What did Bring Down the Soviet Union...?

[dhoward]

I seem to recall quite a slew of Regan cartoons during his presidency. Many having to do with his defense projects. SDI comes to mind first.
I do, however believe in strong defense initiatives. Even when that entails a strong offense...
YMMV.

[techweenie]

Reagan was an awful president. One of the worst. Somehow, he was embraced by some Americans as the "dotty old uncle" they never had. He was showing signs of dementia when he was still governor of CA. He had a corrupt cabinet and made idiot/zealot appointments.

He rationalized his willingness to run up huge deficits by saying that Americans 'didn't understand them.'

We'll be paying for his failures for generations.

[Mulhollanddose]

[dhoward]

Wanna breath mint?

[kach22i]

Originally posted by techweenie
Reagan was an awful president. One of the worst. Somehow, he was embraced by some Americans as the "dotty old uncle" they never had. He was showing signs of dementia when he was still governor of CA. He had a corrupt cabinet and made idiot/zealot appointments.

He rationalized his willingness to run up huge deficits by saying that Americans 'didn't understand them.'

We'll be paying for his failures for generations.

Agreed.

The only war Reagan won was on the screens of Hollywood and the battle against student aid for those in need.

[Mulhollanddose]

Adam Ulam (Harvard Sovietologist) said, before Reagan took office, that the Soviets could not be stopped unless faced with "a power strong and determined enough to make Soviet foreign adventurism too risky and expensive."...This is precisely how Reagan won the cold war and liberated their peoples from totalitarianism.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Adam Ulam (Harvard Sovietologist)

Was latter discovered to be a ghostwriter for the communist, feeding hype directly to the Reagan administration.

I just made it up, but prove it's not true.

[widebody911]

So if the idea is to trick the other guy to spend himself into the ground, then Osama Bin Laden is a frickin' genius. GWB is spending billions chasing "ter'ists" but OBL's entire operational budget wouldn't fund 20 minutes of IraqNam.

[GDSOB]

Exactly, W took the bait and stepped into this mess. The War on Terrorism is as effective as the War on Poverty & the War on Drugs.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Leave it to Pat to diminish one of the greatest Presidents in America, and to accomplish this defending the "truth"ful neo-communist Soviets.

I'm beginning to see the reasons you have such a hard time out here, Mul-berry. Your philosophical and moral yardstick is way too short, probably no more than 26 inches, maybe less. It's definitely not the full 36 inches.

You've stated that Ronald Reagan was a great president, but have yet to list a single reason why that is true.

Since he is not responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union in any way, you'll have to come up with other reasons.

Go ahead, enlighten us. Borrow a real yardstick (and use it) before you begin, though, otherwise you know what's going to happen.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Adam Ulam (Harvard Sovietologist) said, before Reagan took office, that the Soviets could not be stopped unless faced with "a power strong and determined enough to make Soviet foreign adventurism too risky and expensive."...This is precisely how Reagan won the cold war and liberated their peoples from totalitarianism.

Yeah, yeah, Ulan and Richard Pipes used to be on McNeil-Lehrer on a regular basis in the last decade of the Soviet Union spouting their nonsense. I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the CIA's getting caught completely flatfooted by the speed of the collapse, indeed that it was happening at all, was because they listened to these two idiots and a few more whose careers were built on the back of the cold war and their prowess in Soviet knowledge.

Funniest thing was, in the spring of 1983, when I was in grad school, a former economist within the Soviet hierarchy who had immigrated to America as a Russian Jew, gave a talk at my university about the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. He was very thorough, spoke for about two hours and answered all questions, though he was hard to understand because of his thick Russian accent. He told us all why the collapse was going to happen, and was only off by about 2 years, he thought he would occur in 1987. Of course, large systems have a momentum of their own and being as close as two years is pretty accurate. I wish I could remember his name, maybe if I call the school they have records. It was open to the public, but only something like 75 people were there. Reagan of course, had done virtually nothing at the time of his talk to bring down the system.

Anyone who thinks Ronald Reagan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union is the kind of person who thinks the rooster's crowing makes the sun rise.

[carnutzzz]

"While Liberals believed that the United States should be reconciled to the existence of the USSR and the continuation of the failed containment policy known as the Cold War, Ronald Reagan saw a way to bring that government to its knees--now, in our time. He increased our military budget, forcing the USSR to increase its own military spending to match. In fact, given the 28.3% increase in the Gross Domestic Product during the 1980's, the overall increase in military spending as a percentage of the GDP only increased by .6% during Reagan's term, though it nearly doubled in dollar amount from $158 billion to $304 billion (in 1987 dollars). To the Soviet economy, however, a drastic increase in spending was unsustainable, and Reagan's proposed anti-ballistic missile defense system (Strategic Defense Initiative) which was a death-blow. The USSR could never hope to match it. The moment that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev insisted that SDI research be stopped at the summit in Reykjavik, and Reagan walked away from the table, the Soviet Union was doomed. The critics may have a point--if we had just waited another fifty or a hundred years, the Soviet Union may well have suffered an economic collapse. At what cost? During that time billions of people would have lived out their lives in fear and virtual slavery, and no one can tell how many would have died in its death throes. No collapsing government has ever gone quietly onto ''the ash heap of history'' of its own volition."

- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1152635/posts

[jkarolyi]

Yep...what CarNut says.

Let me ask you Pat...is there any part of accepted, academically reviewed American history that you believe, or do you exclusively base your beliefs on revisionists? If you think history books are biased and have an agenda, revisionists are much, much worse.

Keep in mind folks...this is the same guy who says that Hitler wouldn't have bothered the US and would have still been defeated if we had no (or a very weak) military.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by jkarolyi
Yep...what CarNut says.

Let me ask you Pat...is there any part of accepted, academically reviewed American history that you believe, or do you exclusively base your beliefs on revisionists? If you think history books are biased and have an agenda, revisionists are much, much worse.

Revisionist history doesn't apply to what we've been discussing about Ronald Reagan, but there are important aspects to this question.

I've found that historical revisionists fall into two categories. The first, which Mr. Karolyi seems to mention are those who restate history to show a specific agenda. Socialist historians are a near perfect example of this type. They recast well known historical events in the light of social justice or emphasize certain facts and downplay others to change the view of what actually happened during an event or period. Revisionists of this type can write a history of an event either just after it has occured, most histories of the War of Northern Aggression were of this type written by the victor; other times these historians retell stories decades later.

The second type of historical revisionist is one that has done research and either discovered unpublished information, taken another look at facts or data and done modern statistical analysis on it, or put together facts in a new way to tell a more accurate history than has been told in the past. Tom DiLorenzo's work on Abraham Lincoln is such a book.

It's my opinion that the first group are not a good thing and should be ignored; and that the second group are highly valuable and we need many more of them.

Keep in mind folks...this is the same guy who says that Hitler wouldn't have bothered the US and would have still been defeated if we had no (or a very weak) military.

Looks like we have one of the first types of revisionism in the above statement, that's not what I said, precisely.

In order to make a substantive statement on what the German's could or could not have done to America in 1942 and later one needs to know the logistics of the time, and know them extremely well.

The Germans, already engaged on what was effectively three fronts; the eastern, the western, and the southern; was in no position to attack and invade America; in point of fact the Germans could not have mounted a successful invasion of Great Britain itself at any time with the known resources at their disposal.

Here's a list of three critical war production items, by year.

1939 Production of Aircraft
Britain......7,940
USSR......10,382
Germany...8,295
German deficit 10,027

1940 Production of Aircraft
Britain.....15,049
USSR.......10,565
Germany..10,247
German deficit 15,367

1941 Production of Aircraft
Britain.......20,094
USSR.........15,735
Germany....11,776
German deficit 24,053

You can see that this is an issue, but there's more.

1939 Production of tanks
Britain.........969
USSR.........2950
Germany...1300
German deficit 2619

1940 Production of tanks (Russian T34 in service 9/1940)
Britain.........1399
USSR..........2794
Germany.....2200
German deficit 1993

1941 Production of tanks (Germany invades Russia 6/1941)
Britain..........4841
USSR............6590
Germany......5200
German deficit 6231

And one more logistical fact chart:
1939 Production of Artillery pieces
Britain..........1400
USSR..........17348
Germany.......2000
German deficit 16748

1940 Production of Artillery pieces
Britain..........1399
USSR..........15300
Germany......5000
German deficit 11,699

1941 Production of Artillery pieces
Britain...........5300
USSR...........42300
Germany.......7000
German deficit 40,600

Facts from Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy, 1995.

These important war material produciton numbers aren't revisionist, they simply tell you that logistics are what stopped the German conquest of the USSR, and readied Stalin to invade Poland, then Germany itself long before D-Day.

When the German army invaded the USSR they had 3,350 tanks and 650,000 horses to oppose the USSR's 15,000 tanks. the German's were Generaled better, but the USSR had the ultimate weapon, Winter. The Germans did not have a strategic bombardment aircraft at all, Britain had many.

I state categorically that Germany would have been defeated without the involvement of the US government in any way, by Britain and the USSR.

[yellowline]

In case you forgot the sequence of events, we declared war on Japan after they attacked us. We didn't head-on declare war with Germany. Under the Tripartite Act, they voluntarily declared war on us. They were not obliged to declare on us simply because Japan did. What were we gonna do, duck and run? If anything, Germany forced us into the European theater, otherwise I think it would've been a tough sell to the American people to fight in Europe.

The Japanese attacked us first. And if you maintain that we shouldn't have been in Hawaii, why not examine their island-hopping game? How long before they may have looked into attacking LA or the West Coast? Or should we have let the West go to them, because it was wrong to have waged hegemony on the indiginous peoples of the West? It goes on and on and on, Pat. When to stop?

The prevailing quote of the generation was "The only way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." That attitude, and nothing else, drew the world into war. The Germans were deluded into thinking they were good, and the Allies used propaganda too.

[bigchillcar]

i agree that a full-scale invasion of the united states by any of the axis trio is far-fetched. our country is much too large and far away. the manpower and materials needed simply were not even close to being in supply. i think it's more than arguable, however, that u.s. involvement in the european theatre hastened germany's demise. britain was a similar strategic problem, being surrounded by water, much like america. france was easily invaded and occupied, once countries like poland, etc on its eastern side were crushed..france was the unlucky casualty of being geographically reachable. but america played an enormous role in stopping italy in its tracks and pushing germany out of france, especially after normandy. i think all students of history with any sense at all agree that hitler guaranteed germany's ultimate defeat through bull-headed advancement into russia and its mammoth winter. had he focused his resources on the conquest of britain, instead of invading russia, would he have eventually succeeded in bringing them to surrender? i think this is arguable either way..maybe, maybe not. we'll never know..at one time it certainly looked like it just might happen..
ryan

[Tervuren]

Fast Pat, if the US had stayed truely neutral, those deficits might not be as strong. FDR was gunning for war, and was shipping supplies like crazy to anti-axis countries. Without that support, I doubt the allies could of done as well as they did.

[chuckw951]

I credit Lech Walesa.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by chuckw951
I credit Lech Walesa.

He certainly helped a great deal in delivering the final blows, as did Vaslav Havel. Havel did the thing that all governments fear the most, he made people laugh at government.

[Rick Lee]

I think Pope John Paul II comes in second after Lech Walesa.

Mikhail Gorbachev belongs in this list too. Remeber, the first hole in the fence was when Hungary opened their border to Austria in May 1989. I was in East Germany in July 1989 and by then East Germans needed visas to visit Hungary. I went from E. Germany to Austria, where we drove into Hungary and you could see the Trabants on the side of the road with East Germans wandering in the fields, crossing into Austria. This was only possible because Gorbachev made it clear he would not use military force to stop Hungary from opening their border. The USSR did not collapse for another two or so years, well after all their East European "satellite" states had new governments.