The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Stratfor:

Your perspectives on history (Twenty Years After the Fall, Nov. 9) are brilliant! This piece is a great read for anyone interested in what makes the Russian society tick.

-Matthew Ward
Redford, Michigan
United States



Stratfor:

I think you are off the mark regarding Russia and the bit about economic backwardness. Stalin inherited a largely agriculturally based economy and through brute force pushed the Soviet Union through an industrial development phase as few men have ever accomplished. He interwove the economies of Russia and its satellite states such that every state was forced into dependency upon another — each had goods that were needed by each other, but no state could stand alone economically and obtain all it needed (except Russia, the center of power). Entire cities were built to provide even one good or service, such as Chernobyl and its nuclear power plants.

This interdependency could not absorb the high rate of military spending. The USSR went broke before the U.S. did. We, too, were on the verge of economic collapse by perhaps only a few years.

The big mistake the U.S. made was when Mikhail Gorbachev came to President George H.W. Bush with hat in hand. It was then we could have struck a pact with Russia. We could have taught them to be more like us. They were a noble enemy; their military was well respected by us. They certainly would have made a good ally in the budding war against radical Islam. I’d rather have Russia on our side in a fight, rather than the constant state of proxy wars and client states that continue today.

-Daniel Clamage
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
United States



Stratfor:

This was a very interesting expose. I wonder how you view the short- and midterm power struggle between Vladimir Putin’s influences today and U.S. interests such as concerns with Venezuela?

-James K. Hobson
Jackson, Wyoming
United States