50 years later we need new tactics. End the embargo. Let them see that we are not evil and can offer them a better way of life. And watch them evolve toward us. This is the time for change in Cuba and it’s sad to see the angry Cuban element continue to stand in the way of Cuba Libre.

Yes, I am a Cuban.