Reagan Didn't End the Cold War -- Leftist Intellectuals Did

weighty corruption and disparity of apportioning of resources

Hmm, sounds like a lot of countries far closer to home.

When you say "rich get richer" you are using of course the concpet of money as if it were power, which it is to a certian extent

Money is ultimate power in the US of A. Anyone who doesn't understand that in the context of today's world is blind.

Lobbyists curry political favor campaign contributions and out and out bribes. Politician exist largely to feed at the trough of the corporate dollars.

Our democracy has become the best govt money can buy. You tell me who has the power.

Sharn..it seems you have been able to get the recipe for word salad from your Queen Sarah! And it still tastes like crap! No matter who makes it. You have got "Communism" and Socialism" on the brain! That is just sad! You are displaying pathological tendencies that not only keep you from having rational thoughts but can lead to bigger problems. If you don't back off of the obsession that you have your life will become a dark hole from which you may never escape...SEEK THERAPY!!!

He's the one

Lyn Nofziger, His PR director once said "His enemies call him "ray-gun" his friends pronounce it "Ree gun". Now as I was saying to governor ray-gun the other day ..." (laughter)

Reagan's biggest accomplishment seems to be sleeping and letting others do the work.

That said the claim is that by concentrating on building more and more weapons and building up the military, which USSR tried to match, he basically bankrupted them; no one can compete with our economy

Let's not forget that before he started ratting out his fellow actors to Joe McCarthy, Reagan leaned Left. "Juke Girl" is one classic where he played a rabble rousing unionizer for grape pickers. Either way he was just acting then or just acting during his Presidency.

sesostrus - You are confusing an economic and political system with the countries claiming it. It wasn't "Communism" but the Soviet bloc which was expansionist, etc.

This kind of confusion is why many have no understanding of the real world; in an incredible silliness you attempt to to claim a particular political entity (the USSR) is actually the definition of a political system; this is silly, ignorant.

Coincidentally it was not SDI but conventional spending on conventional military programs which bankrupted the USSR - they were always a third world economy and while using a more efficient economic system (communism) could bring parts of it equal to us, it never had a broad base.

What many do not understand - if you look at GDP to military - in 1970 the US could replace it's entire military in 1 year; western europe 5 years, eastern europe 8 years, the USSR 13 years. People look at a mercator projection maop and see USSR as such a big country - look at a globe and it is much much smaller; and 60% is permafrost. They area 3rd world country that just can not compete with old or new world countries

Good commments -- I truly appreciate intelligent dialogue. That said, I do have to push back on your first point. The distinction between communism as an economic theory and the Soviet Union as a nation is an elementary one which I certainly understand. I was careful in my language and meant, literally, that communism was expansionistic. Expansion of "the workers struggle" was a fundamental tenet of Marxism (section 4 of the Communist Manifesto). The Soviet Union, was expansionist in large measure because it was communist. So was Cuba.

I agree with your point that SDI spending did not bankrupt the Soviet Union, because, as we both know, they didn't spend anything on SDI. It was uniquely with our folly. I think we can agree to dismiss the nonsense about Reagan's clever trap.

On conventional spending bankrupting the Soviet Union, I agree in part. There is an element of truth there, but military spending was not the only element in the demise of their system or, in my opinion, the central one. The data that have emerged since glasnost show that the US consistently overestimated Soviet military spending in the 1960s and 1970s. It was never close to what we thought at the time. Kennedy claimed that Ike and Nixon were weak on defense allowing a "missile gap" to develop. In fact there was a huge gap at the time of the 1960 election, but it was in our favor.

We know in part that the Soviets conducted a deliberate misinformation campaign to exaggerate their power (a modern Potemkin village?) as a means of deterrence, but we must also ask whether the US intelligence apparatus were willing participants in the overestimation as it was in the interest of their and the defense budgets.

In any case, an inefficient and dehumanizing system crashed and burdned of it own weight in good part because the Western democracies and our allies resisted resolutely long enough for the weakness to become apparent and regimes to lose the faith of their citizenry.

Russia went into Afghanistan to support a government that gave freedom to its people, in particular women. The current Afghan government is a corrupt puppet regime that ignores women's rights. Our leaders are frightening us with bogey men so we'll support their frenzied flailing around in a country they don't understand ...

I thought the same in the beiginning until I saw on TV all these cluster bomb (toys) thrown in villages that lead to villagers siding with the mujahadeen to attack the russians in the city. Russia then lost 13000 soldiers. They only controlled some cities and by the time they left they lost those too within an year after leaving. Are we repeating the same mistakes by indiscrimante bombings ? the drone kills the guy you want but hits many others in the area who were not with that guy before but now support his cause.

The US used cluster bombs within days of attacking Afghanistan. They're as bad as each other when it comes to human rights. I remember several years ago meeting a Russian who'd fought there. He told me about 'ghosts': local kids who accepted sweets from the soldiers in daytime and attacked with knives at night.

Fareed Zacharia said in an interview the the United States tends to see all of its enemies as though they are ten feet tall. It's never good to underestimate an opponent but we have made susceptibility to fear-mongering into a national habit.

Better to over-estimate, than mis-underestimate threats. You're less likely to live in fear if you wield over whelming power over your enemies.

Fareed Zacharia............I won't even watch him, don't trust him.

Viva, just wondering....any particular or specific reason why?

I guess I'm just confused VIVA, does he have something contagious?

What's not to trust. He's one of the most clear-headed analysts of Western Asia. I know many security analysts for CIA and Defense and they all think his insights are valuable. He brings knowledge of US and Eastern cultures to his writing that is a rarity in media and politics. Unless knowing your opponents and friends is a bad thing.......but ignoring history and regional realities has overextended our military and killed over 250K civilians.

There are many Americans who still make the mistake of believing that everybody has to look and act like us. American culture is very powerful. We don't need to kill thousands to get our message across.

Freedom of choice to not watch him..........is that wrong? I don't watch Beck either!!!!!!

You can watch or not watch whoever you like.

There is nowhere near to being a comparison to Beck, however. Zecharia is a Yale PhD in Political Science, studied under Samuel Huntington and is a former editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine. His gravitas and heft are literally astronomical units greater than Beck's.

I am just curious as to what he might have said or done to lead you to your disinclination.

Well, I guess you didn't go to Yale, because you didn't even spell Zacharia right. Then we differ, because Bush went to Yale too and we know he's stupid. Beck, he's just a highly paid idiot. Just goes to show what standards Yale and the networks have.

Thank you for the edit.

I'm still interested in your answer to the question, though.

You are living in a dream world. The Soviet military budget did not increase during Reagan's terms. The only uptick in their military was to fund their war against Afganistan.

Did you even read the article above?

Debi is exactly right. Gorbachev did not take the bait on SDI recognizing that it was unlikely to work and easily defeated. Soviet spending on conventional weapons were also not a factor. In fact, the arms reductions treaties Reagan negotiated after his meeting with Gorbachev in Reykjavik took military and economic pressure off of the Soviet Union. From 1971-1980 (Nixon, Ford, Carter) Soviet GNP grew at an annual rate of 2.7% with defense spending keeping pace at 2.5%. From 1981-1990 (Reagan, Clinton), their GNP grew at a rate of 1.4% annually while spending in defense lagged at 0.4% annual growth. The massive Soviet military investment occurred before Reagan took office and slowed after that.

The idea that SDI and other US spending "bankrupted" the Soviet Union is simply not true. It was the US who was spending itself into a hole with investments in weapons systems that are nearly useless in the current conflicts. These spending programs, though could be regarded as stimulus spending as they began during the recession in the middle of Reagan's first term.

I DO believe that Reagan played an important role in the ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union and defeat of global communist expansion. He continued the policies established by George Keenan et. al. of resolute resistance, though Grenada was not a shinning moment. He also deserves credit for taking the first steps to reduce nuclear weapons and for reducing our bellicose posture. Reagn talked tough, spent heavily on weapons, and lowered taxes in his FIRST administration. In the second administration he toned down the language, reduced spending from planned levels, negotiated arms treaties and raised taxes.

Actually if anything WE took the bait on Russia, particularly in aircraft. We 'recovered' (I still think they were leaked) plans for a Russian state of the art aircraft. Denoted the Foxbat, the aircraft was supposed to be faster, more manueverable, and more deadly in air air combat than any aircraft in the history of mankind. It was claimed to give Russia 'immediate, inevitable, and unwavering' air superiority.

In turn we spent over 4 billion dollars researching and developing the F-15 strike eagle.

The reality was - different from the intelligence. The Mig 25 foxbat turned out to be nothing more than a high speed interceptor, already inferior to our F14 tomcats in everything but range.

In short Russia wrote some specs on a napkin gave them to us, and we spent the modern day equivilant of 15 billion dollars to defeat that napkin.

Hey Sgt -- I could not agree more. I had a conversation recently with a very high official in the army who complained about the lack of senior officers due to the "peace dividend" of the 1994... Actually, I think we were spending quite enought in 1992 (more than the next 10 nations combined, six of whom were our allies) but we spent it on the wrong things -- preparing to fight a Soviet Union shaped shadow with high-tech weapons when the emerging enemy was something very different. Every B1 and B2 represents the loss of several hundred experienced majors and colonels, each ship several thousand.

I talked to an army major recently who detailed his efforts in Afghanistan to win over a village near Khost . Affter he left we bombed the village. The major said that the bombing probably undid in a single hour all the work he had done over a year and a half. There is not now, and there never has been a substitute for boots on the ground to gain the ground or to earn the respect of the locals.

Eastern Europe experienced communism (?) for two generations, at best. The Tsars were overthrown when my parents were babies. Your understanding of history is pale.

Reagan's handlers positioned him as a major force in the decline of the Soviet Union to increase their own power behind the scenes, through public opinion manipulation. Much like Joe McCarthy, these folks managed to get a sizable portion of our population to foam at the mouth at the mere mention of communism, withour ever really comprehending what communism was. For them, comprehension was not even necessary. All they needed to do was place a prominent and frightening scenario before their devotees and leave the rest to the popular media.

You might want to heed your own advice and research beyond the myth that the popular media and Hollywood has spun about Sen. Joseph McCarthy. I know it's difficult to challenge conventional wisdom, but exposure to only to biased accounts tends to hide the truth.

Beatles, eh?

Hmmm. Given the timing, maybe it was just this.

Yeah, that has something to do with the fall of the USSR and the wall.

And of course "Reagan spending" had absolutely nothing to do with SOH Thomas "Tip" O'neill and his liberal democratic buds who were a majority in Congress. The spending in the 1980s was infinitesmal compared to what Obama has spent in just 11 months. The difference is that Reagan already had the economy on the right track within 9 months of being inaugurated. Obama promised unemployment would stay below 8% if we passed his $900Billion stimulus package. How's that going anyway?

Jobs are already killed.

Bad timing on Healthcare is the biggest problem. After 8 years of W nothing bothers me.

After 8 years of W nothing bothers me.

Do you work for the government or private sector?

dsanthony,

Great post.