I asked a professor mine who is from Russia once if Reagan was responsible for the fall of the USSR. How did he respond?
He laughed.
Amen.
Wait a minute! If RR did not single handedly defeat the evil empire, then I might as well wait for economic benefits to trickle down to me. 'Cause so far, any trickling I’ve perceived seems suspiciously like fatcats pissing on my head…
I know - let’s eliminate capital gains! Wait a minute…
Reminds me of my professor for History of Economic Thought, spring semester 1989. When we got to the part about “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his means,” I raised my hand and asked, “So in a system like that, what’s the incentive to work hard if you’re going to get whatever you need anyway?” The professor laughed and said, “You’re going to Russia in the fall, right? Well, when you get back, stop by my office and let me know how it went.”
I’ve known two former Russians who believe Reagan had a lot to do with the fall of the USSR. My questionable anecdote trumps your questionable anecdote 2 to 1, so there. 
Jeff
I’m curious as to exactly what impact the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan had on the USSR. To me, it seems that their entire involvement in Afghanistan was a huge budgetary drain, and that their pullout could have had as much impact on the Soviet psyche as our pullout from Vietnam did on ours. I know almost next to nothing on how this issue might have accelerated reforms to the USSR, so I’d be interested to hear more about it. Thanks.
BTW, I’m asking because I think that the US’s involvement in Afghanistan could be attributed to Reagan (and yes, I know, it looks to have backfired on us in the long run).
The containment policy, as developed by George Kennan and carried out by Harry Truman beginning in 1947 and continued by every other president until the end of the Cold War is the primary reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union, along with the inherent flaws in a system (communism) that does not financially reward ingenuity and hard work.
That’s very true, but you must admit that some administrations pursued that containment more aggressively than others. Reagan was a helluva lot more aggressive than, say, Carter.
Jeff
Man, I hate how these memes spread. Afghanistan ‘backfired’??? In what way? Do you think the U.S. would be better off had it left the Taliban in power?
Afghanistan was a gigantic nut-hatchery for terrorists. I was a brutal, repressive state. It was essentially a cancer on the planet, spreading destruction all over the place. The U.S. military lanced it. And now it has to heal. No question, it’s still a pretty harsh place. Did you expect it to turn into Des Moines overnight?
But this increasingly negative rhetoric regarding Afghanistan is just way over the top. The fact is, while it’s still unstable and controlled by warlords in some regions, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars in reconstruction so far. The Army Corps of engineers has built dozens of new hospitals (including the largest women’s hospital in the region), hundreds of new schools, bridges, roads, power plants, etc. The Karzai government is still in place. Large amounts of foreign investment are flowing into the country (for instance, there is a 40 million dollar Hyatt under construction in Kabul).
Whatever shape Afghanistan is in today, it is light-years better off than it was before.
Back to Reagan…
I was very active in politics in the Carter/Reagan years. Those of you were weren’t around then, or who weren’t paying attention, may not realize the HUGE effect the Reagan Administration had on the Soviet Union.
Under Carter, the Soviet Union was expansionist, agressive, and unapologetic. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, were heavily investing in the middle east, was actively trying to destabilize east Asia, Central and South America. It had recently cracked down on dissidents in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Pundits and socialists in AMERICA were proclaiming the advantages of Soviet economics. I can’t tell you how many times I had to restrain the impulse to vomit when yet another mush-headed leftist would tell me all about how literacy and health care in the Soviet Union were so great, and how, while the standard of living overall wasn’t quite as high, the people focused much more on culture, literature, education, and family. There was NO suggestion back then that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse - that’s historical revisionism propagated by the same people who back then were claiming that the Soviet Union was a lovely place.
You can still see the last remnants of those people today - they’re the ones who claim Cuba is actually a lovely place to be, and that Fidel Castro is a great leader loved by his people. Of course, when Cuba finally collapses, those same people will claim they knew it all along.
Totalitarian countries survive through expansion. As they burn out their own people and economies, they plunder others. Saddam tried it, and the Soviet Union tried it. Until Ronald Reagan came along.
While it is true that containment was the official policy of the U.S. since the Truman years, it was carried out with varying degrees of effort and success through various presidencies. Kennedy drew a line with the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in the end he pulled missiles out of Turkey in a quid-pro-quo. After Vietnam, the peace movement in the west grew very, very strong, and as a result Soviet expansionism was on the rise. In the 1970’s, countries all through the world fell to Communists. Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, etc. Soviet influence in the middle east during that period was growing as well. Syria had a massive military funded by the Soviet Union, as did Iraq.
Then Reagan came to power. Not only did he step up the rhetorical heat, calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, but he immediately began funneling aid to anti-communist insurgencies throughout the world. And he began a huge military buildup at home. He overthrew the violent communist takeover in Grenada. He funded the Contras. He put Pershing missiles in Europe. He started funding the Strategic Defense Initiative. Incidentally, SDI scared the crap out of the Soviet Union. The brilliance of SDI was that it moved the competition away from a mere accumulation of tanks and missiles, which the Soviet Union was good at, into high technology and engineering, which the Soviet Union was hopeless at. During their various Summits, Gorbachev ALWAYS demanded that SDI be scrapped in exchange for nuclear arms reductions. Reagan always refused (to the fury of the Democrats and the Peace activists).
It’s important to remember just how alone Reagan was back then. He was HATED for his stance against the Soviet Union. He was burned in effigy. Millions of peace activists marched against him. As much as the left hates George Bush today, they hated Reagan ten times as much.
Nonetheless, by the end of his two terms, the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, nuclear arms had been reduced dramatically, Perestroika and Glastnost were in full swing, and the Berlin Wall was about to come down.
The notion that this was just a coincidence just doesn’t stand up to reason. Not considering how dramatic the turnaround was, and how it correlated with the vastly increased opposition to its policies the Soviet Union had to absorb under Reagan.
What I meant was that our involvement with Afghanistan in the 80s can be seen as creating an environment which allowed the Taliban to come to power in the first place, and that this ended up backfiring on us. Since I was specifically talking about the Reagan period, I thought this might have been apparent, but I guess I was wrong. I was not creating any “meme” about the post-Taliban period. In any case, the tone of your post is uncalled for, and did nothing to address my question, which was how specifically the failure of the Russians in Afghanistan might have accelerated reforms in the USSR.
for minega
heres is an intersting read:
http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/700/725.html
some background material
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/coldwar0.html
and some fundamentals about Reagan
http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v10n6/garrity.html
Now you have to remember that Ronald Reagan is an actor. A mediocre actor in the movies but his greatest role was as president of the United States. He gave such a convincing performance as the great leader that all of leaders of the nations of the world took him very seriously. They really thought he meant every single word he said down to the last minute detail.
So when He said he was going to destroy Communism, the russians believed him.
When he continued the military buildup for the US forces to be bigger, better, better equipted and more modern, the soviet military took extra notice.
Then when he touted the Strategic Defense Initiative that would render the soviet nuclear arsenal impotent, the leadership of the Soviet Union seriously worried. So much so that they made it a key point of disagreement in nuclear arms talks.
and what was SDI? Probably the biggest political bluff in history. There was no way that thing could be built in Reagans presidency. We’re only now just getting the kinks out of the Patriot missile. SDI is a myth that the Soviets swallowed whole. Their preparations to counter it, their political manuverings to get around it contributed to the accelaration of communist decline.
What was Reagans role in ending the cold war? I would say a very crucial and important one. No one but an experienced actor couldve pulled off what he did. His credibility was impecible. He was the teflon president. His popularity a mandate of the people. Its hard to believe this was all luck because no one just gets all of the good luck and none of the bad. This man had great skills as statesman, leader and politician.
BrightNShiny: Sorry, I didn’t get the context. But perhaps you could elaborate: What did the U.S. do in the 80’s in Afghanistan that ‘backfired’ on them?
Well, the CIA sponsored fundamentalist Muslim opposition to the Soviet occupation, which included helping out a certain Saudi fanatic by the name of Osama Bin Laden. When the Soviets left, of course the Taliban took over and I am sure that you know the rest of THAT story.
The idea that Reagan helped force the Soviets to collapse by bankrupting it through his defense spending makes very little sense. Dictatorships are very good at surviving even when their economies are stagnant and devoting a huge proportion of their resources to the military. North Korea whose situation is a lot more desperate than the Soviet Union ever was is a case in point.
What would the US have done if the Soviets had pursued a hard line and retained their hold over Eastern Europe? Pretty much nothing. It had no realistic military options for attacking the Soviet Union and Reagan’s policies didn’t change that. There was very little it could do to make the Soviet Union collapse. The steps towards democracy and captialism taken by Gorbachev in the 80’s which lead to the collapse of Soviet control in East Europe in 1989 and then to the collapse ot Soviet Union itself in 1991 were a matter of choice though obviously he didn’t foresee or intend the final consequences of his actions.
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This is a good link which debunks the conservative myth-making which gives Reagan the credit for these events:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Politics/fitzgerald.html
Of special note:
“Between 1985 and 1987 Gorbacheve spent a great deal of effort trying to convince the Reagan administration to restrain the program, presumably because he thought his own military-industrial complex would eventually force him to adopt a program of some sort to counter SDI, but by the end of 1987 the Soviet leadership no longer regarded SDI as a threat”
Sam Stone, The Taliban started as a fundamentalist Muslim resistance group during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Reagn/Bush admistration armed and supprted them during that war. Reagan put the Taliban in power. We also buddied up with Osama bin Laden. This support obviously backfired on us.
To answer the OP, Reagan had zero to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. It was going to fall anyway. He just happened to be there when it did.
Sam Stone, I think Frostillicus and Diogenes have answered your question (although the issue of our involvement in Afghanistan in the 80s could make a good GD on its own). I don’t wish to hijack the thread any further. Its hard to be clear on a message board sometimes, so I guess we just misunderstood each other.
Correction: He wasn’t even in office anymore when it did.
The extent to which the U.S. is responsible for Osama Bin Laden is greatly overestimated. The logic seems to be: The U.S. supported the Mujahadeen. Bin Laden worked with the Mujahadeen. Therefore, the U.S. is responsible for the rise Osama Bin Laden.
Also, to say that something ‘backfired’ implies that things are worse than they would have been had the Americans not gotten involved. Given that Soviet failure in Afghanistan was one of the things that helped bring down the Iron Curtain, it’s hard to say that American support for the Mujahadeen ‘backfired’. Again, the U.S. was presented with two undesirable options, and chose correctly. That doesn’t mean everything turned out swimmingly.
Would you say that U.S. support for the Soviet Union in WWII ‘backfired’? After all, the same government turned hostile again immediately after the war, leading to a half-century of cold and hot wars. But to claim that U.S. support backfired, you’d have to show that, A) The cold war would have been avoided had the U.S. not given arms to the Soviets, and B) The loss of the immediate goal (opposing Hitler) would have been outwieghed by the good of not arming the Soviets.
To me, this is another example of the “Lack of perfection == failure” logic that critics use to oppose policies they don’t like. The U.S. supported the Mujahadeen. They, in turn, drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Sounds like a great success story. Twenty years later, an event happens which is peripherally related to the people involved in 20 year old deals, and suddenly the support for the Mujahadeen ‘backfired’?
The US had no business getting involved in Afghanistan at all. The Soviet invasion was none of our business. We ended up supporting a regime that was far more evil than the Soviet Union. Reagan made a political choice and chose wrongly. His choice resulted in the murders of 3000+ American civilians.
No. The specific charge is that of all the rebel groups in Afghanistan that the Reagan adminstration supported, they specifically directed their funds and weapons to the group that became the Taliban to the exclusion of other groups, even though they were warned at the time that they were funding the group that was most hostile to the U.S.
This was not a “lesser of evils” choice.