Quote:
Originally posted by ironweed
Now that you mention it, what exactly did he do? The theory I'm familiar with is that by wasting shitloads of money on Star Wars and other weapons systems, we bankrupted the USSR by forcing them to keep up with the Joneses. I've never been completely sure why Gorby shouldn't get credit for the death of the CCCP, though, by introducing reforms that made it impossible to put the genies of nationalism back in the bottle.
|
It's not clear to me that we did anything that made much difference in the demise of the Soviet Union, but it is important (hi Iraq!) to pretend that we exercise more control over events in foreign countries than we really do. Arguably our military build-up was forcing them to try to keep up, but this seems like a half-assed way to claim victory, since those arms were sold to us at the time as the necessary response to a Soviet build-up. And if you believe everything Reagan said about the economy, ours would presumably have grown even faster had we cut taxes more instead of spending that money on the military, letting us pull away from the Soviets even sooner.
