Without Reagan would the Soviet Union have fallen?
Nope, it was his pressure, his leadership, and his courage to led the way to the disinigration of the SU. By making statements like the following he got away from that policy of appeasement other administrations had followed:
“Let’s not delude ourselves, the Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren’t engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn’t be any hot spots in the world.”
He described Communism as “a single world-wide force dedicated to the destruction of our free enterprise system and the creation of a Socialist State.”
Reagan increase Defense spending by 7% a year from 1981 to 1985 creating an effective and efficient military that offered to Soviets total destruction if they ever decided to attack. The build-up and modernization of the military also gave credibility to Ronald Reagan’s desire to bargain from a position of strength.
Now This thread cannot go down the shitter with people yelling at me how we would be better off with the SU still around or why Ronald Reagan was an old dumbass. Just answer the question:
I agree with you 100% on that, but is it not true that Reagan increased military spending to the level where the Soviet Union tried to keep up and ended up more or less destroying their economy in the process?
If so, then did Reagan engineer the collapse of the Soviet Union to happen sooner than it would have otherwise?
Well…The armament race, and consequently the overall policy of the US since WWII certainly played a part in the economical failure of the USSR. But that would be the result of the political decisions of all US administrations from 1945 to to 1989. Not particularily of Reagan’s policies.
Beside, I’ve never heard/read Reagan being credited for the fall of the Soviet Union by anybody outside the US.
Oh, that would also explain why North Korea fell so long ago…
Never underestimate the power of a dictatorship to stay in power, regardless of the economic circumstances. Saddam was starving his people, and yet his hold on power was rock solid. Castro is still in power, and his country is an economic basket case.
The Soviet Union fell because the Soviet leadership gave up the fight. They gave up the fight because they realized it was unwinnable. Economics played a part in that. Gorbachev played a big part in it, because he wasn’t ruthless enough to stomp out the unrest in the client states with bloodshed. Reagan had a big part, because he showed the U.S.S.R that the west had a backbone and would not give up. And his military spending and SDI threats moved the battleground into a high-tech arena in which the Soviets could not compete.
Reagan also deserves credit for helping to foster the unrest in the client states that became a big problem for the Soviets. He called them an evil empire, he stood at the Berlin wall and taunted them. He wasn’t afraid to call evil for what it was. He did not ‘accomodate’ communism. When it expanded in central and south America, he stopped it.
All of these factors led to the breaking of the backbone of the Soviet Leadership.
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I’m curious as to whose administrations these were. I’m assuming you didn’t like Carter, who else “appeased” the Soviet Union. US policy towards the USSR from the 40’s to the 80’s could hardly be characterized as soft on communism. The Cold War didn’t just exist on Reagan’s shift. I guess Korea and Vietnam didn’t happen, and they hardly had anything to do with the Soviets fall. Or all that money spend on the military over 40 years.
I actually have some respect for the man. Chest-thumping that he alone won the cold war hardly proves the point or does the man justice. That will probably be the reason it sinks away into obscenity.
Oh, and Sam, what he “stopped” in Latin America was the people trying to take control of their own countries rather than putting up with the US backed fascist dictators and their death squads who were out raping nuns.
Y’know, I might be inclined to agree with you, Sinful. Of couse, I’m not going to say a word in support, since you seem to lack the necessities to fight your own battles.
Doncha think that the Gulf War (part 1, of course) had a lot to do with it? Since US military equipment so handily demolished all of Saddam’s Soviet built equipment in nothing flat, folks had to look at that and say, “If Communism’s so superior, why the hell is their stuff getting blown to bits?”
The fall of the Soviet Union was already well under way by Gulf I (after all, the U.S. felt confident enough that the U.S.S.R. was done for that it went to war in the Gulf with the Soviets in opposition). The Gulf War may have helped a few extra hard cases in the leadership see the light - I really don’t know. Perhaps Gulf I was the final nail in the coffin of the notion of the superiority of Communism.
Nah, Reagan didn’t cause the Union to fall single-handedly. Before Reagan even came into office (circa 1979) experts in the Soviet government predicted that the system would only last another decade anyhow. Reagan just recognized this and pushed it so that people would view him historically as the man who caused the U.S.S.R.'s demise, and struck a major blow against communism.
The Reagan Administration also deserves credit for giving the Soviets such a hell of a time in Afghanistan. In my view, it was the Afghan fiasco that finally pushed the already-weak USSR over the edge.
The former leaders of the Soviet Union certainly qualify, I should think. Reagan can rightly be viewed as giving them the “knockout punch.”
Sinful, don’t look for much support of your assertion here on this board, Reagan is hated by many here. If you’ll recall, the left was absolutely apoplectic at Reagan’s unashamed belligerence towards the Soviet Union, though this is conveniently forgotten now. The official KGB assessment of Reagan was not good, as far as they were concerned e.g. “…he says what he means and means what he says.” The death of the Soviet Union hit the hard core lefties and socialists pretty hard. The most murderous regime in world history to be sure, directly responsible for tens of millions of deaths, but hey - gotta break a few eggs to make omelets after all. We’ll get that Utopia yet!
As far as the “hot spots”, they can be rightly viewed as a sort of continuation of the cold war, given the huge vacuum formed by the soviet collapse.
They certainly might if they ever said any such thing. Every time I have seen documented quotes from “Soviet leaders,” the Soviet “leaders” have turned out to be former dissidents and low-level functionaries who have wanted to curry the favor of the U.S. (or the sponsors of the speaking tours in the U.S. from whom they are now drawing their paychecks).
It would be really interesting, for example, to find out what Andropov really thought about what was going on. (For that matter, even Putin could provide some interesting insights, although he has, to date, remained silent on those issues.)
I’m no huge Reagan fan, but I believe he deserves credit for at least speeding up the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, the fact that it happened sooner may have prevented another Afghanistan from taking place.
I think the breakup would have eventually happened – advances in communications technology (fax machines, internet, etc.) were making it harder for dictatorships to clamp down on their populations (although, as someone noted above, North Korea seems to be doing a pretty good job of it).
This is all highly speculative of course – when I hear someone speak with absolute certainty on such matters, I suspect they are letting their emotions get in the way of their judgement, whether they love Reagan or hate him. And opinion is very polarized about Reagan – people seem to either love him or hate him.
