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I think the best thing Reagan did was not fuck it up. The soviet union's collapse was inevitable because their government system simply didn't work, and that r

I think the best thing Reagan did was not fuck it up. The soviet union's collapse was inevitable because their government system simply didn't work, and that reality was starting to land on them in the mid-80's when oil prices started to fall as a catalyst. Of course, a lot can be said for not fucking it up. I'm not trying to minimize it (much) but I don't think it's fair to say the Soviet Union's fall was due in any part to any "strategy" of the west. At best our strategy helped the fall happen a little faster, but it was inevitable.

hga 12y ago
You believe it's essentially coincidental that Reagan was the first and only President to have the goal of ending the Soviet Union, not "containing" it? Or as I've noted elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8577120 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8577120) that the oil price fall just happened? There were very few people at the time that considered it "inevitable". As late as 1989, that very year, Paul Samuelson, in the introductory university text on economics, still claimed that "[T]he Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and thrive." The conventional wisdom of our ruling class at the time was that the Soviet Union was solid enough that Reagan's material attacks on it were folly, and therefore unjustifiably dangerous.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > You believe it's essentially coincidental that Reagan was the first and only President to have the goal of ending the Soviet Union, not "containing" it? Coincidental with what? The actual policy change of "Reagan's" that is usually credited for destroying the Soviet Union is the escalated military buildup -- a policy conceived and initiated late in the Carter Administration. And the actual collapse of the Soviet Union occurred during the first Bush Administration. In order for there to be even a coincidence, there'd have to be something for this alleged "first and only" status to be coincident with.

hga 12y ago

You believe it's essentially coincidental that Reagan was the first and only President to have the goal of ending the Soviet Union, not "containing" it? Or as I've noted elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8577120 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8577120) that the oil price fall just happened? There were very few people at the time that considered it "inevitable". As late as 1989, that very year, Paul Samuelson, in the introductory university text on economics, still claimed that "[T]he Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and thrive." The conventional wisdom of our ruling class at the time was that the Soviet Union was solid enough that Reagan's material attacks on it were folly, and therefore unjustifiably dangerous.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> You believe it's essentially coincidental that Reagan was the first and only President to have the goal of ending the Soviet Union, not "containing" it? Coincidental with what? The actual policy change of "Reagan's" that is usually credited for destroying the Soviet Union is the escalated military buildup -- a policy conceived and initiated late in the Carter Administration. And the actual collapse of the Soviet Union occurred during the first Bush Administration. In order for there to be even a coincidence, there'd have to be something for this alleged "first and only" status to be coincident with.