One more thing...

On re-reading the last post, I wanted to clarify that I DO NOT deny that there was risk in what Reagan did. By refusing to concede to the Soviets at ANY level, he was placing them in a very precarious position... and the risk was very real that the Kremlin would resort to open warfare before they would allow the system to fail from within.

Case in point... Afghanistan.

My old professor from college (poli-sci and Russian) was of the opinion that the Soviet leadership under Breshnev was convinced that the solution to the economic disaster that the USSR had been undergoing from roughly 1972 to 1979 (caused utterly by Breshnev's inability to curb rampant corruption within the Soviet system AND his fascination with "prestige projects" like the space program and nuclear weapons development) was to take the people's mind off their problems by starting a "war". Frankly, with all I have read since the collapse in 1990, I think Dr. Kenney was right. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the false hope that it would ease economic pressure and take the people's focus away from the Party's failed promises and put it squarely on a cheap, successful example of the military might of the USSR against the imperialist Western agenda in the Middle East.

The problem was, it wasn't cheap and it wasn't successful... at all. Those nine years of fighting cost the Soviets more than they could even have imagined. Each year (from 1979 to 1988) the USSR was more than DOUBLING its national debt due to its expenditures in Afghanistan. Even as early as 1982... mail carriers in the USSR were seeing their monthly paychecks coming in as much as 90 days late. College professors were going six, eight... even twelve months without pay by the end of 1988.

The USSR had dug a hole too big to escape from. Reagan recognised this, and exploited it... but it came with a risk. Soviet planning (as we now know very well) called for expansionist invasions into the Middle East and Western Europe as means of maintaining power, and the Soviets were NEVER afraid of using MWDs as a means of military victory. Chemical and nuclear attacks on places like West Germany and Austria, as well as Iran (in that hallowed push to a "warm water" port like the Persian Gulf) and China were SOP for the Red Army, and knowing that the end was damn near... many thought they wouldn't hesitate to employ them simply to stem off the inevitable.

So, don't think I am taking anything away from Maggie and Ron. They knew they were taking a risky (and mainly untrodden) path by ending all concessions and compromise with the "Evil Empire". My original point remains, though: The Soviet system itself was doomed to fail, and nothing people like Nixon or Ford or Carter could have done to prop-up the USSR would have stemmed off its demise for any great length of time.

I would even go so far as to say that it wasn't "Misha" Gorbachev that ended the USSR with his policies and agendas... it was Leonid Illych Breshnev. He was more responsible for the death of the USSR than anyone I can think of.