It started with Carter and Carter’s man Zbignew Brzezinski , not Reagan.
It was all part of the dummass strategy of sending muslim proxies against the Soviet Union’s weakest area, its southern border areas. Worked out better than anyone could have hoped for, right?
You bet it did.
In 1980 if you had said that in 10 years the USSR would have collapsed and the Cold War would end with effectively zero bloodshed, people would have laughed hysterically. The meme at the time was that we would lose the Cold War or that it would end only with a nuclear exchange.
Comparing the relative risk to US of USSR vs. Islamists: USSR = death. Islamists = sprained ankle.