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The Clown in the Kremlin’s Mirror: [1]
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Date: 2025-09-11
Could It Happen Here? America, the Soviet Union, and the Clown in the Kremlin’s Mirror
In 2018, I wrote a short reflection on America’s forever wars, comparing George W. Bush to Leonid Brezhnev. Both men presided over long, costly foreign interventions that bled legitimacy, enriched cronies, and hollowed their states from within. (
https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/what-comes-next-could-it-happen-here-as-it-did-in-russia/) Recently, while reviewing and updating that blog I wondered what would be the conclusion if I extended that admittedly somewhat outlandish hypothesis to the present day. At the time, I noted that it cost about $694,000 a year to keep each U.S. service member in Afghanistan, up from $667,000 in 2009, and that the cost per soldier in Iraq had risen from $512,000 in 2007 to $802,000 by 2011(1). While those figures were jaw-dropping then, today—after twenty years of wars—they feel almost quaint, dwarfed by the trillions ultimately poured into Mesopotamia and the Hindu Kush.
The Soviets learned the hard way what imperial overstretch does. Their Afghan disaster was a bleeding wound on an already fragile system, and within a decade of pulling out, the Soviet Union collapsed. Back in 2018, I asked: Could it happen here?
Seven years later, in 2025, the answer feels both more complicated and more urgent. The trajectories of the Soviet and American states aren’t identical—but the rhymes are undeniable. Both systems endured the corrosive effects of endless war, reformers too weak to reverse decay, and clowns who accelerated institutional rot. The USSR’s path ended in Putin. What of ours?
Russia’s Collapse: The Pattern of Decay
⁃ Brezhnev (1964–1982): A stagnant leader overseeing costly foreign misadventures, economic sclerosis, and systemic corruption. His Afghan war drained resources and morale.
⁃ Gorbachev (1985–1991): A liberal reformer who tried to modernize a rotting system with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Admirable in intent, but his reforms hastened collapse instead of reversing it.
⁃ Yeltsin (1991–1999): Chaotic, clownish, libertarian, and a drunk. He presided over the looting of Russia through oligarchic “privatization.”
⁃ Putin (2000–): Riding disgust with Yeltsin’s chaos, he consolidated power, throttled democracy, enriched loyalists, and transformed corruption into a centralized, repressive system.
The pattern: stagnant war → reformer too weak to stop decay → clown accelerates collapse → strongman consolidates the ruins.
America’s Path Since 2001
⁃ George W. Bush (2001–2009): Launched the Afghan and Iraq wars on flimsy premises while cutting taxes for the wealthy. Like Brezhnev, he fought wars without demanding sacrifice from elites and ignored profiteering (e.g., Halliburton).
⁃ Barack Obama (2009–2017): The Gorbachev figure—reformer, intelligent and restrained, who inherited disaster and tried to stabilize it. But he could not reverse entrenched rot: inequality, polarization, and oligarchic capture.
⁃ Donald Trump (2017–2021): America’s Yeltsin—clown, con man, and sex offender. He hollowed out institutions, normalized lies and corruption, and turned governance into spectacle.
⁃ Joe Biden (2021–2025): A caretaker, akin to Russia’s short-lived interim leaders. He ended the Afghan war, stabilized alliances, and invested in domestic renewal. But his fixes were modest relative to systemic dysfunction.
⁃ Donald Trump, Redux (2025–): The clown returns—older, angrier, and more polarized. Institutions already frayed are now strained to the breaking point.
The question remains: Is the American at the Putin stage?
The Parallels
⁃ Imperial Overstretch: The USSR bled in Afghanistan; the U.S. did likewise in Afghanistan and Iraq. (2)
⁃ Elite Impunity: In both systems, elites profited lavishly—from Soviet commissars to American defense contractors.(3)
⁃ Weak Reformers: Gorbachev and Obama both managed decline rather than reversing it.(4)
⁃ The Clown Phase: Yeltsin degraded Russia with drunken chaos; Trump degraded America with authoritarian farce.(5)
⁃ Strongman Temptation: Putin rose promising order from chaos. In America, voters might embrace a similarly authoritarian figure.
The Differences
⁃ Economic Depth: The U.S. economy remains dynamic, with capital markets and a reserve currency giving it resilience.(6)
⁃ Federalism: Unlike monolithic USSR, the U.S. may fragment before collapsing.
⁃ Cultural Pluralism: Russia was held by ideology; America is held by myths and markets—slower decay, but real.
⁃ Military vs. Legitimacy: The Soviet collapse was military and political; America’s decay may be institutional and cultural first.
Human and Fiscal Costs
The financial and human toll of America’s post-9/11 wars is staggering:
⁃ Over $8 trillion in total spending when including long-term veterans’ care.(7)
⁃ $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan alone from 2001–2022.(8)
⁃ $2.9 trillion for Iraq and Syria wars through 2022.(9)
⁃ An estimated 4.5–4.7 million deaths across the post-9/11 conflicts.(10)
⁃ Veterans’ long-term care costs projected at $2.2–2.5 trillion by 2050.(11)
These sums represent not just financial waste but opportunity cost—capital that might have rebuilt infrastructure, transitioned to clean energy, or expanded healthcare.
Why the Analogy Matters
History doesn’t repeat—but it rhymes. The Soviet collapse was abrupt; American decline may be slower but more insidious. The deeper risk is not a sudden implosion but a hollowing of democracy: a powerful nation that remains physically intact yet morally and institutionally degraded.
When clowns and cronies run the show, strongmen inevitably follow.
A Decade of Danger
In 2018, I ended with the question: What comes next? By 2025, the outlines are visible. We've had our Brezhnev (Bush), our Gorbachev (Obama), our Yeltsin (Trump), and our caretaker (Biden). The clown is back, and the system is weaker than before.
If the Russian analogy holds, what follows is either:
⁃ A strongman who consolidates power in the ruins, or
⁃ A slow fracture into dysfunction.
Either way, the American republic enters its decade of danger. The Soviet Union collapsed roughly a decade after its Afghan debacle; America ended its Afghan war in 2021. The clock is ticking.
Notes
⁃ 1. Business Insider, “Money Spent in Afghanistan Could Buy at Home” (Aug. 2011).
⁃ 2. Brown University, Costs of War Project, “Human and Budgetary Costs to Date of the U.S. War in Afghanistan, 2001–2022.”
⁃ 3. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), ch. 15.
⁃ 4. Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
⁃ 5 .Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018).5.
⁃ 6. IMF World Economic Outlook (2024).
⁃ 7. Neta Crawford, “The U.S. Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars” (Brown University, 2021).7
⁃ 8. Brown University, Costs of War Project (2022).
⁃ 9. Ibid.
⁃ 10. Brown University, Costs of War Project, “Human Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars” (2023).
⁃ 11. Linda Bilmes, “The Long-Term Costs of Caring for Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars,” Harvard Kennedy School (2021).
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