WI: The Soviets ended the Cold War arms race during the 1970s Oil Crisis

[chankljp]

The following is an argument that I saw proposed by a history YouTuber from Mainland China:

In this video, he recognised that while the Soviet Union was unlikely to have been able to outright win the Cold War against the Western world after taking into consideration the sheer economic disparity between the two sides, he proposed that the USSR's best window of opportunity would have been during the 1970s during the Oil Crisis.

With the entire Western world's economy suffering from the 1970s recession, combined with the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, and the Fall of Saigon, the United States was in a state of serious internal division and national self-doubt. While elsewhere, far-left terrorist groups such as West Germany's Revolutionäre Zellen, Japan's Japanese Red Army, and Italy's Red Brigades have escalated to the point of engaging in the extensive use violence against civilians, causing damage to both the economy and affecting the morale of the civilian population of those countries. With Jimmy Carter having even considered the idea of fully withdrawing US troops from South Korea.

On the other hand, the drastic rise in oil prices had greatly benefited the USSR, an oil exporter, with the world market now putting a premium on Soviet energy exports, allowing them to earn a great deal of much needed hard currency. Not to mention the country having recovered from the shadows of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union was arguably at the height of its power.

Hence, the argument made in the video was that if the Soivets had pushed détente and disarmament harder during the Carter presidency to the point of ending the Cold War, they could have avoid wasteful military adventures that ultimately doesn't bring any tangible benefits to the Soviet economy such as getting involved in the Ethio-Somali War and the Afghan invasion, or to keep spending up to 80% of its R&D budget during peacetime towards military projects. Instead, all that extra oil income could have been invested towards domestic civilian development, improving their industrial production efficiency, and of course, increasing consumer goods availability. With the improvement in the domestic sphere during that window of opportunity, the USSR could have handed the coming of the post-industrial economy and the digital revolution in a much better fashion, perhaps even ideologically and culturally undermining the Western world by presenting itself as a viable alternative to capitalism the time time a crisis such as the 1990s Asian financial crisis or the dot-com bubble hits, even if it still lags behind the West in reality.

So, my question is.... Could a USSR that stopped trying to keep up with the US militarily have been able to handle the 1990s and beyond without significant political and economic reforms? Or would it have simply delayed the inevitable even with the increased investments towards its domestic sphere?

 

[bo123]

The USSR created high-tech armies and large nuclear forces and achieved nuclear equality with NATO.
Then massive people's armies were not needed, and it was possible to plunder state property and switch to capitalism.
This destroyed the USSR. That is, the USSR killed his success

 

[Monk78]

Is it possible that these leftist militant groups in Germany Italy and Japan form a new kind of nexus? Coordinate their activities and funding

 

[Nebogipfel]

While elsewhere, far-left terrorist groups such as West Germany's Revolutionäre Zellen, Japan's Japanese Red Army, and Italy's Red Brigades have escalated to the point of engaging in the extensive use violence against civilians, causing damage to both the economy and affecting the morale of the civilian population of those countries.

(Laughs) Eh, no. While 70s terrorism was bad enough as it was, it came nowhere near what these YouTubers claim. There was vastly increased security (I remember armed police even in my small hometown), but if it affected the morale of the population, it increased determination to fight terrorism. But at no point they came even close to threaten the integrity of the nations mentioned, and the economy was threatened by oil crisis or structural problems, but not terrorism. We talk about small groups of fanatics, a core of <<100 people, with some support in student circles (which waned very, very fast once they started killing people).

 

[marathag]

(Laughs) Eh, no. While 70s terrorism was bad enough as it was, it came nowhere near what these YouTubers claim. There was vastly increased security (I remember armed police even in my small hometown), but if it affected the morale of the population, it increased determination to fight terrorism. But at no point they came even close to threaten the integrity of the nations mentioned, and the economy was threatened by oil crisis or structural problems, but not terrorism. We talk about small groups of fanatics, a core of <<100 people, with some support in student circles (which waned very, very fast once they started killing people).

Italy was a mess, though.
'Years of Lead' was real.

 

[Captain Homicide]

We talk about small groups of fanatics, a core of <<100 people, with some support in student circles (which waned very, very fast once they started killing people).

Not to mention the vast majority of terrorist groups fail to achieve their goals.

 

[chankljp]

(Laughs) Eh, no. While 70s terrorism was bad enough as it was, it came nowhere near what these YouTubers claim. There was vastly increased security (I remember armed police even in my small hometown), but if it affected the morale of the population, it increased determination to fight terrorism. But at no point they came even close to threaten the integrity of the nations mentioned, and the economy was threatened by oil crisis or structural problems, but not terrorism. We talk about small groups of fanatics, a core of <<100 people, with some support in student circles (which waned very, very fast once they started killing people).

Not to mention the vast majority of terrorist groups fail to achieve their goals.

The point being made here was not that the likes of the Red Army Faction could have realistically affected the stability of the West or even meaningfully damaged its economy, but instead, their existence being a symptom of the Western world's ideological weakness, national uncertainty, and deep social divides during the 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Oil Crisis.

Coupled with the USSR enjoying a massive windfall in their energy exports as a result of the high oil prices during that decade, the idea was that if the USSR had pushed harder for détente and disarmament, while avoiding foreign military adventures such as Afghanistan and the sending of weapons all across the world, the 1970s could have been a chance for the USSR to focus on solving their domestic issues and strength their civilian/technological base for the long-haul.

Hence, my question for this thread were:

(1) Would the US and the West in general be receptive towards the Soviets de-escalating the arms race?
(2) Would such a de-escalation be politically viable within the USSR and the Eastern Bloc if a leader tried pushing for it?
(3) If the USSR did managed to de-escalate/end the Cold War, and focus their oil profits during the 1970s on the civilian and domestic economy instead, would it have been enough to have them?

 

[pattersonautobody]

The problem is that the Soviet military industrial complex could not easily be revamped or changed towards civilian purposes. But, let's presume instead of creating tanks they create tractors, instead of making space shuttles and aircraft carriers they produce televisions. It won't save the USSR because it was a social collapse. Simply giving people more crap does not make them happy necessarily.

In the 1970s if a new NEP was made, military expenditures decreased, political repression is renewed (if not hardened), and stupid programs like anti-alcohol programs are never pursued, maybe the USSR can avoid a crash landing and even maintain its borders. The Warsaw Pact would likely fall apart by the early 1990s in any event with maybe the exception of Romania. Potential butterflies are that the Russian economy today is approximately 25 years more advanced, which means maybe Russia could have started doing some cheap manufacturing for western countries if they got their crap in gear by 2001.

But even this needs butterflies. It needs manufacturers willing to take a chance on Russia, maybe an Asian screw (currency crisis deepens and no bailout from West), and the NEP to be successful, and a bump for the Russians due to no OTL 1990s. Maybe USA does something stupid and occupies Iraq in 1991, something bad happens in Iran, and maybe we can bump up oil prices in the 1990s. A POD which gives Democrats more electability in USA may decrease domestic US production. This all slightly props up USSR oil industry, which only helps.

What no one talks about is that Russian manufacturing sucks. This would have to change. A friend of mine is an Orthodox monk and the monastery bough candle making equipment from Russia. It's absolutely terrible. The manufacturer stands by none of its products. He has inferred that in "the old country" no one stands by their work and its expected that people will fix whatever has been manufactured wrong--in other words, "re-manufacturing" is not done by experts but the end user. I'm sure this is an inefficiency stemming from the Soviet era where the bean counters were only looking for increasing numbers, not quality.

Ultimately, any POD after the 1920s may be putting lip stick on a pig. The culture surrounding Russian manufacturing and their economy in general is just too screwed up. Korea, Japan, and China started from sractch. Sometimes, this is better than building on a rotten edifice.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

The following is an argument that I saw proposed by a history YouTuber from Mainland China:

In this video, he recognised that while the Soviet Union was unlikely to have been able to outright win the Cold War against the Western world after taking into consideration the sheer economic disparity between the two sides, he proposed that the USSR's best window of opportunity would have been during the 1970s during the Oil Crisis.

With the entire Western world's economy suffering from the 1970s recession, combined with the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, and the Fall of Saigon, the United States was in a state of serious internal division and national self-doubt. While elsewhere, far-left terrorist groups such as West Germany's Revolutionäre Zellen, Japan's Japanese Red Army, and Italy's Red Brigades have escalated to the point of engaging in the extensive use violence against civilians, causing damage to both the economy and affecting the morale of the civilian population of those countries. With Jimmy Carter having even considered the idea of fully withdrawing US troops from South Korea.

On the other hand, the drastic rise in oil prices had greatly benefited the USSR, an oil exporter, with the world market now putting a premium on Soviet energy exports, allowing them to earn a great deal of much needed hard currency. Not to mention the country having recovered from the shadows of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union was arguably at the height of its power.

Hence, the argument made in the video was that if the Soivets had pushed détente and disarmament harder during the Carter presidency to the point of ending the Cold War, they could have avoid wasteful military adventures that ultimately doesn't bring any tangible benefits to the Soviet economy such as getting involved in the Ethio-Somali War and the Afghan invasion, or to keep spending up to 80% of its R&D budget during peacetime towards military projects. Instead, all that extra oil income could have been invested towards domestic civilian development, improving their industrial production efficiency, and of course, increasing consumer goods availability. With the improvement in the domestic sphere during that window of opportunity, the USSR could have handed the coming of the post-industrial economy and the digital revolution in a much better fashion, perhaps even ideologically and culturally undermining the Western world by presenting itself as a viable alternative to capitalism the time time a crisis such as the 1990s Asian financial crisis or the dot-com bubble hits, even if it still lags behind the West in reality.

So, my question is.... Could a USSR that stopped trying to keep up with the US militarily have been able to handle the 1990s and beyond without significant political and economic reforms? Or would it have simply delayed the inevitable even with the increased investments towards its domestic sphere?

Whilst I don't think that such a scenario is entirely out of the question, I do fundamentally disagree with an assumption inherent in the idea that if the USSR continues to pursue detente that the Cold War will end; it implies that the USSR caused the Cold War through attempts at aggressive revision of the world order. Sure, they sought to improve their power, but the fact of the matter is that there were plenty of forces in the capitalist West that were aggressively anti-Communist. Detente wasn't the standard position of the US government. It was an aberration in foreign policy caused by the Nixon Administration's desire to withdraw from Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger were as strident Cold Warriors as anyone else; it was merely intended to try and convince the Soviets not to "push their advantage" with the US withdrawal. Nixon and Kissinger were also the same ones that were architects of a US-Chinese alliance against the Soviets. Mao's regime were even more radical than the Soviets, but the different was that the lack of development in China at the time meant that the Americans couldnt envison China as a serious global threat. By contrast, the USSR was.

Fundamentally, for the Soviet Union to become acceptable to the USA there either has to be a major shift in the political situation in the US, OR the Soviet Union has to become so open to international finance and capital to make the concept of Communism in that country meaningless. Which, given the situation that occurred OTL with the rapid privatisation of the state-run economy, would be an absolute disaster, and likely embolden ultranationalist forces. The country may have been sold out to oligarchs OTL, but at least they were Russians. If Soviet leaders sold out their economy like that to the Americans, don't be surprised if they're lynched publicly by the army.

 

[Bougnas]

Whilst I don't think that such a scenario is entirely out of the question, I do fundamentally disagree with an assumption inherent in the idea that if the USSR continues to pursue detente that the Cold War will end; it implies that the USSR caused the Cold War through attempts at aggressive revision of the world order. Sure, they sought to improve their power, but the fact of the matter is that there were plenty of forces in the capitalist West that were aggressively anti-Communist. Detente wasn't the standard position of the US government. It was an aberration in foreign policy caused by the Nixon Administration's desire to withdraw from Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger were as strident Cold Warriors as anyone else; it was merely intended to try and convince the Soviets not to "push their advantage" with the US withdrawal. Nixon and Kissinger were also the same ones that were architects of a US-Chinese alliance against the Soviets. Mao's regime were even more radical than the Soviets, but the different was that the lack of development in China at the time meant that the Americans couldnt envison China as a serious global threat. By contrast, the USSR was.

Fundamentally, for the Soviet Union to become acceptable to the USA there either has to be a major shift in the political situation in the US, OR the Soviet Union has to become so open to international finance and capital to make the concept of Communism in that country meaningless. Which, given the situation that occurred OTL with the rapid privatisation of the state-run economy, would be an absolute disaster, and likely embolden ultranationalist forces. The country may have been sold out to oligarchs OTL, but at least they were Russians. If Soviet leaders sold out their economy like that to the Americans, don't be surprised if they're lynched publicly by the army.

I second this. Mutual Balanced Force Reductions like the CFE agreement were probably doable (and I'm not sure they were completely motivated by financial reasons on the Soviet side), but that would still require levels of military spending well beyond post-CW levels, to say nothing of the fact that both sides would still need to improve their military technology at a fast pace instead of just stagnating. That would help the Soviets but as long as the Cold War remains, and it will as long as the USSR is communist, the economy is likely to eventually run into a wall.

Edit: besides, defense spending was about 8-10% of the GDP so not sure cuts would do that much in the long term.

 

[DougM]

It is easy to say.. “end the Cold War” but it is a lot harder to actually do it. The Cold War ended (sort of) when the USSR imploded and thus couldn’t be a threat to the west. In the 1970s the USSR was close to its peak. It was not that long after its success in the early space race. And it’s Teck was making huge leaps so that it was closer to the west in many areas of military tech.
So there is no ”natural” way to end the Cold War.
And the treaties were alwas questionable at best and in reality just created a smaller cheeper Cold War but also increased the fear of what the other side is doing. If you are building all the weapons you can build or can asfgird or think you need to protect yourself then the question of how many weapons your enemy is making is not a huge factor as you are doing your best.
But if you and your enemy agree to build only 100 spears when you know you can built 1000 and so can your enemy then that is a different story. If your enemy is hiding an additional 900 spears then you could be hopelessly out number and you are doing it to yourself. As you COULD build 1000 yourself. So it is critical to know you enemy is Not cheating.
So arms Limitation treaties are very difficult. You can’t prove a negative. You can proof you enemy is building 1000 spears if you get luck and catch him but you can NEVER prove that he isn’t building 900 more then he should as he would be hiding this from you and if he is hidding them well you won’t know…. This is how paranoia sets in.
So about the only way to truly end the Cold War was for one side to implode and no longer be able to keep up or for one side to change so much that the other side no longer fears them. The US never got into a modern Cold War with GB because they trusted GB. The third option is for one side yo give up roll over and expose its belly and all but surrender. Stop any military build up and to give the other side full access or control. None of these are really options for the USSR in the 70s.
So it is very hard to end a Cold War

 

[marathag]

It is easy to say.. “end the Cold War” but it is a lot harder to actually do it. The Cold War ended (sort of) when the USSR imploded and thus couldn’t be a threat to the west. In the 1970s the USSR was close to its peak. It was not that long after its success in the early space race. And it’s Teck was making huge leaps so that it was closer to the west in many areas of military tech.

So call it a victory in 1975 and move on.
Have a 'Peace' offensive to cut down on Arms Conventional and Nuclear.
So when Ford doesn't bite, you get someone farther Left than Peanut in 1976, and deal with him. Get NATO to dissolve, since you are disarming before the Treaties are signed

 

[ferdi254]

Economically that makes a lot of sense but politically hard to achieve. Thatcher and Reagan will not trust the USSR and start the arms race again.
But this is the smaller problem. Nobody in the Politbureau trusted the West and they all had seen what can happen if you are not up to the task to defend the rodina. So none of them would wilfully go into any situation which might, just might make an attack against the USSR feasible.

 

[DougM]

The US understandably didnt trust the USSR. And the USSR was living the old joke “I may be paranoid, but that doesnt mean they arn’t out to get me”. So neither side in 1975 or thereabouts is going to just give up. Neither side had to and frankly neither side could afford to do so.
Without the US the soviet internal politics probably goes out of control and they self implode in internal fighting. And the west giving up would destroy western economies. If the US gave up and disarmed enough to truly end the cold war the confidence 8n the US would be shattered and that on top of the other issues with the economy at that time would shatter the western economy. Probably to a Great Depresion level.
And if you really look at it the cold war is not completely over. Russia is doing all it can to keep up its side of the cold war but it just cant do what it used to. ut it still has bombers and fighters and ICBMs and Boomers it just doesnt have as many as it used to. Meanwhile i. the US the still are doing what they did. Boomers still patrol and ICBMs are still in silos and so on. It is just that it was scaled down.
The former USSR couldnt aford to keep it up at true high level and thus the US doesnt need. to keep up the level it did.

So neither side can go so far as to unilaterally disarm.
On top of this… if the President suggested this he would be replaced in the next election assuming he was not impeached and tossed out of office. The Soviets would have been more direct and simple gave a heart attack to whomever tried to give up.
So it is not a good idea for either side nor is it remotely possible.

As i said it is very very difficult to end an arms race/cold war. And historically i cant think of a single time one of these ended with the sides just deciding it was not worth it any longer, One side of the other either inplodes or goes broke or loses a war or something. So you need a reason for the war to end. Perhaps the western economy implodes so much that we get the Great Depression 2 and the US has to cut back. But thatcis the US being forced to cut back.
The only way you could sort of get this is if the US decides it is Europes problem to protect Europe. It is not likely but.. it is a posiblity.
I have often thought that in the 60/70s the US should have cut back on the defence if Europe. Concentrat on the ICBM/Boomers and the Navy/Air Force. The truth is the US spend a huge amount of money for decades to protect counties that didn't want to spend the money to protect themselves. So ultimatly Europe taking on more of the cost would have helped the US and slowed Europe a bit. But i am not sure you can get Europe to pick up the cost if the US pulls back. And as i said without a strong defence to take the place of the US pull back it will be seen as the US giving up and the economy will implode.
So this is trully a very very hard POD to pull off.

 

[ferdi254]

With the one thing that parts of the military spending of the USA are not done for defending Europe at all, Germany was not allowed to spend on the expensive parts like nuclear weapons and carriers…..

and basically one thing that the USSR understood much better than the „Europe does not spend enough“ crowd in the USA. If you want other countries to fight what is your war on their territory than you have to foot the bill.