NASA jealously despised Mir, which was dozens of times cheaper to maintain in orbit (and was dozens of times cheaper to build in the first place). NASA statists lobbied the State Dept. to hold up Mir's tether export until AFTER the Russian decision to deorbit it a year later, and NASA also pressured academics not to conduct research on Mir despite the cost effectiveness of doing so. When NASA doles out over a billion dollars in academic pork annually, why try to cut costs with its competitor? All of this transpired despite NASA's chartered obligation to maximize commercialization (http://www.spaceprojects.com/charter ). I don't think the recent Soyuz accident is the first example in recent history of sabotaging Russian capitalistic endeavors in space.