The coup de grace

The Soviet Union used to be the power of last resort in support of the power wielders who became the strong man rulers in the Middle East. The Russian people still retain a large measure of that servility that wants to be ruled by power/challengers in a system of honor/shame and money-favoring. In the end the Soviet Union maintained its hold on power in the world by selling its extractive resources, having been unable to compete with the Western societies along standard lines of industrial production. As pundits are glad to point out, the final collapse of the Soviet Union had as much to do with the devastatingly low price of oil at the time as with the inner corrosion of its system of governance or with its weakness relative to its international adversaries. In the end the containment theory of George Kennan needed the coup de grace of turning off the oil tap to make it work. 

The iron logic of the resource curse coupled to the customary servility of the populations in question make the rooting out of strong men in charge of the apparatus of state in the despotic sector almost impossible. Turning off the oil tap is the necessary precursor to freeing these peoples of the ruthless dominance of the strong man power-holders which keeps them imprisoned and has done so for the better part of this century.