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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (53832)	7/11/2004 12:21:09 PM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793581

Reagan put pressure on the Communist edifice, pressure both military and diplomatic, pressure to which they had to react, as Gorbachev admits, pressure which would not have been applied had Jimmy Carter been President throughout the 80s. Yep. Communism was not working, but I expect the system could have continued for another generation with suffcient "cooperation" from Europe, the US, etc. Sufficent pressure from Reagan considerably accelerated the "falling apart" process. It was also outside pressure - the stresses and strains of WWI - which brought down the Romanovs and led to the Russian Revolution. Without the war it's possible that Russia might have continued on its creaky path towards more representative government and less absolutism.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (53832)	7/12/2004 11:13:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793581

Reagan put pressure on the Communist edifice, pressure both military and diplomatic, pressure to which they had to react, as Gorbachev admits One of the amusing things about the whole story is that they really didn’t have to react. The Soviets didn’t have to match US defense spending. All they had to do was to maintain a credible deterrent and keep chewing away at us in the developing world, where American shortsightedness had ceded them the upper hand. The US was never going to send a conventional attack against the Soviets, even if we had superiority. Those massed divisions in Europe served no useful purpose at all. If the Soviets had been flexible and able to think outside the box, they could have ignored the bluff, let us pour our money into weapons that would never be used, and used their money to address the issue that really threatened them – their hopelessly deficient domestic economy. Of course, being communists, they could not see past their paranoia and reflexive responses, and they would never have been able to sort their domestic economy out in any event. That’s why they failed. Don’t expect to get a straight story from the Soviet leaders of that period. Of course they would rather claim that they were brought down by outside interference. It hurts to admit that the ship you were steering sank because it was horribly designed and poorly managed. Much easier to attribute your failure to external forces.