Both FN and walesa chooses to play dumb just ebcause they hate
replubicans.
The message and legacy is clear. Reagan did outspend the Soviet
union and caused it to collapse because teh Soviets knew they could
not keep up.
Here are 2 articles from wikipedia that clearly shows it. I know
both FN and walesa will keep on denying it but here it is for all
to see.
Lets see who are teh ones with English comprehension
problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_war#End_of_the_Cold_War
End of the Cold War
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty in
1987.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty in
1987.
Main article: Cold War (1985-1991)
By the early 1980s, the Soviet armed forces were the largest in the
world by many measuresin terms of the numbers and types of weapons
they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the
sheer size of their military-industrial base.[44] However, the
quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed
areas where the Eastern bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.
This led many U.S. observers to vastly overestimate Soviet power.
[45]
By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military
that consumed as much as twenty-five percent of the Soviet Union's
gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and
investment in civilian sectors. [46] But the size of the Soviet
armed forces was not necessarily the result of a simple
action-reaction arms race with the United States. (Odom) Instead,
Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments can
be understood as both a cause and effect of the deep-seated
structural problems in the Soviet system, which accumulated at
least a decade of economic stagnation during the Brezhnev years.
(see Economy of the Soviet Union) Soviet investment in the defense
sector was not necessarily driven by military necessity, but in
large part by the interests of massive party and state
bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and
privileges. [47]
By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the
Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero
percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a
result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. [48]
(Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of the Soviet Union's
total export earnings.) [49] To restructure the Soviet economy
before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid reform.
(see perestroika and glasnost) Reform required Gorbachev to
redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military
commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a
result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on
the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in
Eastern Europe.
Ronald Reagan recognized the real change in the direction of the
Soviet leadership with Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a
view to encourage the Soviet Leader to go further with his reforms.
Gorbachev agreed to meet Reagan in four summit conferences around
the world: the first, in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in
Reykjavík, Iceland, the third, held in Washington, D.C., along with
the fourth summit, in Moscow, Russia.[50] Reagan believed that if
he could persuade the Soviets to look at the prosperous American
economy, they would embrace free markets and a free society.
Gorbachev, facing severe economic problems at home, was
swayed.[51]
Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall on June 12,
1987, Reagan said, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace,
if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if
you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev,
open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
When Gorbachev visited Washington, D.C. for the third summit in
1987, he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty at the White House (they finalized it a year later),
which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.[52]
Ronald Reagan gives a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin
and challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this
wall!"
Ronald Reagan gives a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin
and challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this
wall!"
The Kremlin made major military and political concessions. The
East-West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in
the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988,
the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene
in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe. In 1989, Soviet
forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
In December 1989, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declared the Cold
War officially over at a summit meeting in Malta.[53] In 1990, the
Berlin Wall was torn down. By then, the Soviet alliance system was
on the brink of collapse, and the Communist leaders of the Warsaw
Pact states were losing power. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev tried
to reform the party to destroy resistance to his reforms, but, in
doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the state and
union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forced to
surrender its 73-year old monopoly on state power. By December of
the next year, the union-state also dissolved, breaking the USSR up
into fifteen separate independent states. (see Dissolution of the
USSR)
Legacy
Despite its rapid and relatively bloodless end, the Cold War was
fought at a tremendous cost globally over the course of more than
four decades. It cost the U.S. up to $8 trillion in military
expenditures, and the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans in Korea
and Vietnam.[54] It cost the Soviets an even higher share of their
gross national product. In Southeast Asia, local civil wars were
intensified by superpower rivalry, leaving millions dead.
The end of the Cold War gave Russia the chance to cut military
spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The
military-industrial sector employed at least one of every five
Soviet adults.[55] Its dismantling left millions throughout the
former Soviet Union unemployed. Russian living standards have
worsened overall in the post-Cold War years, although the economy
has resumed growth in recent years. In the 1990s, Russia suffered
an economic downturn more severe than the U.S. or Germany had
undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression after it had
embarked on capitalist economic reforms.[56]
The legacy of the Cold War continues to structure world affairs.[1]
The Cold War institutionalized the role of the United States in the
postwar global economic and political system. By 1989, the U.S. was
responsible for military alliances with 50 countries and 1.5
million U.S. troops were posted in 117 countries.[30] The Cold War
also institutionalized the commitment to a huge, permanent wartime
military-industrial complex.[30]
Some of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War
competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown
of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist
governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts,
particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[1] In some countries, the
breakdown of state control was accompanied by state failure, such
as in Afghanistan. But in other areas, particularly much of Eastern
Europe, the end of the Cold War was accompanied by a large growth
in the number of liberal democracies. In areas where the two
superpowers had been waging proxy wars, and subsidizing local
conflicts, many conflicts ended with the Cold War; and the
occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, or
refugee and displaced persons crises declined sharply.[57]
