Friday, August 22, 2008

History Repeating Itself Inversely?

The Soviet superpower disintegrated in 1991 largely as a result of:

* Getting bogged down in a war it couldn't win in Afghanistan,

* Declining domestic oil production and dependence on expensive and unreliable foreign sources of supply to meet its energy needs,

* Soaring military expenditures necessary to keep pace with what the world's other superpower was doing,

* Unsustainable budget deficits and foreign debt,

* Its political and governmental institutions and systems having become bloated, balky, unresponsive, corrupt, and incapable of reform, and

* Delusions of grandeur that prevented honest discussions of the problems it was facing.

Who's currently in such a situation?

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