Did Reagan Win The Cold War For The U.S.?

The scale was as important as anything else. We might have gotten the Arleigh Burke Class in some amount, but we wouldn't have had 600 ships in the navy. We would have deployed the M1s, but not in a 28-division army. Roots in Carter or not, Reagan deserves the credit for bringing them to full flower.

Reagan more, but even Carter to a certain extent. In general, it was a good policy decision by our policy wonks and thankfully President Reagan listened to his advisors there.
 
I don't think the fall of the USSR was inevitable myself - they would have probably had to withdraw from Eastern Europe eventually and cut back on defense spending, maybe even cut loose a few SSRs, but I think they probably could have continued shuffling along in some form. Death wasn't assured, in my uneducated opinion, until August 1991.

That being said, I do think Reagan deserves a good deal of credit for putting so much pressure on the USSR that they spent themselves to death and were ultimately forced to seek peace, as others have said. Without that pressure, I doubt the USSR and the Warsaw Pact would have collapsed as soon as they did.

On another note: it's funny how angry some people are that Reagan didn't blow up the world. Hearing some of the people on this site talk you'd think that Reagan is still in power and is doing his best to start the Apocalypse and the Soviets were innocent little lambs whose massive offensive armies and strategic nuclear arsenal were completely defensive and that they wouldn't dare think of war with the West.
 
Reagan more, but even Carter to a certain extent. In general, it was a good policy decision by our policy wonks and thankfully President Reagan listened to his advisors there.

Carter canceled a lot of projects like the Super Stallion helicopter that Reagan later brought back and didn’t do much that was special in this area. It was pretty much all Reagan.
 
Absolutely. The Arms buildup, causing the oil glut as a result of the Iran-Iraq War, and aiding the Muj in Afghanistan (Along with other third world proxy conflicts) directly led to the collapse of the USSR. The belief the Soviet Empire's fall was inevitable is more confirmation bias than anything else.
 
Absolutely. The Arms buildup, causing the oil glut as a result of the Iran-Iraq War, and aiding the Muj in Afghanistan (Along with other third world proxy conflicts) directly led to the collapse of the USSR. The belief the Soviet Empire's fall was inevitable is more confirmation bias than anything else.

And the belief that Reagan was the one who won the Cold War is completely ridiculous
 
And the belief that Reagan was the one who won the Cold War is completely ridiculous
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Had Help
 
The oil glut wasn’t caused by Reagan, or even the Iran-Iraq War specifically. It was caused primarily by reduced demand (think how small 80s cars got vs 70s cars) and over supply as a result of the reaction to the 1970s energy crisis. The Saudis in particular wanted low prices to get the world off emerging energy saving technologies. But certain measures like improved home insulation were already baked in.

The energy crisis was also a reason for the terrible economy and national anxiety Carter gets unfairly blamed for. Had Reagan won the Presidency in 1976 he likely doesn’t get the stellar repuation he ended up with. Also the arms build up had already begun late in Carter’s term. Some of Carter’s project cancellations were actually quite sensible. For example he cancelled the B-1, and Reagan brought it back as the B-1B. Any B-52 crew will tell you that was an expensive mistake.
 
The oil glut wasn’t caused by Reagan, or even the Iran-Iraq War specifically. It was caused primarily by reduced demand (think how small 80s cars got vs 70s cars) and over supply as a result of the reaction to the 1970s energy crisis. The Saudis in particular wanted low prices to get the world off emerging energy saving technologies. But certain measures like improved home insulation were already baked in.
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Even with the huge spike from the 2nd oilshock, people kept driving more, and mileage only slightly improved, with the advent of electronic engine controls(fuel injection) replacing carburetors, despite record high pricing of gas
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and cars got heavier and more powerful, as engines got more efficient. They are smaller in size, but actually heavier than many of the late '70s full sized.

The big change was in deregulation and end of last price controls on oil, this restored market conditions.
Price controls just create shortages
 
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The President who "won" the Cold War was Truman, who was the architect of a strategy that was consistently applied from c. 1948 to 1991. Collective defense and containment was what won the Cold War. Reagan, like every President from Truman to HW Bush, did his part and left his individual mark on that strategy, but the idea that any one President alone made the difference in winning victory is misplaced. It was consistent policy applied by Presidents of both parties that "won" the Cold War.
 
I would even go so far as to say (and I did at the time) that the US did not "win" the Cold War, so much the USSR lost, first. The US & the Soviets had been in an economic arms race since 1945. The Reagan administration kicked that into high gear, and raised the stakes-through spending, and borrowing more to spend so that the USSR wrecked its economy trying to keep up. Yet, since then, the US has kept up the same borrow/spend/buildup policy pretty much intact. It remains to be seen when we wreck our own economy trying to keep up, or if we finally act like the Cold War has, indeed, ended.
 
The President who "won" the Cold War was Truman, who was the architect of a strategy that was consistently applied from c. 1948 to 1991. Collective defense and containment was what won the Cold War. Reagan, like every President from Truman to HW Bush, did his part and left his individual mark on that strategy, but the idea that any one President alone made the difference in winning victory is misplaced. It was consistent policy applied by Presidents of both parties that "won" the Cold War.

Except Reagan went for 'Rollback' rather than Truman's 'Containment'
 
I would even go so far as to say (and I did at the time) that the US did not "win" the Cold War, so much the USSR lost, first. The US & the Soviets had been in an economic arms race since 1945. The Reagan administration kicked that into high gear, and raised the stakes-through spending, and borrowing more to spend so that the USSR wrecked its economy trying to keep up. Yet, since then, the US has kept up the same borrow/spend/buildup policy pretty much intact. It remains to be seen when we wreck our own economy trying to keep up, or if we finally act like the Cold War has, indeed, ended.

So when is this failure due?
It's been 27 years
 
Grenada and arguably Afghanistan. If you want to stretch the definition you could say his policies caused the rollback of communism all the way to Moscow

Grenada has barely more people than the Cheyenne, Wyoming metropolitan area. As for Afghanistan, what was the difference between supporting anti-Soviet forces there, and doing the same in Greece and Turkey in the late 40's, such that the former is rollback and the latter is containment? Honestly, I think the shallowness of the distinction was most obvious in 1956, when even James Burnham and the National Review crowd admitted that stepping in against the USSR in Hungary was too risky. More than anything, what caused the fall of communist states in eastern Europe during the 80's was the decreasing willingness of the Soviets to repeat what they'd done in 56 and 68. And the first evidence of this shift came with the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980, where the Soviets didn't even attempt to step in. And that happened months before Reagan won the election, so the shift in doctrine was already underway by the time he entered office. From what I understand, it was the shift in power from Brezhnev to Andropov and Suslov, along with problems in Afghanistan, that triggered this change.

I'm not completely opposed to crediting Reagan for effective foreign policy (although Able Archer getting as bad as it did shouldn't be overlooked, and unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis was utterly gratuitous), but a lot of it seems like continuations of things Carter was doing at the end of his term. Arming Afghani fighters in particular was something he'd been doing from pretty early on.
 
So when is this failure due?
It's been 27 years

Well, I can't help but notice that while we
continue to plow $, $, & still more $ into
defense, we spend little on our infra-struc-
ture, even though much of it is literally
falling apart.
 
Well, I can't help but notice that while we
continue to plow $, $, & still more $ into
defense, we spend little on our infra-struc-
ture, even though much of it is literally
falling apart.

You do? Last time I checked you don't have 16 carriers or 28 Divisions or 250000+ men parked in Germany or your Pershing IIs, MX Peacekeepers, 21 Seawolves, and hundreds upon hundreds of tons of gear lying around in reforger depots and last time I checked your GDP spent on the army has gone from 6% to 3.7%
 
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