Posted on 06/02/2015 10:18:59 PM PDT by Ray76
Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired.
In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate.
For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was time to stop playing for a tie and seek victory in the Cold War.
From his first week in office, President Reagan went on the offensive against the Soviet Union. In his first presidential news conference, Reagan denounced the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to "world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state."
The establishment was appalled at what it called saber-rattling and uninformed analysis. Harvard intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith insisted that the Soviet Union was economically strong and militarily powerful-- the only responsible policy was a continuation of détente leading at some future time to convergence between Communism and democracy.
Reagan did not agree. Based on intelligence reports and his own analysis, the President concluded that Communism was cracking and ready to crumble. He took personal control of the new victory strategy, chairing 57 meetings of the National Security Council in his first year in the White House.
The President was determined to reassure those who had lived behind the Iron Curtain for nearly 40 years that they had not been forgotten and that a new day of freedom would soon dawn for them.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
After all this time I still get chills when I hear that.
Cool your jets. I haven’t taken anything from Reagan.
Moral, economic, and political pressure work together.
Reagan employed moral pressure when he criticized the Soviets. His repeatedly employed rhetoric to increase moral pressure. He called the Soviets an “evil empire”, for example. He had allies, allies within Soviet controlled countries, allies that helped break the Soviets.
Did I say we are in a more dangerous daily situation today, that he threat is even larger now? No I didn’t.
Cool your own jets, as you keep ignoring the biggest factor for some reason, what we were doing in the military.
How Reagan was engaging the Russians everywhere, with GIs and/or mercenaries, and conducting a massive military build up and aggressive military actions and advancing weapons placements in Europe, daring the Soviet war machine.
About 2200 of us a year, were dying under Reagan, and things were tense and high speed. What defeated the Soviets was seeing the helplessness of their situation militarily.
Russians and morals? an economy that they couldn’t sit out while keeping their empire? people not liking them? Everything helps, but if they could have made war work for them against Reagan, then they would have used it.
In 1979 some of us were predicting war with the Soviets in about 1984 or 1985, which would be a window of maximum advantage for them, but Reagan came in and spent billions to erase that window, and reverse the situation.
If you look at the history of the Cold war, your elements had existed before, and the Soviets rode it out.
I don’t know if you are too young to have been a part of the Cold war, but you seem to have gotten your views from the post Cold war media.
I haven’t ignored the military AT ALL. I’ve done nothing but praise Reagan and you’re ranting about things I haven’t said.
By the way, post 11 wasn't even to you, so why the weird response, as though it was?
Without a single shot. It was brilliant.
thank you for your service.
“i also recall that angry leftists gave Gorbachev full credit for the dismantling of the USSR”
That’s what our schools are ‘teaching’ our dumbed-down youth. No mention of Reagan at all.
“The big difference is our own left is not pointing a gun at our heads like the Russians - YET!!”
They are following the Coward-Piven plan. No need to use guns if the masses capitulate easily.
I drove by Reagan's boyhood home of Dixon IL on Interstate 80 today on my way back from my oldest son's college orientation at Western IL University.
I live about 90 minutes (+/-) from the town he was born in and as we drove by the sign on I-80 I looked over at my wife and said "I really want to go see Reagan's home town and birthplace."
We're going this weekend. And yes, I agree with you: Greatest President in my lifetime, hands-down, no question. (I was born in 1962.)
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