[Draco]

Some believe Reagan spent the Soviets into their downfall. He refused to scuttle SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, derisively called “Star Wars”) when he met with Gorbachev.

The Soviets, unlike the Congressional Democrats, believed SDI could work — against them. So they directed even a greater percentage of their GDP toward military research and manufacture to counter SDI. (The USSR already spent a huge fraction of its GDP on its military.)

There is a good argument to be made that this additional stress on the Soviet economy brought about the overthrow of Gorbachev and the hard-liners’ eventually unsuccessful attempt to retain power.

[Army Air Corps]

Indeed, that was part of the equation. Some books report that the USSR spent as much as 60% of GDP on the military during the height of Reagan’s military spending. Also, despite our military increases, we still did not dedicate a huge percentage of GDP in military spending. That is, military spending did not demand as much of our GDP as it did that of the Soviets.

[txroadkill]

That’s pretty much where my paper goes. But I completely give Reagan credit for forcing the Soviet Military budget to rise from $101 Billion to $130 Billion in just a few years and forcing the Soviets into an bigger arms race that came at the worse possible time for the USSR. I argued that Reagan was so well informed by the CIA that he knew the Soviets could not resist spending to prevent SDI and it would topple what was left of the economy. He knew they were already spending 14% of their GNP on defense as it was. Absolutely brilliant.....and the Dems called him stupid.