Based on this comment where you represented yourself as still being in country or associated with the military. But like I said, you jump about so much that the train of thought or point you are trying to make gets somewhat incoherent to me.
As for Reagan, lets go there as it applies to Russia.
Regan took office in jan 1981. Brezhnev died in 82 and the Russian economy, such as it was, was already broken. There were food shortages, nothing worked and Gobachev had his hands full. We knew this, so what we did was drive them nuts! But Russia was a basket case in the early 80s. When a country begins to destabilize, just as the US is doing now, it become unpredictable. I believe Reagan and his advisors saw it a opportunity and as a diversion to keep them occupied until everything fell apart internally. Maggie Thatcher also played a big role. Without her, the deception would not have worked. And it was a deception. Were they dangerous at that time? I would say yes, but we played right and the results speak for themselves. I would agree that it was a dicey couple of years, but it was not even close to what it was during the Stalin and Khrushchev era. Not even close. If you want to disagree fine, but you have made no cogent arguments to change my mind or position of this.
Got a question for you...not to say you were wrong or anything, because those years you speak of WERE indeed dangerous.
Have you ever heard of Able Archer ‘83? Many consider that to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets were so freaked out at Reagan and what they THOUGHT he might do that they were sure something would happen. Andropov was Soviet Premier at the time, and...him being formerly the head of the KGB and all...he was focusing heavily on ANY signs that the West might attack (look up ‘Project RYAN’). This was nothing more than an exercise and it almost resulted in nuclear war.
An apocryphal story from around that time: (This incident happened at a Pershing storage site near the Pershing HQ. I heard about this a few days after it happened.) When the Pershing 2’s first got to the units, the soldiers were training on them to make sure they knew how all the pieces fit. The lieutenant in charge over this one platoon decided to stand a missile up...with NO warhead, just the missile body...to make sure the soldier’s work was done right. Within minutes of the missile being stood up, a frantic call was made to the storage facility from HQ to “get that @#$%^& missile down!”. What happened?
Understand...it was a cloudy, slightly rainy day. HOW they knew a missile was standing, I don’t know...but I heard later that the Soviets along the entire East German border went on high alert within minutes of that missile being erected.
It was widely made known afterwards that you do NOT stand a missile up for any reason without express permission from people WAY high up in the chain of command. I imagine that lieutenant had his butt in a sling for quite a while.