Had very little to do with Chernobyl and Afghanistan, which were minor interventions. Had everything to do with Gorbachev's policies and underlying LONG-TERM economic problems.
this is false. Long term economic problems were there for years and it could have continued to hobble along with those problems for many more years. But cleaning up Chernobyl specifically cost so much money, that dealing with those problems became practically impossible. Soviet Union couldn't just print dollars like US can.
"Soviet Union couldn't just print dollars like US can."
Any country can print more currency according to Modern Monetary Theory. Also, from Wikipedia:
"The production of Soviet rubles was the responsibility of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise, or Goznak, which was in charge of the printing of and materials production for banknotes and the minting of coins in Moscow and Leningrad. "
If you are trying to draw some sort of conclusion from the idea that the US is an international reserve currency - that has nothing to do with printing money. You can further read the "Economic role" section to understand that the USSR currency was not pegged to PMs or baskets of securities, making it easier to "just print".
"the USSR currency was not pegged to PMs or baskets of securities"
There were a lot of products with their cost in rubles imprinted directly on them, which I guess was supposed to make that currency value "backed by goods" at one point. (It was fun though, after USSR collapse, to get my hands on a cast iron frying pan with its engraved price of a few rubles, and hear that its actual price jumped orders of magnitude at the end of old ruble's circulation, presumably a consequence of "just print".)
As long as there is a demand for American dollars from the abroad, US can print it. MMT says, exporters swap real assets with US dollars.
Is China/Taiwan/Vietnam interested in exchanging their exports with Zimbabwe currency? Zimbabwe's curry is not in a unique position like US dollar. No one wants Zimbabwe, but every one else wants USD.
I mean, sorry, this is a nonsensical point. Of course, Soviet Union could physically print their own currency. This is completely irrelevant - they couldn't print hard currency and that is what they needed to import lots of things, including food.