thegipples/russia

From the page: "How did the first Bush administration respond to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

...What they said is that everything is going to go on exactly as before, with one change. Now it is not the Russian menace that we're defending against. We have to defend ourselves against what they call the technological sophistication of Third World powers. I don't know if they laughed hysterically when they wrote that, but that's what they said. What about the military system, what they call the defense industrial base? That's a euphemism for high-tech industry. It has to be exactly as before.

What about our intervention forces, primarily aimed toward the Middle East? They have to stay exactly the same. And they add an interesting phrase. They still have to be aimed toward the Middle East where the problems that might have called for military intervention "could not have been laid at the Kremlin's door." Nice phrase. That means, sorry, folks, we've been lying to you for 50 years, but now we can't lie anymore. The clouds have lifted so the problems could not have been laid at the Kremlin's door, but we still have to have those forces there because that's the world's major energy resource and we've got to control it."