A closer look
Soviet officials famously traded seventeen submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer to PepsiCo in 1989 just to secure a massive shipment of sugary soda. Because the Soviet ruble was functionally worthless on the international market at the time, the government decided that bartering an entire naval fleet was the most economically sound way to keep their citizens heavily caffeinated. For a brief, glorious moment in history, a multinational soft drink corporation possessed the sixth-largest military navy on the entire planet. Pepsi ultimately sold the fleet to a Swedish scrap recycling company because maintaining aging Soviet warships is surprisingly terrible for profit margins. Next time you feel bad about a slightly irresponsible impulse purchase on Amazon, just remember that an entire global superpower once traded its geopolitical military might for a few million bottles of fizzy brown corn syrup water
