Yes, the decision to support the mujaheddin was important, and was initiated during the Carter years. However, this was like a sudden coming to its senses on the part of that Administration, which had already weakened our strategic position and invited Soviet adventurism by its fecklessness.
The specter of Soviet bankruptcy has been exaggerated post hoc as a rationalization by all of those who, in the early '80s, asserted that Reagan was playing into the hands of Kremlin hardliners, and would make the Cold War more dangerous. They were, of course, wrong, and he was right, an unthinkable situation. Therefore, he had to be lucky, and the Soviet Union had to be on the verge of collapse anyway, although no one knew it. In reality, of course, there was no reason that the Soviet Union needed to maintain an offensive posture in the Warsaw Pact, or needed to perpetuate an arms race. At any time, it could have disengaged and reallocated GDP from military to consumer items (American was spending about 6% of GDP on the military, by comparison to their 25%). Also, even with the Leninist example of NEP in their history, the Soviets never tried to follow the Chinese example of economic liberalization, which was providing impressive growth in the PRC. No, they were far from bankrupt, by any normal measure.
One is left with the fact that Reagan anticipated the real possibility that the Wall would fall, when few others did, and that he pursued an aggressive strategy that anticipated success in pushing back Soviet adventurism when the experts decried his attitude as harmful, and on both counts, was more right than his critics....... |
