I'm not familiar with the wood theory of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Link? I figured it was their centrally planned economy.
Yeah, so China has most rare earth metals. Are you advocating imperialism and occupation? Do we have evidence that they are managing their resource in an abusive way? (After a bit of reading, it appears that China does have large export restrictions. That market inefficiency is being solved by smuggling. :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_industry_in_China#Hi... )
> By the time of the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of 1991,
> nearly every kind of food was rationed.
> Non-rationed foods and non-food consumer goods had virtually
> disappeared from state owned stores.
Do you think that people were happy about this kind of situation?
China was not the only producer of rare earth metals but they used dumping and by that made production of rare earth metals unprofitable elsewhere. After other producers closed their plants, they started to heavily increase the rare earth metal prices.
The problem here is that you expect history to indicate future performance. You expect each country to act morally instead of what's in their best (monetary) interest. How are wars fought these days? Sanctions, it has happened in recent history. Now what is a nation to do when a sanction against them on food imports? One thing is for sure, it'll help solve a population problem.
Not being able to produce enough wood tanked Soviet Union.