By the time Reagan took office, it was basically already over: the U.S.S.R. had already failed to mobilize economically in the way it needed to, and it had already fallen behind in the arms race. Afghanistan was what broke the Soviet Union’s spirit militarily. Reagan no doubt should be credited for keeping the pressure on so that they wouldn’t try something crazy to regain their losing fortunes, but even Reagan knew that the Soviet Union was doomed. It came out not too many years ago that he was basically given intel on how pathetic things were over there, how past military strength estimates had been widely inflated. It’s not clear why he withheld this info from the public, but it all worked out in the end.
Reagan broke the back of the Soviet Union in three ways.
First, he transformed the morale of the United States. One of the tenets of Soviet Doctrine was that the United States was decadent and would collapse from within. When American morale turned around, this disproved the Soviet theory and demonstrated to all but the truest believers that the United States would not be collapsing anytime soon. T
Second, he rebuilt and refunded the military. His willingness to do so, even in the face of defecit spending, forced the Soviets to keep up their military spending levels at a time when their economy was rotting from the inside out.
Finally, In Iceland in 1987, he refused Gorbachevs offer to give up SDI for Soviet concessions on missiles. This convinced the Soviets that SDI was plausible and forced them to keep throwing money at their military that could have been used to artificially prop up the dying economy. The bread lines stayed in place and Ivan J. citizen stopped being a true believer. The Soviet Union continued to rot from the inside as the border between Austria and Hungary comes down in 1989. The air leaks out and the communist governments of the Warsaw Pact countries fall one by one. Soviet tanks don’t appear in Prague this time. The Baltic States leave in 1990. The Soviet Union itself turns off the lights on December 26th, 1991.
Was it inevitible because communism is fatally flawed? Perhaps. Did Ronald Reagan force them to spend themselves into oblivion and hasten the process? Yes.
We are discussing politics and history. What’s decency got to do with anything?
Rubbish. IF the Soviet’s were concerned about SDI, it was so much just theory and in the future they worried little about it. And, in the unlikely event SDI would have been found feasible, what if the Soviet’s just announced “If you try to deploy it, we’ll respond by launching all our nukes before you can do so.”?
It could have easily turned out differently. The military buildup could have led the Soviet Union into a bloody power struggle better armed and more pissed off than ever before. Without the head to head, Gorby might have been able to bring his nation down sooner and more softly. We’ll never know. But it’s silly to pretend that Reagan’s policies were predictable or inevitable or even a pre-thought way to get the particular result we got. It certainly contributed, but it was through the efforts of a lot more important people than Reagan that it worked out the way it did.
Brutus, showing more ignorance is what is pathetic, as it was more pathetic to kill the political leaders who wanted to win through elections, Republican administrations supported the electoral fraud victories of two previous administrations (before the civil war), and condoned the massacre of leftist political leaders. That was the last straw that then caused the civil war, I can tell you that while a communist regime may have been the result, there was more of a democratic tradition to prevent that from happening, and I do base that on the fact of what happened to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas were voted out of office.
The big point, if you have already not noticed, is that the extreme left was going to win trough elections, by condoning fraud and supporting death squads, Reagan just aborted what was going to happen, I would have preferred the people to find for themselves how lousy living under communism would be, and in the end it was more likely that they would have done so and vote the commies out of office, change would have been more peacefully, alas, the extreme right in El Salvador choosed to kill more than 50,000 to do it the other way, and Reagan did condone it.
Are you a joke or were you Secretary of Defense under President Reagan? What positions have you held in the US Government or DoD? Etc. …
Grenada. Operation Urgent Fury, when America bravely went forth to defeat the crack commando Cuban bulldozer drivers. Where, you might ask, is the monument to this valiant American display of armed virtue? There was a proud day for all Americans, when we bravely faced impossible odds in our favor to crush an enemy we hardly knew existed. Not just anyone can smash a gnat with a sledge hammer, it takes American know-how. And courage, of course.
That, and watching him sell my mamma Twenty Mule Team Borax on the western story TV show. That gleaming, confident face, those eyes twinkling with sheer candor, as he assured us that only Borax could truly cleanse.
GIGO was right to mention the horror of American intervention in Central America. But it is too specific, RR cannot be singled out. The list of blood-drenched, brutal, and ruthless dictators - Trujillo, Pinochet, Uguarte, so many monsters nourished at our bosom - is too lengthy for such blame. All we required to provide a license to murder and the means to do so was a sincere declaration of anti-Communism. But the shame is ours, not his.
He also broke the back of the Soviet Union by helping its client states revolt. He called them an ‘Evil Empire’ (to the howls of protests from the left). He went to Berlin and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. He took the moral high ground and held it, at a time when a lot of people in the west were convinced that the Soviet Union was the wave of the future. If I had a nickel for every time some idiot lectured me on the universal health care and education in the Soviet Union, and on how the working man was the backbone of the country and there were no evil rich, etc… Anyone remember “Commie Chic”? Young idiots running around wearing Che Guevera caps and wearing T-shirts with hammer and sickle logos? It was all the rage for a while.
And this notion that ‘everyone knew’ the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse is pure historical revisionism. In 1979, it looked like the Soviets were winning. They were engaged in adventurism all through central and south America, they had just invaded Afghanistan, they had a HUGE military with weapons that were in some ways better than the American’s had at the time. Their sphere of influence was expanding all over the world. Vietnam had been lost, and Cambodia soon followed. In contrast, the U.S. had been humiliated by Iran, the military was in decline, and the economy was a shambles.
“Oh no our enemy is patriotic” was not a cause of the downfall of the Soviet Union. The bloody fax machine played an infintely larger role than US patriotism.
How brave of him
Not really. Their economy was in the shitter anyway. They didn’t have the money to increase their military.
Like…?
J isn’t a letter in Russian.
When did Reagan build a time machine and go back to 1928?
All of which would have happened, no matter how much money Reagan spent.
Political and economic turmoil from within and rebellious member states began and continued long before and despite Reagan. After Kruschev, it was pretty much all downhill.
Interestingly, until the last, one of the “tenets of Soviet Doctrine” was that they needed to stay unified against the growing American threat. This is one of the few things that they held on to until the end, in large part thanks to Mr. Reagan.
Won’t even get into the difference between “communism” and the Soviet Union.
Nope. He did screw a whole generation out of their future, though.
Go Reagan!
I didn’t say everyone knew. Reagan knew. We didn’t know because he claimed the opposite in public from the reports he started to get in on how overinflated our estimates of the Soviet economy and military strength was.
And, why would you think a crony in the administration of Ronald Reagan would be particularly credible? They’d have every reason to lie about matters that cast themselves in a favorable light. If you wish to criticize what I wrote, then back up your arguments citing independent military and scientific experts outside of the US. Or, quotes from people high up in the Soviet power structure that contadict what I wrote.
What happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan would suggest their military strength was dubious.
But all those things were perfectly true so far as they went, Sam. They weren’t worth the price the people paid for them, but they were very positive things about Soviet society – things we would do well to learn from.
Sam Stone
As opposed to a nation that was rapidly spiralling down the crapper when he arrived.
Yeah, he could really do a sound bite. And this has what to do with his legacy?
Yeah. . .moral high ground. Like IranContra, and Grenada.
You’d have a crapload of nickels. Dated 1978.
Man, you really don’t wanna see my cycling socks.
Okay, then instead of “everyone” we’ll just say that the intelligence agencies in the US were aware of it. And the US had learned that imperialism didin’t work as well in the late twentieth century as it had previously. A lesson that the USSR was on the way to discovering for itself. And I’m gonna hafta ask for a cite that the USSR had weapons that were better. They had MIGs. And there’s only so much fun you can have with a plane that’ll almost go all the way into space. And the economy, as has been pointed out to you previously, isn’t really controlled by the president. Now, the prez can screw it up pretty mercilessly (see Reagan, Ronald and Bush, George fils), but Reagan had dick all to do with the economy in the US going anywhere but straight into the shitter.
Waste
What are you implying by this? That one has to be in the DoD in order to know that in the 15 years since Reagan left office, SDI has only advanced to the stage of unrealistic tests? In fact, much is known about the current SDI system…and the tests used to be public knowledge until the Bush Administration, in their commitment to open democracy, chose to classify them so that organizations like Union of Concerned Scientists would no longer have access to the information that allowed them to point out in gory detail how far from a realistic operation system SDI is. Now they can just leak the results of tests if they succeed (without giving the details that the test was essentially just a repeat of previous tests with the same unrealistic conditions) and keep the failures classified.
You’re sure the arms race had nothing to do with helping the Soviet Union collapse? Granted, Reagan didn’t start the arms race but to pretend the United States had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union is false.
Marc
The three things Reagan will be remembered for are Iran-Contra, the collassal failure of trickle down economics and the corresponding explosion of the national debt, and an appealling, okey doke public persona which made him politically immune to his own incompetence and the incredible corruption of his administration.
And believe it or not I voted for the guy in '84. Stupidest vote I ever cast.
A burden of regret like that might crush a lesser man.
Oh, what a crock. US intelligence agencies have NEVER successfully predicted this sort of thing. What evidence do you have that the US intelligence community predicted Soviet collapse? They were utterly surprised at the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years later. The US intelligence community has never been right about matters of such magnitude.
I don’t often agree with Sam Stone but on this one point he is right; it is pure, absolute historical revisionism to suggest that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable in 1979. At that time, the two superpowers were running neck and neck and a lot of very bright people felt the Soviets had an edge. Nobody thought the USSR was doomed - not the US intelligence community or anyone else. The Soviets were doing just dandy in 1979.