Reagan ended the cold war

[middleview]

Seriously? How could the U.S. benefit from a proxy war among factions tied to France and Russia, Germany, and Britain, that was both a symptom of and a precipitating factor in the breakup of socialist multinational solidarity, and that distracted the world’s attention from Russia’s bloodier war in Chechnya that the U.S. supported?

The "breakup of socialist multinational solidarity" only happened because the USSR occupied so many nations at the end of WWII and forced them to belong to the Warsaw Pact. Any attempt to move away from the Kremlin was met with an invasion....Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, Kabul....

Solidarity was a myth and the US gained nothing at all by suppressing the Serbian onslaught.

 

[EatTheRich]

The "breakup of socialist multinational solidarity" only happened because the USSR occupied so many nations at the end of WWII and forced them to belong to the Warsaw Pact. Any attempt to move away from the Kremlin was met with an invasion....Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, Kabul....

Solidarity was a myth and the US gained nothing at all by suppressing the Serbian onslaught.

Yugoslavia was never a member of the Warsaw Pact (and itself set a terrible example of solidarity by siding with the imperialist camp during the Korean War). Albania withdrew without being invaded. Poland and Romania took up positions fairly critical of the Soviet line at various times without being invaded, as Bulgaria did to a lesser extent. But the bottom line is that the many nations of Yugoslavia lived mostly in peace with each other during the Tito/socialist period.

 

[georgephillip]

And Biden has restarted it. And yet, even with only 40% approval rating, lefty here backs him up 100%. Why? ( this post has nothing to do with any other candidate ).

Reagan's support for right-wing dictators from Central America to the Philippines works against the argument his policies ended the USSR.

https://ips-dc.org/dont_credit_reagan_for_ending_the_cold_war/

"Soviet-style communism was doomed in part because it fell victim to the pro-democracy movement that was also then sweeping Latin America and parts of Africa and Asia during this same period.

"No credit can be given to the Reagan Administration, which was a strong supporter of many of these right-wing dictatorial regimes, such as the Marcos regime in the Philippines."

Imho, you're correct about Biden helping to restart the Cold War by fomenting a violent coup in Kiev in 2014, launching a civil war that has resulted in the current for-profit bloodletting we're seeing in Ukraine today.

 

[middleview]

Reagan's support for right-wing dictators from Central America to the Philippines works against the argument his policies ended the USSR.

https://ips-dc.org/dont_credit_reagan_for_ending_the_cold_war/

"Soviet-style communism was doomed in part because it fell victim to the pro-democracy movement that was also then sweeping Latin America and parts of Africa and Asia during this same period.

"No credit can be given to the Reagan Administration, which was a strong supporter of many of these right-wing dictatorial regimes, such as the Marcos regime in the Philippines."

Imho, you're correct about Biden helping to restart the Cold War by fomenting a violent coup in Kiev in 2014, launching a civil war that has resulted in the current for-profit bloodletting we're seeing in Ukraine today.

Every president from Truman to GHW Bush had a hand in ending the USSR. The last straw was probably the war in Afghanistan, but it certainly primarily falls to Gorbachev who clearly ended it to attempt to revive Russian society.

 

[georgephillip]

Every president from Truman to GHW Bush had a hand in ending the USSR. The last straw was probably the war in Afghanistan, but it certainly primarily falls to Gorbachev who clearly ended it to attempt to revive Russian society.

https://ips-dc.org/dont_credit_reagan_for_ending_the_cold_war/
"In a December 2003 interview, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the fall of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the arms race. 'When it became clear to us that the one-party model was mistaken, we rejected that model,' he said. 'A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.'"

 

[middleview]

https://ips-dc.org/dont_credit_reagan_for_ending_the_cold_war/
"In a December 2003 interview, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the fall of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the arms race. 'When it became clear to us that the one-party model was mistaken, we rejected that model,' he said. 'A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.'"

Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan and then began negotiations with Reagan to end the arms race. That had less to do with the effort to restructure the political system he called Perestroika than it did with also ending the cold war.

He refused to intervene militarily in other countries in the East Bloc began to move away from communism and Kremlin control.

We are talking about two different efforts. Basically the arms race bankrupted the USSR.