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Russian Communist Party supporters attend a memorial ceremony to mark the 142nd anniversary of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's birth at Red Square on Tuesday. (AFP/Yonhap News)

“The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.”

Mikhail Gorbachev, then-leader of the Soviet Union, spoke these words 30 years ago on Dec. 25, 1991, when he declared the official dissolution of the Soviet Union together with his resignation.

But if his words are indeed true, did the world create a new system to replace the Cold War order that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union? It is hard not to be skeptical.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was once considered to be the “end of history.” However, from the Gulf War in 1990 to the 20-year war in Afghanistan — which ended in August with the unilateral withdrawal of US troops — wars and conflicts have in fact become more frequent. As the sole hegemon, the United States has engaged in military interventions more frequently and more directly than it did during the Cold War.

Meanwhile, it seems that the unipolar system centered around the US has come to an end as geopolitical confrontation has rematerialized due to the rise of China and the so-called revival of Russia.

Cold War historian John Gaddis’ assessment that we were able to enjoy a "long peace" during the Cold War is now a widely accepted academic theory.

Why the old regime rapidly collapsed before Gorbachev's intended new regime was put into practice remains a subject of controversy. Some are of the opinion that the Soviet Union would have survived (longer) through gradual reform if it were not for the perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness) programs Gorbachev launched to replace the old regime.

The main reason for the collapse of the Soviet system was that the “cost” of maintaining the system was too high. The Soviet economy was supported not by improvements to productivity, but by quantitative factors such as increased labor and capital inputs, according to the economist Paul Krugman.

As the Soviet economic model reached its limits, it was unable to afford the enormous cost of an arms race against the US while also maintaining Eastern European satellite states and republics within the Soviet Union.

In order to overcome this difficult situation, reform and opening up were initiated, but the old system could not withstand the shock, resulting in a rapid collapse.

The reason that the Soviet economy, which had been stagnant since the early 1960s due to failure to improve productivity, was able to survive for such a considerable period of time, was due to abundant energy resources and the timely oil crisis. This shock in the 1970s led Western capitalist countries such as the US to fall into recessions comparable to the Great Depression.

The Soviet Union maintained its regime based on soaring revenues from oil sales and expanded its intervention into the Third World. But while Western countries began innovating into knowledge industries in the wake of the oil crisis, the Soviet Union maintained an inefficient heavy industry-focused system and missed its chance to innovate.

Then, in 1979, the Soviets became mired in the invasion of Afghanistan. In a situation in which national power was over-deployed beyond his own capabilities, the collapse of oil prices since the 1980s brought catastrophe to the system. Stephen Kotkin, a prominent Soviet historian at Princeton University, called the oil shock "a cruel trick of history" for the Soviet Union.

In the end, the core cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be summed up in its obsession with maintaining power. The Soviet Union became a party to the Cold War by making all of Eastern Europe its own satellite base despite strong resistance from the West, including the United States. The Soviet Union made this choice because it felt the need for a “buffer zone” due to past invasions by Napoleon and Hitler. However, this placed a constant burden on the Soviet system. In addition to the cost of stationing Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, anti-Soviet movements in the region eroded the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

In the end, anti-socialism and anti-Soviet movements arose in Eastern European countries. This, accompanied by falling oil prices and Poland’s Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, didn’t bode well for the Soviet Union. Eventually, all this led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which resulted in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.

After the end of World War II, there were even proposals about making Eastern Europe a neutral zone like Finland. Henry Kissinger and others in his book “Diplomacy” estimated that if Eastern Europe had become like Finland, it would have been a greater benefit to the maintenance and security of the Soviet Union.

This is a noteworthy point, particularly as it pertains to the US, which has been leading the international order for 30 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, there were calls to make Eastern Europe a demilitarized zone. However, the United States and others continued to advance the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, despite opposition from Russia.

As Russia protests, geopolitical confrontations such as that in Ukraine — bearing a resemblance to that of the Cold War — are being reenacted. The US is attempting to counter China from various fronts through, for example, cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan, the Quad, and most recently AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific region.

These recent moves by the US bear striking similarities to blockade strategies attempted against the Soviet Union and China immediately after World War II. This current international situation serves as a fitting backdrop for the term “Cold War” to come back into use.

However, as seen in the chaos surrounding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August, the US has not yet picked up the pieces of its “war on terror” that it waged in the Middle East since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The current state of the United States is similar to that of the Soviet Union when they had to face off on “two front lines” — against the US and China on the one hand and in Afghanistan on the other.

Since the inauguration of the Joe Biden administration in January, the United States has been challenging China along the Taiwan Strait and Russia on the Ukrainian front. Washington seems obsessed with using its alliances to rally support to help it win its match.

Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union was obsessed with maintaining and expanding its sphere of influence against the United States, and it met with catastrophe.

The Soviet Union repeated the disaster suffered by the UK in the 19th century in Afghanistan in the 20th century, and the United States has since taken over these same failed strategies in the 21st century.

Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the international order has become more unstable than it was even during the Cold War. This is because humankind has still not learned the lessons provided by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]