Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
A significant factor in Ronald Reagan's successful destabilization of the ex-Soviet Union was the U.S.S.R.'s inability to maintain both the arms race and its internal economy in the face of Reagan's dramatic expansion of military spending. As a result of the economic…plan…we've been suffereing under, and past and projected war and reconstruction expenditures , I'm not at all sure we could do that to China.
It would be the greatest possible irony if our capitalist system were destabilized by China by essentially the same process that Reagan destabilized the Soviet Union's system.
By Toshi Yoshihara, 10/16/2003
WITH TUESDAY'S successful launch of the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, China has become the third nation, behind the United States and the former Soviet Union, to place a human into the Earth's orbit. Not surprisingly, the Chinese government is now engaged in a full-court press to tout this dramatic event as a major scientific and engineering achievement, complete with full-color photos and large front-page stories in scores of newspapers around the country.
…China enjoys the resources and boasts the political will to invest in space over the long term. As such, even if China does not pose a credible threat to the United States, perceptions that the Chinese may eventually challenge US space supremacy could spur Washington to view Beijing as a future rival in space.
In other words, Chinese apprehensions of US space dominance might easily be reciprocated.
Posted by P6 at October 17, 2003 06:02 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2009Don't buy into the Reaganite propaganda. The USSR's economy was going to go down the tubes regardless. (You would think that the hardline anti-communists of the GOP would recognize this. Central planning doesn't work, right?) The line that it was cold war defense spending that did the trick is just their way of trying to make those huge deficits Reagan ran up look like they accomplished something besides making defense contractors wealthy.
By the same token, we may now be tax-cutting and borrowing our way into oblivion regardless of anything China does. Actually, cutting off the loans they make to our government is probably the most devastating thing China could do to the US economy.
Luis is correct in the long term sense that the USSR had stopped growing economically by the early 1970's ( and began contracting after 1980)but he is wrong because totalitarian states can limp along for quite some time on the edge of utter ruin. Case in point, North Korea which on the margins endures actual starvation with an intact regime.
The Soviets could easily still be in business today had they not begun to reform - the purpose of which was to free up their economy to avoid collapse and continue as a superpower vis-a-vis the United States. Reagan's arm's build-up was a considerable pressure on the Soviets which most former Soviet officials freely admit, even if American leftists do not.
China is an interesting case. They do now have enough surplus to invest in a variety of competitive " races " with the US but they are also very cognizant of the per capita GDP aspect. 800 million peasants cannot be allowed to go hungry nor can the new class of urban quasi-capitalist workers and capitalists be allowed to suffer to great a drop in their standards of living; the legitimacy of Communist Party rule is now vested in delivering economic growth which limits expenditure for less productive state projects like space.
Fifty years from now though.....