I was reviewing some theories behind the fall of the Soviet Union and came across something interesting. A theory I subscribe to supposes that the reason the Soviet Union crumbled was because of a strategy Reagan employed during the Cold War.
Reagan stretched the Soviets by using American influence in regions that bordered the Soviet Union. This kept opening up new "fronts" that the Soviets had to respond to, and forced them to spend great amounts of money to expand and maintain their military. The final nail in the coffin was when the Soviets went into Afghanistan and the US managed to train the mujahideen in very effective guerllia war tactics that continued to chip away at the invading army. This spread the military too thin, and forced the country to spend so much money, that their economy began to fail. This brought on the fall of the Iron Curtain as the Soviets could no longer afford to look after the masses. It was either let the people go, or have another bloody civil war. Cooler heads prevailed.
So using this as a template, could al Qeada, the old mujahideen, have learned their lessons well and have taken advantage of an administration with delusions of grandeur and an imperialistic dream? Would the PNAC's plan, published is 1997, have given bin Laden the basis for his plan to bring down America? Could these guerllia tactics be employed on a global level and work in such a way that America will spend billions of dollars chasing the terrorist threat around the globe until the United States is left with no allies, has taxed the economy to the point of failure, and is spread so thin that they are subject to a crippling blow that brings the whole "empire" down on itself leading to potential civil war or dramatic ideological change?
The irony of this possibility is the fact that America gave this strategy to the mujahideen and trained them. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a plan devised to defeat America's greatest enemy used to defeat America itself? Just a thought. Comments?
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