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montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 45
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2003 - 10:36 pm: |     |
Reagan won the Cold War in the same way that Al Gore invented the Internet. He focused attention on the right place at the right time, and deserves a small but genuine share in the credit.
Who can forget lines like "I've passed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union and we start bombing in five minutes", or his wilder fantasies about ballistic missile defence.
That got people into the streets all right, and by the end of the decade everything had changed.
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cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 51
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - 11:58 am: | |
Reagan won the Cold War not by "focusing attention on it), but by going against the wishes of the striped-pants appeasers in the State Dept and the Democratic (and Nixonian, to be honest) thinking of "don't get them mad at you whatever you do" which also 'focused attention on it" but in an entirely unsuccessful way. Reagan confronted the Soviets despite people trying to remove "tear down this wall" and similar lines from his speeches. It was the threat of SDI and the US ability to economically pursue it that buried the Soviets. THey couldn't compete, and they fell -- no thanks to Communist-at-heart Gorby (I assume you erroneously credit him with the dismantling of the Soviet Union? Nothing is further from the truth).
"Right place at the right time" doesn't acknowledge that his desire to defeat that "Evil Empire" was a constant with Reagan. Had Gore been pining away for years about the idea of the internet?
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Elmwoodian
Citizen
Username: Java_drinker
Post Number: 286
Registered: 8-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - 12:26 pm: | |
Cjc,
You’re correct; “they could not compete”. We bankrupt them into fiscal submission, but only at the expense of bankrupting our nation’s morals too.
The Reagan administration was home to $350 hammers, ex-CIA directors (then Vice President of the US) who claimed to be “out of the loop” on operations he personally signed off on, John Poindexter running his own mini-government and some of the worst domestic policies of the late 20th century.
It’s with rose-colored glasses that Reagan-huggers look back at those times. What they forget is what it was like to live under them; secret wars all over South America and Iraq, crushing unemployment and record-breaking debt only now topped by Dubbua, duck-and-cover 50's era propaganda, payola to the media outlets to prop up “just say no”, anti-Russian misinformation and D.A.R.E. (horrible failures, history has proven), not to mention the largest peace-time military spending package ever (by a factor of 10).
So sure, I’ll give him credit for spending his way to victory, but try not to forget what he was actually spending.
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cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 54
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - 12:46 pm: | |
Oh....Woody! "Crushing unemployment" obviously refers to the Carter years which gave us the Misery Index. Deficits -- you no doubt point to interest rates on that. Problem is, interest rates fell during Reagan. And they have with Bush as well.
Peace time military spending is what ended the SOviets, and stopped a necessary foreign policy at the time of "pick your A--hole" (see: Iran Contra) when you tried to counter Soviet influence around the world. It was easier for the Soviets to support dictators as they were a totalitarian state.
No doubt you support more spending on education (I mean, what thinking, feeling person couldn't?), where the Education dept LOST 100s of millions. At least we (that means "me", and "you") spent on the COld War and won! We transfered 5 Trillion in the "War on Poverty" with nothing to show for it (until it was reformed in 1996).
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montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 49
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - 10:36 pm: | |
Did you think that Star Wars weapons had an effect? The following report by former DoD Testing Director Philip Coyle paints a different picture (courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists).
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmdcoylerep.pdf |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 56
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 11:47 am: | |
sorry -- for some reason I can't access that article. But I'd say yes, it did. Whether it worked or not (and I think eventually it would -- either as proposed or in some other form) --- that the US would commit to doing it in and of itself tipped the Soviets over the brink.
If that scientist said it wasn't possible -- fine. They're getting some decent results in their tests now for an ABM defense, particularly in the booster-phase intercepts rather than the bullet-on-bullet raining down from space intercepts. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 22
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 12:04 pm: | |
Of course, Gorbachev likes to take some credit for the Cold War ending.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm
lying commie bastard. what the hell does he know about the Soviet Union? |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 61
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 1:56 pm: | |
Obviously not enough. Gorby thought he could grant a tiny bit of freedom/glasnost and keep the totalitarian communist state which he believed in. |
montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 52
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 2:56 pm: | |
Ballistic missile defense is a questionable strategy because the countermeasures cost so much less than the defenses themselves.
It might be useful for an extremely wealthy nation confronted with an extremely poor attacker, but even in this case it would only apply to the missile-based nuclear deterrent, and would still take away resources that could have been used to resolve the underlying conflict.
In the U.S.-Soviet situation it was a joke. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 65
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 3:56 pm: | |
The joke was the foreign policy that appeased the Soviets before this. That the US was backing and pursuing it was enough.
When you say "resources to resolve the underlying conflict" -- what do you mean? Pay them off, like in North Korea? |
montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 54
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 4, 2003 - 10:41 pm: | |
In a case where both sides can destroy each other with nuclear weapons, the rules change.
Containment of the U.S.S.R. was not a policy of appeasement. It had its origins in the 1950's, when the consequences of appeasement and the effects of nuclear weapons were much clearer in people's minds.
To be honest, there are no good historical examples of large powers resolving their differences with small powers in the way I suggested, mainly because the small powers usually don't have weapons of "deterrent strength".
Israel is a possible exception, as was France (in relation to the Soviet Union) when de Gaulle created the independent French nuclear deterrent.
North Korea is a special situation. The Bush Administration has apparently grasped the need for a multilateral approach, and we should wish them all good luck. Only a fool would want him to fail for partisan political reasons. |
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