Kerry failed to mention that Pres Reagan's military buildup triggered the collapse of the USSR.....
Spoken like a true Republican! But basically that's incorrect.
By the time Reagan became the Prez, the former USSR was ripe for a collapse. Largely as a consequence of the price of oil having gone down by 50%, the former USSR
which was the second largest oil producer at the time, did not have the funds it needed to match the arms buildup in the US.
This, coupled with the applications of hi-tech in in the workplace and in industries in the US made it very hard for the USSR to compete economically. Result: collapse!
For about a decade prior to the collapse, Alexander Solzhenitzyn (of Gulag Archipelago fame), then resident in America, said that the power of the USSR was a mirage and that stopping shipments of wheat to it would accelerate its collapse. But the recommendation fell on deaf ears. But that's another story for another day.
IMHO, Reagan serendipitously got all the credit for the Soviet collapse.
A failure of the Repub think-tanks in the time of Reagan was their inability to foresee the genesis of the Jihadists. Clinton attempted to deal with them but, imho, his attempts were half-hearted.
In his bid for immortality in the annals of world history, Clinton strove to achieve a peace accord between Palestine and Israel. Perhaps he thought his "nice-guy" attitude would help him along and also with his wife's election to the Senate at a later date. Clinton had much foresight here.
(Recall that his wife went to Palestine, was wellsy-palsy with the Palestinians and got a sizeable cheque for her election war chest. But it was returned due to unfavorable public opinion in the US.) |
