Three myths about the cold war"

Three myths about the cold war"
'We won the cold war'! But in fact, the end was negotiated.

'The Soviet Union collapsed because the US brought pressure to bear or because Unca Ronnie 'outspent' them.' In fact, the opposite is true as you will learn.
'Ronald Reagan defeated communism'. In fact, Ronald Reagan defeated America!!
Let's set the record straight. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with the fall of communism. A great statesman-- Mikhail Gorbachev --deserves the credit for withdrawing nuclear weapons from Eastern Europe which he did upon his own initiative. Gorbachev was the architect of Perestroika and, later, Glasnost. Reagan merely followed the leader.

As I have pointed out: Ronald Reagan Blew the World's Last Chance for Peace! It was Gorbachev --a real leader --who had put total nuclear disarmament on the table. It was an offer Reagan could not accept! Reagan had bosses who had already made him an offer he didn't refuse: the sale of his soul!

The real power base back home would have had Reagan's head. Reagan was a typical Republican, that is, he said many things and did the opposite. Every Republican has two stories to tell: one that he/she tells the base via "code words" like "family values" the other, he/she tells to the world. This second category is most often just lies and bullshit. In this case, Reagan had talked the talked --world peace, nuclear disarmament, etc. When Gorbachev put total nuclear disarmament on the table, Reagan blinked because he was not free to negotiate in 'good faith'. He was but the figure-head for an entire class that had been enriched by 'cold war' military spending. The same folk have a vested interest in a destabilized middle east.


Here is what Reagan himself said about the threat of nuclear war.
The Russians sometimes kept submarines off our East Coast with nuclear missiles that could turn the White House into a pile of radioactive rubble within six or eight minutes. Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radarscope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that? There were some people in the Pentagon who thought in terms of fighting and winning a nuclear war. To me it was simple common sense: A nuclear war couldn't be won by either side. It must never be fought. Advocates of the MAD policy believed it had served a purpose: The balance of terror it created had prevented nuclear war for decades. But as far as I was concerned, the MAD policy was madness.
--Ronald Reagan, The Official Site

So, if that's how Ronald Reagan really felt about nuclear madness, why did he blow what is perhaps our last chance at peace? The answer is simple. Reagan was not his own man.