When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the West faced a strategic puzzle it had not encountered before: a Soviet leader who did not merely speak politely about coexistence, but also about genuine renewal. His ideas of glasnost and perestroika suggested that the Soviet Union might be willing to reform itself, reduce its global ambitions and aggression, and open parts of its economy to Western technology and capital.

But the uncertainty was never simply whether Gorbachev was sincere. The more difficult question was whether the West understood what his project required — and whether it actually wanted him to succeed.

The Dollar Compass captures this dilemma through the fictional Glasnost Project, in which Henrik Bertelsen is sent to Moscow to sell American supercomputers to the Soviet energy and raw-materials sector. The premise is commercially attractive but politically explosive: the Soviet Union needs Western technology; American companies need new markets; Western governments want influence while fearing that they might strengthen the adversary they had spent 40 years trying to contain. In the novel, the project rests on the assumption that Soviet exports of energy and raw materials can be increased with the help of Western computers and expertise, thereby generating the foreign currency needed to repay the American-guaranteed loans.

That assumption was not plucked out of thin air. The Soviet Union had enormous natural resources, a highly educated population, and a military-industrial complex capable of delivering impressive technological achievements. Yet by the mid-1980s, the civilian economy was stagnant, technologically backward, and structurally incapable of converting knowledge into productivity and prosperity.

How Much Did the West Really Know?

Intelligence services, diplomats, economists, and businesspeople observed the shortages of goods, industrial inefficiency, technological lag, and the enormous burden of military expenditure. In The Dollar Compass, Henrik’s friend Jesper delivers a blunt assessment: the Soviet economy is “worn thin,” growth has stalled, military spending is far too high, and the system cannot continue in this way. This reflects a view shared by many Western analysts.

But there was a difference between analysing one’s way to the conclusion that the economy was weak and understanding that the state itself might be structurally doomed to collapse if subjected to fundamental reform.

Gorbachev recognised the need for reforms, but he did not know precisely what they required, nor could he grasp their full consequences. But he did not set out to dissolve the Soviet Union. He wanted to save socialism, not dismantle it. The purpose of glasnost and perestroika was to restructure the Soviet system and make it more efficient, not to replace it with liberal capitalism.

That distinction is crucial. Gorbachev saw that the system needed openness, technology, a lighter military burden, and better relations with the West. But he underestimated how deeply autocratic hierarchy, secrecy, corruption, and central planning were woven into the state he was trying to modernise.

Support, Suspicion and the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Western leaders faced the same challenge. Reagan and, later, Bush were not indifferent to whether Gorbachev succeeded. They did not want regime change followed by chaos in a nuclear-armed superpower. They did not want hardliners to overthrow Gorbachev. They did not want a new arms race or a return to Stalinist confrontation.

But neither did they want to help Gorbachev turn the Soviet Union into a technologically stronger version of itself. That was the problem of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” A revitalised USSR might become more peaceful — or a richer, more efficient authoritarian empire.

The fear was especially strong when it came to advanced technology. In the novel, American politicians are willing to consider easing export restrictions, but only for civilian sectors and only under strict controls. The CIA’s concern is obvious: computers sent to the Soviet Union to improve oil, gas, or mining operations could also strengthen military planning, weapons development, or intelligence capabilities.

A Soviet scientist in the novel says directly that the CIA will never approve a large-scale transfer of technology because, historically, the military has always secured first priority. Any major technology transfer will therefore strengthen the war machine. That is the central dilemma of détente through trade and technology: what helps a society may also help its machinery of repression.

Capital, Expertise and the Limits of Soviet Reform

The West also recognised that a revitalisation of the Soviet Union would require outside capital and expertise. The question was whether the Soviet system could absorb either of these for peaceful purposes.

Western capital requires contracts, enforceable property rights, reliable accounting, convertible currency, and institutions capable of distinguishing between public utility and private enrichment. The Soviet Union had ministerial façades, impressive plans, informal networks, nepotism, secrecy, corruption, and major political risk.

For Base Gain shows again and again how even a seemingly technical sale becomes entangled in bribery, surveillance, blackmail, and bureaucratic power struggles. The book’s summary describes the Soviet project as a billion-dollar opportunity surrounded by “hidden agendas, ruthless rivalries, bribery, and moral deceit.”

This is where Western caution was both understandable and insufficient. It was understandable because no democratic government could simply pour capital and high technology into a hostile nuclear power without security guarantees. It was insufficient because the alternative — partial engagement, half-open doors, commercial opportunism, and strategic hesitation — neither gave Gorbachev the help he needed on a sufficient scale nor provided the institutional framework required for the reforms to succeed.

Chernobyl and the Collapse of Trust

The Chernobyl disaster made the contradiction impossible to hide. The accident in April 1986 exposed not only technical failure, but also systemic incompetence: secrecy, evasion of responsibility, bureaucratic paralysis, and contempt for the public’s legitimate need to know the truth.

In that sense, Chernobyl did two things at once. The disaster strengthened Gorbachev’s argument for openness, because Soviet culture had now proved to be lethal. But it also weakened the credibility of the state he was trying to save. If the system could not tell the truth about a burning reactor, why should anyone believe that it could reform itself through vague political slogans and administrative decrees?

The disaster revealed that the Soviet Union’s dysfunction was not merely economic. It was moral and institutional.

Could the West Have Foreseen What Came Next?

Should Western leaders and their foreign policy analysis apparatus have foreseen that the collapse of the Soviet Union could lead to something worse?

Only partly. They should have understood that the collapse of an empire with nuclear weapons, wounded pride, weak institutions, and enormous security services could create a long-term danger. Some did understand this. But no one acted on it.

But predicting the precise emergence of Putin’s Russia — revanchist, hybrid, cyber-capable, nuclear-threatening, and willing to wage major war in Europe — required more than ordinary foresight.

The lesson is not that the West should simply have saved the Soviet Union. That was neither morally defensible — its people had not chosen communism — nor practically simple. The lesson is that support for reform in a hostile system requires more than trade agreements and optimistic summits. It requires institutional imagination: safeguards against corruption, support for civil society, realistic plans for economic transition, security guarantees, and a clear understanding that humiliation and collapse can be just as dangerous as confrontation.

Gorbachev tried to renew a system whose expiry date may already have passed. The West tried to encourage him without strengthening the Soviet machine too much. Both sides understood parts of the truth. Neither fully grasped the consequences.

Out of this failure came neither the revitalised Soviet Union Gorbachev had imagined, nor the stable democratic Russia many in the West had hoped for, but a wounded successor state, still armed to the teeth. It was not inevitable, and it was a risk that should have received far greater attention than it did.