The US has always taken pride in its Cold War victory over the Soviet Union. The decades-long battle between the liberal, individualistic, free market ideology faced off against the centrally driven, communalist and workers ideology. In 1991 after decades of stagnation and malaise the Soviet Union collapsed with a whimper with no global revolution, but with the Soviets abandoning the ideology. Three decades on the US has faced no peer competitor, but now the US is characterised with malaise, decline and stagnation. It’s the US that now seems to be facing the same problems the Soviet Union faced not so long ago, and we all know how that ended.
A City Upon a Hill
It is no secret that the US is looking for reform. Both Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) campaign slogans are a yearning to go back to an undefined, idyllic period in US history before people can move forward. They want American society to be “A City Upon A Hill” the way John Winthrop famously described in a sermon, “for all to observe.”
The rise of populism and the adversarial attitudes towards the political class demonstrates that people have resorted less to trusting political institutions to resolve their issues — and more towards demagogue-type characters to grab the bull by the horns and steer the people towards better days, even if the bull destroys China along the way (no pun intended). For the time being, Trump has done well to craft his image as an almost messianic figure among Republicans, with the recent assassination attempt on his life only adding to this perception.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was the man. “He may smile, but he has iron teeth,” is one of the best remembered descriptions of the late Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The line belonged to long-time Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, a grim-faced Stalinist who offered it upon Gorbachev’s elevation to general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. [1]
Gorbachev embodied the hopes of a reformist faction within the Soviet Union that realised the USSR could not survive without major renovation. As the West and much of the rest of the world raced past the Soviet Union in every measurable category of success and prosperity, Gorbachev came to the forefront as a divided leadership eventually settled on him as the new leader.
Contrary to popular beliefs, Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) weren’t made to turn Soviets into Jeffersonian democrats but to remove or neutralise counterproductive features of the Soviet regime so that the USSR could remain a viable world power governed by Leninist party-state apparatus that was answerable to no one other than itself. His job: make the Soviets great again.
This proved to be his undoing as his reforms did not address the fundamental problems laced into Communism. Charisma, reforms and tackling institutions wasn’t enough as the Communist ideology crumbled under its own weight with its top-down economic and political controls.
Gorbachev was seen by Communist party as a solution, a young reformer, but he simply accelerated the demise of the USSR. For the US, both Biden and Trump face similar challenges as their respective fans pin their hopes on personality politics to overcome deep-rooted, systemic rot.
Soviet Succession Was Bad. America’s Is Worse
Hindsight is 20-20. In the mid-1980s, although its dissolution was nearly at hand, few were predicting the complete demise of the Soviet Union. But when it came to the politics of leadership succession, a country that had been widely feared or respected for decades had already begun making a mockery of itself. Gerontocratic leadership was one of the hallmarks of late Soviet leadership, personified by the senility of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.
But by American standards, the Soviet leaders were not old. Brezhnev was 75 when he died in 1982, Andropov was 68 when he succeeded Brezhnev and Chernenko was 72 when he came to power. All were afflicted with a variety of health issues from strokes and kidney failure to heart failure and pneumonia. [2]
While Biden and Trump’s good health is a testament to American healthcare compared to the Soviet regime of old, Biden is 81 and Trump is 78 — hardly a flush of vitality. Biden’s incoherent waffling during his presidential debate and repeated gaffes during a summit in which he referred to Ukrainian President Zelenskky as “President Putin” and a conference where he referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” is just the tip of the iceberg. This ultimately led to the end of his presidential campaign. Trump is a convicted felon and unrelenting in his claim that the 2020 elections were rigged. His running mate for Vice President is JD Vance, a “Never Trumper” who only a few years earlier had compared Trump to Hitler. With Biden remarking “time to put Trump in the bullseye” just days before the assassination attempt on the Apprentice-host, it is fair to say the pair are a damning indictment on the leadership choices the US has to offer.
The new Sick Man
There’s a perception that the resilience of the free market cannot be compared to a dysfunctional planned economy that Stalin built and bequeathed to his heirs.
The Soviet system squandered resources and shortages of consumer goods were all but guaranteed. The Soviet healthcare system was crippled by dilapidated hospitals and chronic shortages of equipment. There was grinding poverty, hunger, and child labour.
In the US, these conditions may only exist in the bottom 20% of economic distribution but the extent to which they do exist is appalling. Infant mortality in the late Soviet Union was around 25 per 1,000. The figure for the U.S. in 2021 was 5.4, but for single mothers in the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia it is 13 per 1,000. Life expectancy in general has also declined in a way that we do not find across other developing countries; 1.3 million deaths due to drugs and alcohol between 1990 and 2017 among the working population. Add to this a mental health epidemic which Anne Case and Angus Deaton famously dubbed, “deaths of despair”. [3] In 2022 alone, more Americans died of fentanyl overdoses than were killed in three major wars: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s little wonder why American Starbucks culture and drugs go hand-in-hand: one to keep citizens functioning during work and the other to numb their pain.
The US economy might be the envy of the rest of the world today, but recall how American experts overrated the Soviet economy in the 1970s and 1980s.
Meanwhile, the anticipated AI and Fourth Industrial Revolution to transform the US economy hasn’t announced itself as expected — many businesses are looking at conventional solutions and “on-shoring” after the logistical nightmare during and after Covid disruptions and shutdowns. Productivity in the US business sector outside of agriculture has declined for 20 years, interrupted only last year with an uptick that has slowed since then.
Yes, the Soviet system promised a micromanaged economy that was bound to fail but capitalism demands overproduction and perpetual debt. The federal debt is reaching unsustainable levels as interest payments on debt will not be serviced unless the US makes changes to its budget that can directly affect defence spending.
While some economists remain positive and think in terms of slowing down inflation and stocks that remain in the bull market, average people think in terms of pricing and whether they’re better off financially than a year ago; today, the consumer sentiment remains below pre-pandemic levels.
The US economy might be the envy of the rest of the world today, but recall how American experts overrated the Soviet economy in the 1970s and 1980s.
A Bloated Military
The US certainly has the largest and most expensive military ever assembled. However, the American military today is simultaneously expensive and unequal to the challenges it faces as it struggles to quickly adapt to modern challenges and methods of war.
Nowhere is this being exemplified more than the battles the Pentagon is facing in the Red Sea where Yemen continues to hold its blockade in response to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Effectively, the US is using munitions worth millions of dollars to blow up unmanned aerial systems that can be made with off-the-shelf parts for thousands of dollars. This trade is already proving to be unsustainable.
“If we’re shooting down a $50,000 one-way drone with a $3 million missile, that’s not a good cost equation,” Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, told a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday. [4]
US spending will also face changes. The federal government will almost certainly spend more on debt service than on defence; the share of gross domestic product going on interest payments towards the federal debt will be double what is spent on national security by 2041. [5]
Even during times of economic chaos, the Soviet leaders were adamant that the Red Army was the biggest and therefore the most lethal military in the world till the bitter end. Like the US today, this was true on paper. But this didn’t help the Soviets win their war in Afghanistan after ten years of death and destruction. The US spent twice the time fighting the Taliban only to leave them back in power. America may still have more military resources than all other members of NATO put together — but to contend with a coalition of China, Russia, Iran and other emerging regional actors in the near future will be too much. The US military is overstretched and is already taxing the public beyond what they are willing to accept.
The USA and NATO
The USSR had its own NATO-style military alliance and formed the Warsaw Pact. It ended in 1991 when Gorbachev’s policy of openness (Glasnost) and restructuring (Perestroika), together with other initiatives inadvertently opened the way for popular uprisings. Among the newly-formed independent countries was Ukraine. The USSR reminded the republics of its global standing and global struggle but to no avail — Warsaw pact nations had lost faith and pushed for independence, which they eventually got.
NATO nations were left reeling when Trump threatened to leave the alliance during his first term. Trump’s view was controversial — during a campaign rally he said he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who don’t spend enough defence funds. [6]
Many are questioning whether the alliance can survive another Trump term. It is highly unlikely that any measures will be taken to end NATO but instead, what one defence expert familiar with the thinking inside Trump’s national-security advisory circle, Dan Caldwell, describes as a “radical reorientation” of NATO. With this approach, other NATO states will be expected to contribute much more towards the organisation both financially and in terms of troops, armour and equipment while the US provides the nuclear security umbrella. It would also see a foreclosure of NATO expansion.
Gorbachev’s reforms only hastened the disintegration of the Warsaw alliance and the rhetoric on NATO has spooked European leaders into thinking about more independent policies. French President Macron has warned that Europe must become more independent for its own defence and to ensure energy supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In an address on prime-television he stated, “We can no longer depend on others to feed us, care for us, inform us, finance us,”. In a clear message of growing disillusionment from the US he went on to say, “We cannot depend on others to defend us, whether on land, at sea, under the sea, in the air, in space or in cyberspace. In this respect, our European defence must take a new step forward.” [7]
For the last five years, Macron has repeatedly proposed a new non-NATO, Europe-only security architecture: a “strategic autonomy” intended to be more flexible and responsive to continental Europe’s needs, and independent of America’s isolationist whims. In other words, something made for exactly this kind of moment.
The spectre of a break-up doesn’t just haunt Europe but looms within the United States too. Trump and his army of Groypers repeat their mantra to Make America Great Again (MAGA) but calls for secession are growing across US States. As of 2024, over six states are said to have growing secessionist movements, those being Alaska, California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and New Hampshire.
Admittedly, these grievances emerged before Trump as America’s secular, liberal ideology divides the country on everything from abortion issues to gender and from the US’s global role to its election results. Without a philosophy or belief system anchored in fundamental truths and clear moral guidelines, US society is lost at sea and can’t seem to come together. Movies in 2024 such as Civil War and Leave the World Behind (produced by Barack Obama) are already being labelled as “predictive programming” for what’s to come by suspicious segments of the public. [8]
These elements hold that “…the modern Western liberal state is so corrupt and inept that it is beyond redemption and must be destroyed in order to create a new society and way of governance.” It’s easy to draw parallels with the apocalyptic visions that are prevalent among Christian extremists. [9]
While it is easy to look at the cracks in the Soviet system and understand how it led to its rapid demise, perhaps the alliances inside and outside the US are becoming just as untenable.
Implosion
The “decline of the US Empire” has often been a lazy cliche; overused, with many antagonists hoping it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than describing reality as it is. However, the direct parallels with the end of the USSR provide a modern example of how one of the largest and most powerful empires in history quickly fell apart.
It provides a backdrop of a revolutionary empire that was facing crises across multiple institutions and facets of its ideology, with a divided public placing their hopes in reformers with questionable credentials. The reformers, establishment figures, weren’t interested in understanding the fundamental problems with their belief systems and ideology but intent on reviving their state through policy changes. In the end, it only accelerated the collapse of the state instead of reviving it or even slowing it. The US could be sharing this prospect.
It is interesting to note that in the 1980’s the world saw a global struggle between two ideological powers — sides had to be picked, someone had to win. In the case of the US however, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has had a clear run. As Fukuyama put it, it was meant to be “the end of history”. Instead of asserting its global dominance in a way that builds confidence in liberalism and capitalism, the American Eagle flapped its wings of neoconservatism and neoliberalism and has put itself in a very difficult position. The unique, unipolar position they found themselves has bred arrogance and with the “War on Terror’” onwards, trampled over all the values they advocated.
Now the US faces multiple challenges that could lead to its end as the preeminent power. This can come externally from rising regional powers such as China or a completely new emerging power from a very unstable and fluid Middle East as the US pivots to the Pacific. Or it comes from complete disintegration internally as people lose confidence in the economy, in liberalism and in its leaders. For now this looks remote, but ask those in 1985 USSR if they envisaged what would happen in 1989.
[1] Mikhail Gorbachev Was Not the Savior of the World | Opinion – Newsweek
[2] Soviet Succession Was Bad. Trump 2.0 Would Be Worse. (foreignpolicy.com)
[3] Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now | The Free Press (thefp.com)
[4] U.S. military’s missile cost curve vs drones on the battlefield (axios.com)
[5] Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now | The Free Press (thefp.com)
[6] Trump’s Plan for NATO Is Emerging – POLITICO
[7] Europe must be more independent and shore up its defence, says Macron | France | The Guardian