The USSR even had a higher economic growth than the USA in the 80s (the Soviets had aroumd 5% GNP growth, while the US had 3% to 4%). Yes, its true that there was some Stagnation in the Soviet economy (8% GNP growth in the 60s ; 5% in the 80s), but that was due to a higher focus on extensive economic growth than intensive ones. The Soviets just believed after the 60s, it was not worth it to invest too heavily in new technologies (not that they didn't have them, though), but that more extensive growth would pay off in the long run. So this was a rational decision, and nothing that couldn't be changed.
5%?! Even the official Soviet statistics only clocked growth at 4%.
The real growth was somewhere between 1% and 2.5%.
While Khanin's statistics for Soviet growth rates have mostly been debunked, and generally the CIA numbers have been vindicated as the best "like for like" comparison of the Soviet to the US economy I seem to remember that even the CIA were overestimating Soviet growth rates in the 80s (
so look at the red bar in this graph).
The Soviets just believed after the 60s, it was not worth it to invest too heavily in new technologies (not that they didn't have them, though), but that more extensive growth would pay off in the long run.
That's not at all what the Soviets believed. They invested heavily in new technologies. Mostly, focusing on acquiring it from the West, which was largely a mistake IMO - stolen Western technology took about as much R&D to deploy as it would take to develop themselves something they knew could be done and also could be sabotaged.
But Soviet railroads, shipbuilding, civilian cars, electronics and chemical industries (just to mention a few) advanced significantly between 1969 and 1989.
Where the Soviets failed to invest was in new
buildings which made deploying new technologies in factories a fools errand. At the fall of the Soviet Union, there were enterprises with fairly modern machines sitting in warehouses, still using Stalinist or Tsarist era equipment because the new stuff didn't fit in their production halls.
And, as I say, if the Soviets had invested more in their own R&D rather than KGB industrial espionage, they would have done better also.
But the overall point you make, that the Soviets were suffering from bad investment choices they'd made earlier, is correct. With better investment decisions (and ones that still fit within the paradigm of Stalinist socialism) you could get another 20 years of growth out of the Soviet system - and it's not unreasonable to think that in those 20 years, they'd be able to figure out a new paradigm as the population recovered from the death-toll of WW2 and Stalin's atrocities.
In fact, the communist government had the highest approvement rate of all time in 1984 (despite pollitical conflict inside of the CPSU). So it was really Gorbatchevs rise to power and the systematic destruction of socialism and the economy, through so called 'Perestroika' and 'Glasnost', that destroyed the USSR and the eastern bloc.
And the collapse of the USSR was so incredibly unlikely. Think about it: In 1984, the communist party has the highest support rate of all time. In 1985, Gorbatchev is elected under a liberal-communist agenda. Then he forms a clique of opportunists (which later stabbed him in the back alá Yeltsin) and systematicly destroys the country and the ideology, and it takes untill 1991, 6 years later, untill someone actively does something against this (with the August Coup). And even after socialism fell, 75% of the Soviet (not only russian) people voted to preserve the Union in March of 1991. And then it was dissolved a few months later, the same year by exactly the opportunists who once backed Gorbatchev.
This was incredibly unlikely, so a continued Cold War is a very easy thing.
And here, I'd say your overall point is spot on. Though I think the clique that formed around Gorbachev was mostly made up of genuine people like Gorbachev. Though as Gorbachev became more radical, he alienated more and more of the genuine reformers and was left with more and more Yeltsins.
Actually had things remain the same but the Warsaw Pact versus Nato I think you would have seemed less terrorist attacks in the western world. For the main reason the Soviets would be using their network of agents to help track down terrorists. Because if something happens like 911 they want to make sure that they are not blamed. One thing to be said about the Cold War it was relatively safer than the world today because you don't have all these different actions and terrorism excetera. Also the Soviets have been having terrorist attacks on there soil mostly to the best of my memory since the breakup of the Soviet Union but some were before.
I'm not so sure.
For one thing, it's a mistake to believe that either the USA or the USSR were in control of the Cold War.
Cuba used the Soviets more than the Soviets used Cuba. Syria, Israel and Egypt used the USSR and the USA more than the superpowers used them. Iraq and Somalia similarly were very successful in wagging the dog (indeed, they managed to be clients of all of the players, though Somalia had to "switch sides" to do it - of course, the reality is that Somalia was always on
Somalia's side). Even in the Eastern Block, right under the guns of the Red Army, the satellites had a surprisingly broad latitude so long as they didn't try to be neutral (Hungary's crime) or try to roll back Communism (the fear in Czechoslovakia). The small players were consistently successful in manipulating both superpowers and more often than not, what happened in a region in the world had to do with what the local powers wanted and the superpowers were dragged along like alarmed puppies hitched to run-away buses.
And the real roots of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism have to do with local injustices (like the way Nigeria turned a flat Earther society into one of the most vicious terrorist groups today), the failure of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism (OK, the USSR surviving can help with that) and anger at growing US influence in the middle east (after the Iran-Iraq war the US had pretty much "won" in most of the middle east, and after the Gulf War, the US had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia itself). I don't see how the USSR surviving can change most of that. What a surviving USSR does mean is continued
Communist terrorism. Which, you must remember, was a big problem before the Soviet Union fell. And the Soviets either directly or indirectly supported many nationalist terrorist organizations as well. Overall, a continuing Cold War
definitely means a more violent and volitile world.
Also, there's a very real danger that South Africa falls to civil war if the Cold War continues and trust me, that would be
ugly.
Of course, violence could still go down overall in the 1990s. Mostly because the last convulsions of decolonization would be ending.
I'm on my phone so I can't look this up but during the 80s when they had the boom-time so-to-speak were they still buying wheat from the US and other countries to feed their people.
Well, mostly that was because they were trying to feed the Soviet people like they were citizens of a rich country when actually they were citizens of a middle-income country.
A more developed food sector (especially the packaging industry) or eating less meat and wheat and they'd have been able to feed their population just fine.
Or invest in their 3rd world allies and import food from them in exchange for exporting machinery.
no American victory in the Cold War makes most of the "globalization" program impossible, particularly if China is not opened, and makes American sponsored "regime change" impossible as well. No globalization and the environmental situation starts to look very different.
Not necessarily. One could have "globalization" in the "free world"+China, or even globalization that
includes the Soviet block - Gorbachev in OTL was playing with similar policies to those China deployed to basically firewall most of the economy while also creating portions of it to key into the "global" world. So the Soviets could have free enterprize zones in Leningrad and Talinin that participate in the global capitalist economy while most of their economy sits back, reforming along more "socialist" lines. All this requires to work is for the US to want it. If the US decides to trade with the Soviet free enterprize zones in the same way they traded with the Chinese free enterprize zones (say fear of being cheated by the Soviets, which was very strong in the 80s and 90s in OTL) is outweighed by a belief that fostering these free enterprize zones is a good way to hollow out Communism from within) then the USSR could totally get pulled into the global economy. In OTL, the USSR was gradually "normalizing" already, accepting capitalist ideas like copyright and trade marks under Brezhnev, for example.
As for American sponsored "regime change", keep in mind that the US energetically sponsored regime change throughout the cold war. The modern ideology of "liberal interventionism" might also emerge in a continuing cold war scenario - perhaps as a way to legitimize US-USSR cooperation in regime changes. Or, at least cooperation on the diplomatic level. Under all the sweet words I expect it would boil down to a "we accept you have the right to invade people in your sphere of influence". But of course, all the diplomats would agree that the real reasons were "championing justice and the freedom of oppressed peoples".
Even if the US and USSR continue to bad-mouth each-others' invasions, liberal interventionism can still emerge in the US as a post-Vietnam ideology to make invading small countries palatable to the centre-left in the US.
Then when 9/11 happens the US if forced to stop suppling the Taliban, in Afghanistan, and instead aid the Soviet backed government, allowing the USSR to finally win the Afghan War. Than the USSR would convince the US to invade Iran. Invading Iran IOTL would be very hard for the US, because of Iran’s Naval and Air Dominance over the Persian Gulf, but the US could it with the help of the USSR, and invade directly from the USSR’s boarder with Iran, American interventions alwayse dream of invading Iran, but are militarily unable to do it, now that they can do it they will.
Yeah, the Soviets would
never help the US invade Iran. The Soviets were already scared enough at the level of US power butting right up against their borders. Also, the Soviets, as much as they thought the Iranian Ayatollahs were fanatical silly people, also felt a certain kinship, because Iran, like the USSR, had overthrown an oppressive monarch and become a revolutionary republic and the Iranians shared an enemy in the US to boot.
Also, if the USSR survives, they'll have won the Afghan war long before 9/11. The USSR didn't lose the Afghan war in Afghanistan - they lost the Afghan war at home, because they collapsed.
I don't see why this would happen, specially with the USSR still existing and thus providing an alternative target. Moreso, Islamic terrorism agains the US only began after the US deployed troops in Saudi Arabia to launch Operation Desert Storm, which probably would never happen due to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait being butterflied away.
...
Also this. Why would that happen? A bipolar system is the most efficient and balanced way to distribute power. And woth the USSR still existing, while there could be a Detente, the Cold War would still go on, mainly because inevitably one superpower will try to overcome the other.
I agree that so long as the USSR and the USA exist, there's going to be a cold war.
I don't agree that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait would be butterflied away necessarily. Yes, it can be. But more likely it plays out much like OTL without a PoD in the middle east.
Even if the islamists, that are still fighting the USSR, decide to bite the hand that gives them weapons to resist the Soviets, it certaintly wouldn't be a 9/11 like OTL.
Let's remember that Al Qaeda was a fringe group in OTL.
I can easily see them arising in a TL where the Soviets win in Afghanistan, the Osama Bin Laden decides that the reason for this is because the treacherous Americans are to blame because they gave the Afghans just enough support to bleed the enemy, but not enough support to win. And if the US still is supporting the Gulf monarchies and has troops inside Saudi Arabia, there'd still be all the OTL reasons to hate the US.
Ergo, he can make the case that the middle east won't be able to win its battles against the Soviet atheists until they also rise up against the decadent Christians using them as tools.
Could China end up having a reapproach with the Soviet Union and adopting a more neutral position or pro-soviet one in continuing cold war ?
If some Soviet leader follows Gorbachev's approach with China (which I think is very likely), then yes, China can be removed as a de-facto US ally. There'd still be competition between the two for who was the "best Communists", and possibly by the modern era China will be flipping some Soviet satellites to be Chinese satellites, but that doesn't need to be a rivalry that threatens full blown war as it did in the 60s and 70s.
Would some kind of large scale uprising against Soviet domination be likely in the Warsaw pact ?
I reckon there was trouble brewing in Romania and Yugoslavia that would suck the Soviets in. But I don't see those as being any worse than Hungary or Czechoslovakia were.
fasquardon