by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his secretary of state, George Shultz, as well as U.S. President George H.W. Bush, are well known to have worked effectively with their Soviet counterparts to advance bilateral arms control. What is less known is that Reagan, Bush and successive presidents also sought to convince the Kremlin to give the market economy a chance, as they believed that a transition by the Soviet Union to a market economy would have been in America’s interest. The 1992 Freedom Support Act submitted by the Bush Administration to Congress, for example, stated that “recent developments in Russia and other independent states of the former Soviet Union present an historic opportunity for a transition of the independent states of the former Soviet Union into the community of
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U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his secretary of state, George Shultz, as well as U.S. President George H.W. Bush, are well known to have worked effectively with their Soviet counterparts to advance bilateral arms control. What is less known is that Reagan, Bush and successive presidents also sought to convince the Kremlin to give the market economy a chance, as they believed that a transition by the Soviet Union to a market economy would have been in America’s interest. The 1992 Freedom Support Act submitted by the Bush Administration to Congress, for example, stated that “recent developments in Russia and other independent states of the former Soviet Union present an historic opportunity for a transition of the independent states of the former Soviet Union into the community of democratic nations…the entire international community has a vital interest in the success of this transition.”
Today, Russia’s transition to a market economy is at least partially completed, though estimates point to the state holding between 33 and 46 percent of the economy, with this control concentrated in “strategic” sectors such as energy and banking. Nevertheless, this transition did not succeed in embedding Russia into the Western camp. Nor did a similar effort to encourage China’s transition to a market economy yield the results the West had hoped for, such as democratization of the Middle Kingdom and its alignment with the U.S. and its allies.
Despite this, promoting worldwide economic reform has remained popular among U.S. leaders; most recently, Donald Trump sought to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong-un of the benefits of a market economy during their 2018 summit in Singapore. Below, we have compiled a selection of calls for economic reform in Russia, in chronological order, made by U.S. presidents and their administrations beginning with Ronald Reagan....
Russia blew the chance to open the economy after the collapse of the USSR with the replacement of the former communist elite with the Russian Mafia and foreign business people. Vladimir Putin stepped in to put an end to that. That experiment is over and China took note of it. From here out liberalization will be gradual in both countries, which the West hates and is attempting regime change in both countries.
In the Thick of ItCalls by US for Economic Transition in Russia From Reagan Through Trump
Aleksandra Srdanovic