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    Disruption
    The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War

    Michael De Groot (Author)

    9781501774119

    Hardback, published 15 March 2024

    324 pages, 10 graphs - 10 Graphs
    22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.907 kg

    Disruption enlarges and enhances readers' understanding of the end of the Cold War With thorough research and clear explanation, De Groot demonstrates why, by the late 1960s, the US and the USSR could no longer finance an international economic system founded on Cold War principles. Essential reading for advanced undergraduates through faculty.

    (Choice)

    In Disruption, Michael De Groot argues that the global economic upheaval of the 1970s was decisive in ending the Cold War. Both the West and the Soviet bloc struggled with the slowdown of economic growth; chaos in the international monetary system; inflation; shocks in the commodities markets; and the emergence of offshore financial markets. The superpowers had previously disseminated resources to their allies to enhance their own national security, but the disappearance of postwar conditions during the 1970s forced Washington and Moscow to choose between promoting their own economic interests and supporting their partners in Europe and Asia.

    De Groot shows that new unexpected macroeconomic imbalances in global capitalism sustained the West during the following decade. Rather than a creditor nation and net exporter, as it had been during the postwar period, the United States became a net importer of capital and goods during the 1980s that helped fund public spending, stimulated economic activity, and lubricated the private sector. The United States could now live beyond its means and continue waging the Cold War, and its allies benefited from access to the booming US market and the strengthened US military umbrella. As Disruption demonstrates, a new symbiotic economic architecture powered the West, but the Eastern European regimes increasingly became a burden to the Soviet Union. They were drowning in debt, and the Kremlin no longer had the resources to rescue them.

    Introduction
    1. American Power and the Collapse of the Bretton Woods System
    2. Eastern European Development and Soviet Subsidies
    3. The West and the Oil Shock
    4. Twin Oil Crises Behind the Iron Curtain
    5. The Travails of Jimmy Carter
    6. The Soviet Umbrella and the Volcker Shock
    7. Managing the Inversion
    8. The Collapse of the Soviet Welfare Empire
    Conclusion
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