Not even vaguely true. Sure, he cancelled the neutron bomb and the B1 bomber. Over the past decades, exactly what mission would the neutron bomb have made easier?
None, zero, zip, zilch.
How often has the B1 bomber made a difference in any of the conflicts it has been used in since it was resurrected?
Same answer.
OTOH, Carter took the money from those programs and re-directed it towards the smart weapons programs. Now, how important has smart weapons been since the early 1980s in the various conflicts we have been in or supplied weapons for?
Crucial.
They have turned all of the Soviet and Soviet derived weapons into targets. A perfect example would be Desert Storm. The tanks and aircraft that Saddam had were some of the best the Soviets had during the early 1980s and a decent match for what we were fielding at the time. With the sensors and other electronics that were part of the smart weapons programs, the Soviet stuff was not even close. Despite the basic platforms being close to what we had in the early 1980s. Hence it was more of a target shoot than an actual battle.
That is what dealt the death blow to the Soviets. Afghanistan showed them they had made the wrong bets in the arms race. They were dependent on numbers and brute firepower. But those were more than neutralized by smart weapons. They had nearly bankrupted their empire building up a force that was rendered obsolete. They couldn't afford to make the fundamental changes required to catch up to the US. And that totally demoralized them and allowed the reformers like Gorbachev have a shot. Unfortunately for the Soviets, and fortunately for us, they were too little, too late.
Really, the Golden Book of History approach where Reagan points at the Berlin wall and tells Gorbachev to tear down the wall and the Soviet Union promptly collapses might be ok for elementary school, but you are a putative adult. History isn't something that exists as small sound bites. Usually the forces that shape history are subtle and complex.
Now, was Carter responsible for the existence of smart weapons? No. They had been on ongoing and controversial idea. Opposing it was the idea that the Soviets were right. After all, it had worked well for them during WWII. Our attempts at more sophisticated weapon systems had mixed results in Vietnam, and there was a school of thought that we relied too much on sophistication. What Carter did was to pick the sophisticated approach over the brute force one and then fast track it. So they started entering service in the early 1980s instead of much later. Assuming they were fielded at all.
So things like Stingers had enough time to get the kinks worked out to be used in Afghanistan. Blind luck, but you get that in real history. |
