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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (69151)	4/30/2018 6:03:01 PM
From: combjelly	1 Recommendation Recommended By J_F_Shepard Respond to of 358863

You can make the argument that SDI was sort of the final straw for the Soviet military. The smart weapons that were developed in the 1970s, and strongly supported by Carter, that we supplied to the mujahadeen under Reagan, was a wakeup call to the Soviets that they had a big technological gap that rendered their military ineffective. SDI was just more of the same. But it was the Soviet experience in Afghanistan that enabled Gorbachev to rise to power. He was also helped by the fact that the old guard who served in WWII were dropping like flies, leading to them burning through Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko in just a few years. They epitomized and were the source of the problems the military had run into. Essentially relying on the technologies that beat the Nazis was no longer effective was the lessons that were learned in Afghanistan. Gorby and his crew were the last hope the Soviets had. It was too late by then, but... It is simplistic to say that without Reagan the Soviet Union would have survived. Much less SDI doing the job.