If you had asked me in 1978/79 if the Soviets were going to move on us, I would have answered that they were probably were, and would do it in about 1983/4, because that was where our military decay and their growth were going to meet, and if they missed that window then it could be 20 years or more before such an opportunity showed up again. Upon his election, Reagan set out immediately to disrupt that scenario and timing.
Agree 100%, but they're kicking themselves for playing it safe and betting on a Carter reelection. If they had hit us in mid 1980, they had at least a 50/50 chance of taking the rest of Europe.
Interestingly, in 1978 a NATO General and some advisors wrote a book that speculated just that thing was about to happen. General Sir John Hackett was an Australian-born British soldier and quite the vocal critic of the British government's poor funding of the British military.
The book is called The Third World War: August 1985, ISBN 0025471600
It's quite the interesting read, if a bit dated.
The window for a successful First Strike was in the early 1980s. Soviet Nuclear superiority combined with a superior civil defense system, as well as ABM treaty violations and Biological weapons treaty violations and bomber defenses we didn’t have would not have ended well for us against the Soviet Union who valued human life to the extent that they had no problem killing 30-60 million of their own.
Reagan at that time was incredible. He knew we were vulnerable, but he came across with confidence and character, and then built a military that could take the Sovs on.
Is there any doubt after a first strike Carter would have surrendered?
Reagan was amazing in so many ways that are not remembered today by the majority, and that is a crime.