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.
Reagan changed everything, by the mid 80s he had totally changed the odds for Soviet success in Europe.
It was very exciting and nerve racking times for many of us, but he succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, this nation should have an annual day of honor for President Reagan destroying the Soviet Union, to me it equals any accomplishment of any other President, and it came from his will, it was not the result of a massive war where whoever is in the chair gets the glory, this was all Reagan and his vision, and his will, and his life’s work, and his self, steering it to successful completion.
Reagan was a visionary, only George Washington and Ronald Reagan sit in those two top seats of American Presidents.
The soviets were so astonished by how fast Carter was destroying the American military that some junior plans officers started informal planning for a general nuclear war against the US in the early 1980s. Of course, they couldn't believe than an American senator would seek KGB help in defeating Reagan in the 1980 election until Teddy Kennedy did exactly that.
The thinking was that Carter would so physically and morally weaken America by 1982/1983 that nuking a city or two would bring about unconditional surrender. The soviets had so much invested in the cowardice and evil of Jimmah Carter that they genuinely feared Reagan. And rightly so. Reagan saved us from the greatest danger we've faced since the Revolution.
Someone made the case for George Washington being "man of the millennium", since the whole world would look different if he hadn't existed. Certainly Ronald Reagan has earned the title of "man of the 20th century".