Lynn of A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance has a short post with a quote about the pitiful technique with which history classes are generally taught. You know the kind - "Memorize these names, dates, and places, and puke them back up for the test".

In college I was fortunate enough to have the GOOD kind of history prof. He was an accomplished storyteller, and did a good job making the past come alive. Also, his focus was not on the raw data, but on the historical trends and events that tied one story to the next. Exams were all essay.

One day we were discussing the Cold War, and he asked how it ended in the collapse of the Soviet Union (this was in 1992). I piped up, "we challenged the Russians to a spending contest & they lost."

Surprisingly, he agreed, and I felt pretty damn good about having my off-the-cuff remark supported instead of being met with a glare for being a smart-ass.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Reagan added hundreds of billions of dollars to the defense budget. The Russians spent hundreds of billions of dollars playing catch-up. Since a communist state has far less money than a capitalistic one, they went broke trying to maintain parity.

My question is: do you think that was Reagan's plan all along? To outspend the Russians and drive Ivan into bankruptcy? Or do you think he was just preparing to be the stronger side in case war broke out, with no real inkling that the arms race would ever end?

Posted by: Harvey at 02:23 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 275 words, total size 2 kb.

1 I thnk it was a combination of the two. If Reagan's economic plan to win the cold war succeeded, great! But if not, at least we were armed to the teeth...

Posted by: Richmond at November 22, 2006 03:41 PM (e8QFP)

2 Yeah, pencil me in for both. I think he came into office thinking that we needed to be stronger (especially in the wake of Jimmy Carter). Somewhere in there, things shifted to "hey, my wallet's fatter than yours." Possible shifting point: Star Wars. Reagan probably started out thinking it was a feasible program, and then just kept throwing money at it to keep the Russians spending in an attempt to counter it.

Posted by: Mike the Marine at November 22, 2006 04:27 PM (594be)

3 One of the books I want to read was just suggested to me the other night is called, "Reagan in His Own Hand"... or something like that. Apparently he had been working on his positions for years and years, jotting notes and stuff. I'm wondering now if the answer to your question might lie in the notes highlighted in the book. Once I get hold of it, I'll have to read it in that light. In any case I think Richmond and Mike are right - it was a win-win doing what he did. And best of all it worked beautifully. *grin*

Posted by: Teresa at November 22, 2006 05:04 PM (5UR9t)

4 Win-win, but "lose" for you. Should have spent a few more dollars on your education. "capitistic"

Posted by: That 1 Guy at November 22, 2006 05:24 PM (Hn1Gg)

5 I remember reading somewhere (I swear it wasn't a dream) that Ronald Reagan clearly understood a communist state couldn't match to growth potential of a capitalistic one. There's no doubt he believed in a strong military ("Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong".). The key to winning the cold war, IMAO, was understanding the Soviets would wither in the face of superior economic & military strength so long as they were convinced we had the resolve to use it.

Posted by: Hapkido at November 22, 2006 09:52 PM (+cC9w)

6 T1G - DOH! ... fixed...

Posted by: Harvey at November 23, 2006 08:39 AM (L7a63)

7 Reagan had a degree in Macro-Economics. He knew what he was doing. It was a deliberate plan and one we should have continued.

Posted by: _Jon at November 26, 2006 11:35 AM (AqumQ)

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