Reagan's Legacy

The hawks are telling us that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union. They may be right, but almost certainly for the wrong reasons.

Acccording to the hawks, Reagan spent so much money on the US military that the Soviet Union finally threw in the towel. This argument is not entirely convincing, since the US had been spending on the military for years with no apparent effect on the Soviet Union. Why was Reagan's spending any different from the spending before him? And why would the Soviet Union care about increased US military spending, especially on technological boondoogles such as "Star Wars"?

A better explanation is that Reagan was to the Soviet Union as Nixon was to China. Only a politician who had a reputation as a hard-liner could put aside the hard-line rhetoric and sit down and talk business. Nixon had his trip to China, and Reagan had his meetings with Gorbachev. At those meetings, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to arms reductions. The Soviet Union already was on its final legs, and those meetings may (or may not) have helped lead to its final implosion. "Hey, maybe we are better off being friends with those Americans, rather than spending a fortune on our military."

Comments

[S.W. Anderson]

The Soviet Union and its greater East bloc empire operated on an ever-growing body of lies, denials of reality and internal inconsistencies for a very long time. This was made possible by the concentration of power in the hands of a very few people dedicated to keeping the system going, and by the ruthlessness of those people.

Eventually, the realities closed in on those in power, as they became widely obvious to the union's various populations. It's also worth noting that after Stalin and his Neanderthal toadies passed from leadership, succeeding leaders seemed to be more intelligent, better educated and more basically decent as human beings. I really believe that by the time Gorbachev rose to the top, the leadership had lost all heart for continuing the lies and murdering large numbers of people in an effort to keep the lies going.

In that sense, the whole communist system just came undone. And Ronald Reagan was president when that happened.