The United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union was enacted by US President Jimmy Carter in January 1980 in response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. The embargo remained in effect until US President Ronald Reagan ended it on April 24, 1981. [1]
American farmers felt the brunt of the sanctions, and it had a much lesser effect on the Soviet Union, which brought the value of such embargoes into question. [2] During the presidential election campaign of 1980, Reagan, the Republican nominee, promised to end the embargo, but Carter, the incumbent Democratic nominee, was not willing to do so. [3] The embargo had suspended the Armand Hammer supported fertilizer détente. [1]
The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was met by the United States with numerous economic sanctions including the agricultural embargo. In addition, the United States led a boycott of the 1980 Olympics which were hosted in Moscow.
According to Boris Yuzhin and Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB abhorred Carter's sanctions. [4] [5] In 1980, according to both Yuzhin and Gordievsky, the KGB ordered its agents to conduct activities that discredited US President Jimmy Carter and supported Ronald Reagan during 1980 election. [4] [5]
The Soviet Union lost its only source of phosphate fertilizer upon which its agriculture was heavily dependent. [1] The Soviet Union shifted to receiving grain from other sources such as by increasing imports from its second highest import partner, Argentina. The sources included most of South America such as Venezuela and Brazil. The Soviet Union still received grain from the United States with regard to the grain agreement in 1973 between the two countries. The agreement required the United States to send 8 million tons of grain to the Soviets. [6] Even after the embargo had been lifted, the Soviets continued to rely on grain from Ukraine and South America and reduced their interaction with the U.S. [7]
In October 1979, United States producers and distributers of ammonia and natural gas accused the Soviet Union of dumping its products in the United States and therefore collapsing the United States market. The Soviet supplied products were from the William J. Casey, who, from 1974 to 1976, was chairman at the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Eximbank) and provided Eximbank loans to the Soviet Union, and Armand Hammer supported fertilizer détente that began while Richard Nixon was president of the United States. [8] Upon enacting the agricultural embargo, the provisions of the fertilizer détente were suspended. [1]
U.S. grain prices collapsed over night and languished for years. [6] [9] [7] The embargo had a direct impact on the 1980 presidential election. [10] [11] In several states, farmers who were part of the farm strike movement circled their tractors around local state US Department of Agriculture offices to protest the department's enforcement of the embargo. [2]
The main figure of the 1980 grain embargo was Carter. The grain embargo was his way of using food as a weapon. Carter believed that if he cut out the Soviets' grain imports, they could no longer feed their livestock or people. He hoped that would lead to unrest against the war in Afghanistan. [7]
Another key figure in the grain embargo was the Farm Bureau. At first, it supported the embargo, which it saw as a way for farmers to sell more of their grain to Americans. As a result, grain prices dropped, and farmers became angry with the legislation and decided to protest against the embargo. When Jimmy Carter lost their support, it was the end for the embargo. [6]
A year later, Reagan took power with the support of the Farm Bureau and ended the embargo on April 24, 1981, and therefore restored fertilizer détente which allowed shipments of natural gas, ammonia, urea and potash fertilizers to resume from the Soviet Union to the United States and shipments of phosphate fertilizer as superphosphoric acid to resume from Florida in the United States to the Soviet Union thus greatly enriching Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum. [1] [12]
Another key figure of the embargo was the farm strike movement. The American Agriculture Movement was a group of farmers who protested the embargo through peaceful means such as the incidents with encircling the department's headquarters in few states with their tractors. Their actions brought attention to the demands of the farmers for the embargo to be lifted. [2]
The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991 spans the period from the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's death until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, and complex systemic problems in the command economy, Soviet output stagnated. Failed attempts at reform, a standstill economy, and the success of the proxies of the United States against the Soviet Union's forces in the war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially in the Soviet-occupied Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński, known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. As a scholar, Brzezinski belonged to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman, while elements of liberal idealism have also been identified in his outlook. Brzezinski was the primary organizer of The Trilateral Commission.
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. It was a response to the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and it was intended to deter the Soviet Union, the United States' Cold War adversary, from seeking hegemony in the Persian Gulf region.
William Joseph Casey was an American lawyer who was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Armand Hammer was an American business manager and owner. He spent decades with Occidental Petroleum in the mid 20th century. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, he was also known for his art collection and his close ties to the Soviet Union.
The history of the United States from 1980 until 1991 includes the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration, and the first three years of the George H. W. Bush presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plagued by the Iran hostage crisis, runaway inflation, and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the 1980 United States presidential election to Republican Reagan.
Détente is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The diplomacy term originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce tensions.
Linkage was a foreign policy that was pursued by the United States and championed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s détente, during the Cold War. The policy aimed to persuade the Soviet Union to co-operate in restraining revolutions in the Third World in return for concessions in nuclear and economic fields. Soviet interventions occurred in various conflicts such as the Angolan Civil War, the Mozambican Civil War, and the Ogaden War, while many revolutions still occurred in Third World countries, undermining the policy.
Able Archer 83 was a military exercise conducted by NATO that took place in November 1983, as part of an annual exercise. It simulated a period of heightened nuclear tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, leading to concerns that it could have been mistaken for a real attack by the Soviet Union. The exercise is considered by some to be one of the closest moments the world came to nuclear war during the Cold War. The purpose of the exercise, like previous years, was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the U.S. military attaining a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. The five-day exercise, which involved NATO commands throughout Western Europe, was coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) headquarters in Casteau, Belgium.
The Cold War from 1979 to 1985, was a late phase of the Cold War marked by a sharp increase in hostility between the Soviet Union and the West. It arose from a strong denunciation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. With the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and American President Ronald Reagan in 1980, a corresponding change in Western foreign policy approach toward the Soviet Union was marked by the rejection of détente in favor of the Reagan Doctrine policy of rollback, with the stated goal of dissolving Soviet influence in Soviet Bloc countries. During this time, the threat of nuclear war had reached new heights not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc., formerly IBP, Inc. and Iowa Beef Processors, Inc., is an American meat packing company based in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, United States. IBP was the United States' biggest beef packer and its number two pork processor.
Soviet foreign trade played only a minor role in the Soviet economy. In 1985, for example, exports and imports each accounted for only 4 percent of the Soviet gross national product. The Soviet Union maintained this low level because it could draw upon a large energy and raw material base, and because it historically had pursued a policy of self-sufficiency. Other foreign economic activity included economic aid programs, which primarily benefited the less developed Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) countries of Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam.
Operation RYAN was a Cold War military intelligence program run by the Soviet Union during the early 1980s when they believed the United States was planning for an imminent first strike attack. The name is an acronym for Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie. The purpose of the operation was to collect intelligence on potential contingency plans of the Reagan administration to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. The program was initiated in May 1981 by Yuri Andropov, then chairman of the KGB.
Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were fully established in 1933 as the succeeding bilateral ties to those between the Russian Empire and the United States, which lasted from 1776 until 1917; they were also the predecessor to the current bilateral ties between the Russian Federation and the United States that began in 1992 after the end of the Cold War.
Boris Nikolaevich Yuzhin is a former Soviet spy. He was a mole in the KGB, spying for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1970s and 1980s before being caught and imprisoned. Arriving in San Francisco in 1975, he, as an expert in semiconductors, posed as a visiting scientist at UC Berkeley where he attempted to find any useful information or possible contacts. During his second assignment to the United States, Yuzhin was assigned by the KGB to monitor student activities under the cover of a TASS correspondent.
TogliattiAzot is a Russian chemical company and has recently been identified as being world's largest ammonia producer. It is headquartered in Tolyatti, Russia.
During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that it also influenced non-aligned peace groups in the West.
The United States foreign policy during the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) was dominated by the Cold War, a period of sustained geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Trump administration farmer bailouts are a series of United States bailout programs introduced during the first presidency of Donald Trump as a consequence of his "America First" economic policy to help US farmers suffering due to the US-China trade war and trade disputes with European Union, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and others. China and respectively European reconcilable tariffs imposed on peanut butter, soybeans, orange juice, and other agriculture products had hit hard, especially swing states, such as Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Leonid Kostandov was a Soviet engineer and politician who served as the minister of the chemical industry between 1965 and 1980 and as the deputy premier from 1980 to his death.
