That's tin foil crap and you ought to think long and hard about what other tidbits your pals are passing your way.
To make that feasible would have required INSTANT rule of law in Russia to attract Western investment into an area that hadn't seen capital expenditures, in real terms, in the O&G industry, since 1958.No bank was going to lend or joint venture made until property rights could be guaranteed.
You have to remember too, who the dullards were who set foreign policy back then.They were the "stability at any price crowd", such as Brent Scowcroft and Larry Eagleburger.Not exactly visionary Reganites.
"We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
--- U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, in a meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 29, 1990.
"Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."
--- U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, in response to a question from a journalist who repeated her original quote to Hussein, September 2, 1990.
Nothing "tin-foil" about that one, is there?