Reagan’s strategy was simple. Make the Soviets try to keep up with his military expansion until their economy collapsed.
DOD spent several billion studying one Soviet military system. In 1994 a Soviet Colonel sold a complete system to a US Army Captain in W. Berlin for just enough to get his regiment home to Moscow. The Soviet army could not even afford to feed his men.
Also, Reagan had the Saudis open their oil spigots, so the price went down to $10 a barrel. It put a lot of us oilfield workers out of work, but it also helped bankrupt the USSR, which relied on petrodollars to fund their activities.
His strategy was actually more sophisticated than that. It was across the board, as I show in my new book “Reagan: The American President.”
Reagan understood that the two main Soviet exports were oil and gold. By rebuilding OUR economy, we automatically weakened theirs. For ex., Reagan urged Paul Volcker to squash inflation, even if it meant a recession. As inflation came down, the Soviet ability to sell gold crumbled. The value of a 10 pound gold ingot dropped TENFOLD in a couple of years.
Then Reagan struck at their ability to raise hard currency via their oil sales. One of his first meetings was with the Saudi oil minister and he firmly told him that they were going to lower prices & increase output . . . which the Saudis did. Down came Soviet oil prices and with it, lower sales and less hard currency.
I could go into the alliances with Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesca, the decision to pump rock and roll behind the Iron Curtain, supporting Charlie Wilson, and of course maintaining a strong alliance with the Germans and GB. It was more than just the military.
Reagan squeezed the Soviets everywhere simultaneously. It reminded me of Ulysses Grant’s command to all his generals when he became head of the Army: attack, all the time. “Anyone who can’t skin should hold a leg.”