XPost: alt.economics
Jarred Dunn
Studied History at The University of Texas at Austin June 17, 2019
What were the most accurate predictions of all time?
On November 30, 1983, Herbert E. Meyer sat at his desk at the Central Intelligence Agency to write a prescient essay. His composition had an
audience of two: CIA director Bill Casey, and United States President
Ronald Reagan.
Meyer, the special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence,
titled his classified memo Why is the World so Dangerous? [1]
Herb’s thesis would prove controversial. Some of his colleagues in the intelligence community, along with foreign policy intellectuals,
believed in one immutable fact: the US and the Soviet Union would
continue their global struggle for decades to come.
Photo: r/HistoryPorn - Soviet nuclear missiles being paraded through Red
Square at the height of the Cold War - Circa 1963 (639 x 441)
The analyst was convinced of exactly the opposite.[2] Despite these prognostications of Russian staying power, the Soviet state was actually
in grave danger.
Meyer declared this in stark terms:
Now let us consider the implication of our assertion that if the Soviet
Union doesn’t take the West in the next 20 years or so, it never will:
it means that if present trends continue, we’re going to win the cold
war.[3]
Meyer was right. The Soviet Union collapsed only eight years later.
The memo pointed to several factors supporting his conclusion:
The Soviet Union was not a coherent whole. The disparate elements had
“failed utterly to become a country.” The Union was home to more than
one hundred different nationalities, all jostling for more political and economic freedom. Russian domination of these groups simply could not
last.[4]
The Soviet economy was “heading toward calamity.” Soviet annual growth rates averaged 2 percent, while military spending averaged 4 percent
annual growth rates. With sharply rising energy costs, living standards
would inevitably decline.
The Soviet Union was a “demographic nightmare.” Russian women averaged among the highest abortion rates in the world: up to six abortions per woman.[5] A precipitous drop in the birth rate meant less workers for
state factories. (This warning was also prophetic: demographic declines continue to this day, with estimates of the Russian population dropping
from 150 million to 100 million by 2050.)[6]
Meyer concluded his essay with his firm belief in the soon-to-come
triumph of the West.
It has long been fashionable to view the Cold War as a permanent feature
of global politics, one that will endure through the next several
generations at least…
In short, the Free World has outdistanced the Soviet Union economically, crushed it ideologically, and held if off politically.[7]
In the intervening years, popular consensus has held that U.S.
intelligence failed to predict the Soviet Union’s collapse. This has
been challenged, with scholars pointing to remarkably predictive
intelligence estimates that were not blind-sided by the “sudden” fall of this seemingly unbeatable adversary.[8]
But the “Soviet permanence” school of thought persisted, and Meyer
directly challenged it.
Meyer remembered well certain elements of the memo, particularly the
Cold War predictions. He also had not forgotten the memo’s reception.
Within the intelligence community, there was a general feeling that
Meyer had lost his mind. That was just the start of the backlash.
The memo was leaked to syndicated columnists Evans & Novak, who devoted
a column to it. There was subsequent uproar throughout Washington, which
made Meyer very nervous. He was summoned to his boss’s office.
“Herb, right now you’ve got the smallest fan club in Washington,” Bill Casey told him grimly. As Meyer turned pale, Casey laughed: “Relax. It’s
me and the president.”[9]
Meyer’s work earned him the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
His stunningly accurate memo remains one of the best examples of
predictive intelligence.
Photo: “A woman reaches into her bag, which rests on a fallen Soviet hammer-and-sickle on a Moscow street in 1991.” The Fall of the Soviet
Union in rare pictures, 1991
Footnotes
[1] Predicting the Soviet Collapse | National Review
[2] A Tribute to Herb Meyer - Ricochet
[3]
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000028820.pdf
[4]
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000028820.pdf
[5] Talking to My Grandma About Her 12 Abortions
[6] Predicting the Soviet Collapse | National Review
[7]
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000028820.pdf
[8]
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/20080229.pdf
[9] Predicting the Soviet Collapse | National Review
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