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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (453640)	2/3/2009 8:35:04 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 1572214

There is no doubt, whatsoever, that Reagan ended the Cold War. it would take a moron or an idiot to claim otherwise.

To: i-node who wrote (453640)	2/3/2009 10:03:11 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1572214

His plan to end the Cold War by forcing the USSR to spend themselves into oblivion is well-documented and took shape at that time. Conservative fantasies...facts aside. Al "From 1983 to 1987 the Strategic Defense Initiative alarmed Soviet leaders because it threatened to reverse what they saw as the trend toward strategic stability and stable costs. Nonetheless, they did not respond to it by creating their own SDI program. That is, they continued their existing research programs on lasers and other advanced technologies, plus their existing design-work on space weaponry, but they did not mount an effort to test or develop SDI-type weapons. In addition they studied counter-measures to space-based weaponry, but since the SDIO never designed a plausible system, they had nothing specific to study, and their military spending was not affected. Between 1985 and 1987 Gorbacheve spent a great deal of effort trying to convince the Reagan administration to restrain the program, presumably because he thought his own military-industrial complex would eventually force him to adopt a program of some sort to counter SDI, but by the end of 1987 the Soviet leadership no longer regarded SDI as a threat. "Then, too, the Soviets did not respond to the Reagan administration's military buildup. "As CIA analysts discovered in 1983, Soviet military spending had leveld off in 1975 to a growth rate of 1.3 percent [per year], with spending for weapons procurements virtually flat. It remained that way for a decade. According to later CIA estimates, Soviet military spending rose in 1985 as a result of decisions taken earlier, and grew at a rate of 4.3 percent per year through 1987. Spending for procurements of offensive strategic weapons, however, increased by only 1.4 percent a year in that period. In 1988 Gorbachev began a roun do budget cuts, bringing the defense budget back down to its 1980 level. In other words, while the U.S. military budget was growing at an average of 8 percent per year, the Soviets did not attempt to keep up, and their military spending did not rise even as might have been expected given the war they were fighting in Afghanistan. "What happened during the 1980s was that the Soviet economy continued to deteriorate as it had during the 1970s. The economic decline, of course, resulted from the failures of the system created by Lenin and Stalin--not from any effort on the part of the Reagan administration. Without Gorbachev, however, the Soviet Union might have survived for many more years, for the system, thought on the decline, was nowhere near collapse. It was Gorbachev's efforts to reverse the decline and to modernize his country that knocked the props out from under the system. The revolution was in essence a series of decisions made by one man, and it came as a surprise precisely because it did not follow from a systemic breakdown. econ161.berkeley.edu

To: i-node who wrote (453640)	2/6/2009 1:28:32 PM
From: RMF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572214

The Russians ALWAYS had economic problems. Their "commerce by edict" never worked, so it's absurd to think that Reagan's spending splurge on the military had anything to do with their breaking up. Sine the 1950's the Russians have had the ability to wipe out the U.S. despite whatever cash Reagan threw away on the military. If Reagan ended the Cold War and brought Russia to its knees, then how come the same tactics by Bush toward N. Korea and Iran have had just the OPPOSITE affect??????? In fact, Bush applied much MORE economic strain on those two countries and all it's gotten us is N. Korea going from 2 nukes to 8 and Iran going from almost no nuclear program to 5000 centrifuges? Splain' me that....