You're still in denial about the Cuban missiles for Turkey missiles quid pro quo that wasn't and now you want to change the topic to the favorite leftist rationalization about how Communism would have collapsed on its own? In a new age of Aquarius vacuum no less! LOL.
I really don't have the time for that kind of anguished revisionism. Just compare and contrast Carter's wishful thinking and Reagan's moral clarity then choose a version of reality that makes you sleep well at night.
The point is that if you thought containment was the way to fight Communism then is it really surprising that you think that containment is the way to fight radical Islam?
In your case what is revealing is that you proudly assert that JFK won the Cold War during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis but yet you claim with a straight botox-less face (presumably) that our great nation doesn't depend on one man as if the moral leadership of one man does not matter one iota in our system of checks and balances.
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Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. I am glad that that is being changed.
Jimmy Carter, 1977</font>
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"The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."
Ronald Reagan, 1981</font>
Misinterpreting the Cold War: The Hardliners Were Right
Richard Pipes
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1995
Forty years ago the foreign policy debate in the United States revolved around the question, "Who lost China?" Today one of its most contentious issues is, "Who won the Cold War?" Advocates of the hard line feel that the events of the past five years have vindicated their strategy. They claim that it was the policy of containment, reinforced by a technological arms race, economic denial, and psychological warfare, that brought down the Soviet Union and communism. Advocates of the soft line will have none of it. They contend that, far from contributing to the demise of communism, the hard?line strategy prolonged the Cold War by arousing deep?seated anxieties in the Russians and making them even more truculent. As for the causes of communism's demise, they are less certain
Raymond Garthoff's account of the final phase of the Cold War is meant to justify the soft line. By virtue of its massive research, it is likely to acquire the status of a primer for adherents of this approach. The book, which traces the course of U.S.?Soviet relations during the Reagan and Bush administrations, picks up, with some overlap, where its predecessor, D?nte and Confrontation, left off. The two volumes, similar in approach and format, complement one another, surveying in minute detail relations between the two superpowers from 1969 to 1991. They are imposing treatises, totaling some two thousand fact?filled pages, nearly every one supported by references to the sources.
Mr. Garthoff identifies three basic approaches to communism and the Soviet Union, each with corollary policy implications.
The first, of which President Ronald Reagan was the outstanding champion, he labels "essentialist." This approach assumed that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state driven by a militant ideology and hence intrinsically expansionist; such a power could be restrained and rendered harmless only by determined confrontation.
The second, "mechanical" approach, while conceding that the Soviet Union was indeed expansionist, viewed it above all as a pragmatic power that could be "managed" by the astute application of rewards and penalties.
The third, "interactionist" approach made light of both Soviet ideology and behavior, focusing instead on the conflict between the two superpowers, which it saw as propelled by a dynamic of its own. For this school, the ultimate reality was the competition itself; to reduce tensions, it was necessary above all to understand and allow for the concerns of the adversary.
Mr. Garthoff, whose mission is to enlighten readers about the motives behind Soviet actions, makes no secret that his sympathies lie with the third school. Although he has some good words for the proponents of the mechanical approach, he has nothing but scorn for the "ideologues" espousing the essentialist cause.....
REAGAN VINDICATED
Proceeding from the premise that in the Cold War the Soviet side acted almost exclusively out of fear for its security, Mr. Garthoff heaps scorn on Reagan and the "ideologues" in his entourage, who, he claims, drove the president to engage the Soviet Union in military and rhetorical confrontations. He does not address the question of why the conciliatory policies of Presidents Nixon or Carter were accompanied by a relentless military buildup and foreign intervention that culminated in the invasion of Afghanistan. He depicts Reagan as a passive accomplice of policies orchestrated by others, an ignoramus driven by a visceral anticommunist sentiment.
Admittedly, Reagan showed little curiosity about the kind of data that Mr. Garthoff has accumulated with such tenacity. Nevertheless, he displayed great discernment and the instinctive judgment of a true statesman, being inspired by a strong moral sense and a sound understanding of what it is to live under tyranny. As someone involved in the formulation of Soviet policy in the first two years of the Reagan administration, I can attest that the direction of this policy was set by the president and not by his staff, and that it was vigorously implemented over the objections of several more dovish secretaries. It rested on a keen grasp of the vulnerabilities of the Soviet regime.........
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