Thomas Friedman: Soviet Union Died Due to Low Oil Prices, Not Ronald Reagan

Columnist Friedman says it was low oil prices that killed the Soviet Union, "not because of anything Ronald Reagan did."

Columnist Thomas Friedman on Friday advanced the rather iconoclastic view that it was low oil prices, not Ronald Reagan, that killed the Soviet Union.



From Friedman's latest column on oil prices and America's lack of energy independence, "The Oil-Addicted Ayatollahs":



"Economists have long studied this phenomenon, but I got focused on it here in Moscow after chatting with Vladimir Mau, the president of Russia's Academy of National Economy. I mentioned to him that surely the Soviet Union died because oil fell to $10 a barrel shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev took office, not because of anything Ronald Reagan did."