" Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

Defeating the USSR was the right thing to do. Clinton screwed up royally on the re-build of Russia. He did not make Russia tear down their military factories as a pre-condition for economic assistance after their economy collapsed. He thought that reducing inventories of nuclear weapons would be enough. George Soros was more interested in lining his own pockets than in improving Russian society. Clinton screwed up even more on China, allowing U.S. mutual funds (think: your retirement money) to invest wildly in Chinese businesses and hand them American technology without regard as to how this would affect U.S. businesses in the future. Clinton was ignorant enough to believe that China would be our manufacturing center, and the ideas, products, and profits would remain ours. GWB did little or nothing to reign in this exodus of technology, even as China started building its military.

There is no guarantee that, had the USSR survived as a Cold War adversary, they would have kept China in check. Historically, China did not trust Russia. There were some military threats and actions after WWII on the part of Russia, which caused China to move their weapons factories far away from where Russia could reach them (in remote areas, up in the mountains, etc.). If Russia and China could get past that and form an alliance, they would make a dangerous combination for the U.S., Japan and NATO. (And they did do that to a certain extent to oppose the U.S. in Korea.) If one attacked, the other would wait and watch, and then look for the opportune time to attack. Just like Germany and Japan in WWII.

The U.S. has historically been extremely good (Europe and Japan, after WWII) or extremely bad (Russia and Afghanistan, 1990's) at re-building countries after war. Part of Clinton's problem was that he was a wide-eyed optimist who assumed that all countries have the makeup to become free democracies if you just throw money at them. He really thought that once a population became wealthy, the people would demand freedoms and the right to select their leaders. Corrupt societies like Russia will funnel the money into the hands of a few who will do whatever it takes to hold on to that money.

 

Respectfully disagree. If we “defeated” the USSR, the sole purpose was opening their markets and spreading capitalism. Saying Clinton “screwed it up” is counter intuitive to the plot. You can add GHB to your “screw-up” view.

The second part on Russia-China, of course we don’t know in this alternative reality scenario, but I certainly don’t think we would be looking inward with American-hatred producing leaders like Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump. We would have been a very different nation with an economic and social rival.

 

I blame Bush, Sr. for Afghanistan. It would have taken a fairly small amount of money and materials to help the Afghans to recover from the destruction wrought by the Russians, but Bush was too cheap to spend it. The lack of financial aid led to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and 9-11.

I don't think there was much that Bush, Sr. could have done about Russia, since it was too much of an unstable situation to put large numbers of Americans into the country to advise them, since they didn't really want us there initially (especially after we helped Afghanistan defeat them).

 

Valid point about Afghans, but “nation building” has no become a dirty idea in America. It is sad. The “woke” Evil Empire bs has rotted the mind of Americans. If we built more schools and an economy, much of our need for defense budget could go down. Oh well.

 

The Soviet’s didn’t curtail rogue nations, they creating them and fostered them. Anything to destabilize.

 

I remember as a kid doing nuclear bomb drills. I’d be hard-pressed to agree that the world feels more dangerous that when I was a kid.

 

Hiding under a desk to protect from a nuclear blast is like wearing a mask

 

The thing is that a dangerous country can still have capitalism. We really didn't need to open up the Russian markets to U.S. businesses. There was no harm in allowing McDonalds and Subway and KFC into the country, but not that much benefit either. Clinton had a lot of foolish hopes that capitalism was the way to fast-track Russia to western-style democracy, but he was too ignorant to understand that a weak democracy could be undone by a ruthless autocratic ruler (especially one from the intelligence services), who could bully his opponents to the point that he got to select his opponents in every election (and imprison and murder the ones who might be electable).

The goal and top priority should have been long-term safety and global peace. We rushed Russia too quickly back into a functional status without any action taken to disable their military manufacturing. In addition to active military interventions, Russia also sold weapons to third world countries that helped destabilize entire regions. We had the ability (assuming they really needed our help to recover) to disable Russia's military manufacturing in the 1990's, but not the wisdom to do so.

 

How exactly would building "more schools and an economy" have made it less necessary to spend on national defense? Are we building more schools and an economy in the U.S. or in other countries? We built an economy in China, from almost nothing to the #2 economy in the world. Our cash financed it, and our technology super-charged the Chinese economy. Is the world safer because of that? No, because China spent a huge amount of money from that economy building a modern military. We did not put any limits on what kind of technology could be transferred to China until it was too late.