>>2505483Try to figure out how to significantly cut military spending without getting overthrown or destabilizing the country by unleashing a horde of unemployed soldiers.
The Soviet military had three main purposes:
1. Deter foreign aggression.
2. Assist the spread of Soviet power and communism in foreign lands.
3. Hold the Soviet Union together by force if necessary.
Now let's examine these.
1. Nuclear weapons already deterred foreign aggression enough, there was no reason to spend such a huge portion of the economy on the conventional military.
2. To the extent that this succeeded, it did not help the Soviet Union one bit once the Soviet Union started to collapse.
3. This didn't end up happening when the Soviet Union started to dissolve, for the most part the military just stood aside and let the country disintegrate. So the resources spent for this purpose were wasted.