Plan to destabilize America

There is no surprise in the fact that the Soviets hoped to destabilize and discredit the United States. What does surprise is the subtlety and audacity of their effort. The opening salvo of the KGB’s plan was financial.

Seductive advertising was placed in our media through dummy corporations. The intent was to encourage Americans to spend and borrow. From the KGB’s point of view the way to ruin capitalism was for our citizens to run up record levels of debt, preferably with escalating interest rates, and for the national savings rate to plunge into negative territory.

It would be an added plus for them if we would use the borrowed funds to buy non-durables instead of investing in infrastructure.

Should these conditions develop the KGB felt that our country would encounter economic difficulties that could weaken the dollar, undermine our global leadership, and raise the cost of imports heralding inflation. If by some stroke of luck these conditions should be accompanied by reckless use of energy with no thought to conservation, this country might lose control of its own economic destiny.

The final piece of the KGB’s financial strategy involved benefits. The agency employed all of its influence, which was greater than we had suspected, to lull us into potentially lethal complacency. Its aim was to get our government to grant generous social benefits. Then it would persuade our citizens to take those obligations for granted, but not fund them. If it worked, this strategy would create a time bomb, softly ticking until an explosive wave of retirements hit the system. SOURCE

This sure comes out at just the right time to prove that no KGB input was required to destabilize America... America did it all by itself.

Couple of issues with this article:

In reality KGB's influence in this matter was never as great as the writers' suggest and, there was never any chance for social benefits, generous of otherwise, and none will come even though more and more people will desperately need them.

In fiction - similar "plan" to bring down America in the post- Cold War era is described in my novel THE FIFTH INTERNATIONALE