Politics Thread ( Don't click if you don't want to see political discussions. )

[RedCowboy]

I was alive in the 80's as well, granted I was a teen in the mid 80's, but I have to say that Regan was a Great American President and no democrat President after Regan has been worth a dam..... Biden has helped to destroyed the democrat party as democrats have gone way too far left for America.

 

[paul1598419]

I was alive in the 80's as well, granted I was a teen in the early 80's, but I have to say that Regan was a Great American President and no democrat President after Regan has been worth a dam.

Yeah, I'd expect no more from you. There were many people who deserve credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The East Germans for one. You only know what you read now. I lived that time.

 

[Aorus Forever]

Regans SDI was the straw that broke the Soviet Union.

In Margaret Thatcher’s words, Ronald Reagan had ended the Cold War without firing a shot.

If you want to learn something then read this, and don't say: aww the heritage foundation bla, bla, bla.
Just give yourself a chance to learn and if you disagree with something then make your case, but simply saying Nixon was a criminal and SDI was too expensive is hella weak, why not just admit you don't care about foreign policy and simply want US socialism?

But no one can learn anything from right-wing heritage foundation bull shit, 99% is nostalgic nonsense that didn't happen, though I would agree that Reagan's talk of a powerful space-based "Star Wars" system did scare the Russians because they thought at the time we might be able to do it and they knew if we could they couldn't do anything about it, but we all now know it couldn't be done back then...

Great bluff by Regan, I must say. They didn't call him "The Great Communicator" for nothing! He could talk a big game with the best of them, and it never sounded like bull shit!

Hell, he had me believing we could do it back then! And I was all like "hell yes, to hell with negotiations, we should do it anyway!" lol

 

[paul1598419]

But no one can learn anything from right-wing heritage foundation bull shit, 99% is nostalgic nonsense that didn't happen, though I would agree that Reagan's talk of a powerful space-based "Star Wars" system did scare the Russians because they thought at the time we might be able to do it and they knew if we could they couldn't do anything about it, but we all now know it couldn't be done back then...

Great bluff by Regan, I must say. They didn't call him "The Great Communicator" for nothing! He could talk a big game with the best of them, and it never sounded like bull shit!

Reagan didn't do squat. Of everyone who does deserve credit, he is not among them. Reagan was an actor, and that was his great communicating skills.

 

[RedCowboy]

Regan was Great, I wish we had more candidates like him.

 

[RedCowboy]

 

[Mosc007]

The Available information seems to say the USA had NOTHING to do with the USSR splitting into independent states.




Russia didn't unilaterally split the USSR; the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent post-Soviet states in 1991. While Russia played a key role in the dissolution, the process was driven by a combination of factors including nationalism, economic stagnation, and political reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1. Nationalist and Separatist Movements: Nationalist sentiments and independence movements gained momentum in the late 1980s, particularly in the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and Ukraine. These republics increasingly sought to break away from Moscow's control.

2. Gorbachev's Reforms: Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring) aimed to modernize and democratize the Soviet system. However, these reforms inadvertently weakened central authority and fueled nationalist and separatist movements.

3. Economic Problems: The Soviet economy faced stagnation and inefficiency, leading to shortages and discontent among the population. This economic crisis further fueled calls for change and independence.

4. The August 1991 Coup: An attempted coup by hardline communists against Gorbachev in August 1991 backfired and accelerated the process of dissolution. The coup attempt demonstrated the weakness of the central government and emboldened republics to declare independence.

5. Russia's Role: While Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, ultimately became the successor state to the USSR, its actions were more about asserting its own sovereignty and independence than actively initiating the breakup. Yeltsin and Russian elites saw the dissolution as a way for Russia to control its own resources and rebuild its economy.

6. The Final Dissolution: Following the failed coup, the republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared their independence. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR, and the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.

In essence, the Soviet Union's collapse was a complex process driven by internal pressures and external factors, culminating in the emergence of 15 independent nations.

 

[RedCowboy]

The Available information seems to say the USA had NOTHING to do with the USSR splitting into independent states.

NOTHING? Really? I disagree!

In his first presidential press conference, Reagan stunned official Washington by denouncing the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to “world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state.” As he wrote in his official autobiography, “I decided we had to send as powerful a message as we could to the Russians that we weren’t going to stand by anymore while they armed and financed terrorists and subverted democratic governments.”

Based on intelligence reports and his life-long study, Reagan concluded that Soviet communism was cracking and ready to crumble. In May 1982 he went public with his assessment of the Soviets’ systemic weakness. Speaking at his alma mater, Eureka College, he declared that the Soviet empire was “faltering because rigid centralized control has destroyed incentives for innovation, efficiency, and individual achievement.”

One month later, in a prophetic address to the British Parliament at Westminster, Reagan said that the Soviet Union was gripped by a “great revolutionary crisis” and that a “global campaign for freedom” would ultimately prevail. He boldly predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy … will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”

He directed his top national security team to develop a plan to end the Cold War by winning it. The result was a series of top-secret national security decision directives that:

• Committed the U.S. to “neutralizing” Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region.
• Adopted a policy of attacking a “strategic triad” of critical resources –financial credits, high technology and natural gas – essential to Soviet economic survival. Author-economist Roger Robinson said the directive was tantamount to a secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union.
• Determined that, rather than coexist with the Soviet system, the U.S. would seek to change it fundamentally. The language, drafted by Harvard historian Richard Pipes, was unequivocal: America intended to “roll back” Soviet influence at every opportunity.

Following these directives, the administration pursued a multifaceted foreign policy offensive that included covert support of the Solidarity movement in Poland, an increase in pro-freedom public diplomacy (through instruments like the National Endowment for Democracy), a global campaign to reduce Soviet access to Western high technology and a drive to hurt the Soviet economy by driving down the price of oil and limiting natural gas exports to the West.

A key element of Reagan’s victory strategy was the support of anti-communist forces in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and Cambodia. The “Reagan Doctrine” (a name coined by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer) was the most cost-effective of all the cold war doctrines, costing the United States less than a billion dollars a year while forcing the cash-strapped Soviets to spend some $8 billion annually to deflect its impact. It was also one of the most politically successful doctrines in Cold War history, resulting in a Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, the election of a democratic government in Nicaragua and the removal of 40,000 Cuban troops from Angola and the holding of United Nations-monitored elections there.

And then there was SDI—the Strategic Defense Initiative. Dismissed as “Star Wars” by U.S. skeptics, it put the Soviet military in a state of fear and shock. A decade later, a top Soviet strategist revealed what he had told the Politburo at the time: “Not only could we not defeat SDI, SDI defeated all our possible countermeasures.”

The American president who effectively wrote finis to the Cold War was Ronald Reagan. He entered the Oval Office with a clear set of ideas he had developed over a lifetime of study. He forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world communism by challenging its legitimacy, regaining superiority in the arms race and using human rights as a powerful psychological weapon.

By the time Reagan left office in January 1989, the Reagan Doctrine had achieved its goal: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet system, publicly acknowledged the failures of Marxism-Leninism and the futility of Russian imperialism. In Margaret Thatcher’s words, Ronald Reagan had ended the Cold War without firing a shot.

 

[RedCowboy]

In Russia, Reagan remembered for helping bring down Soviet Union.​

He stunned the Soviet Union with his tough rhetoric, calling it an “evil empire” whose leaders gave themselves the “right to commit any crime.”

His famed “Star Wars” program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn’t afford. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War.


Ronald Reagan’s determination to destroy communism and the Soviet Union was a hallmark of his eight-year presidency, carried out through a harsh nuclear policy toward Moscow that softened only slightly when Gorbachev came to office.

He is vividly remembered in Russia today as the force that precipitated the Soviet collapse.

“Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal,” said Gennady Gerasimov, who served as top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.

Reagan’s agenda toward Moscow started shortly after the start of his first term — and marked a major departure from the mild detente of the Jimmy Carter administration.

In 1981, Reagan backed his rhetoric with a trillion dollar defense buildup. U.S.-Soviet arms control talks collapsed, and the two nations targeted intermediate-range nuclear missiles at each other across the Iron Curtain in Europe.


The deployment of the U.S. missiles in Europe rattled the Kremlin’s nerves, because of the shorter time they needed to reach targets in the Soviet Union compared to intercontinental missiles deployed in the United States.

In an even bigger shock to the Kremlin, Reagan in 1983 launched an effort to build a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles involving space-based weapons.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars,” dumped the previous doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction that assumed that neither side would start a nuclear war because it would not be able to avoid imminent destruction.

Even though Reagan’s “Star Wars” never led to the deployment of an actual missile shield, it drew the Soviets into a costly effort to mount a response. Many analysts agree that the race drained Soviet coffers and triggered the economic difficulties that sped up the Soviet collapse in 1991

 

[Aorus Forever]

In Russia, Reagan remembered for helping bring down Soviet Union.​

He stunned the Soviet Union with his tough rhetoric, calling it an “evil empire” whose leaders gave themselves the “right to commit any crime.”

His famed “Star Wars” program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn’t afford. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War.


Ronald Reagan’s determination to destroy communism and the Soviet Union was a hallmark of his eight-year presidency, carried out through a harsh nuclear policy toward Moscow that softened only slightly when Gorbachev came to office.

He is vividly remembered in Russia today as the force that precipitated the Soviet collapse.

“Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal,” said Gennady Gerasimov, who served as top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.

Reagan’s agenda toward Moscow started shortly after the start of his first term — and marked a major departure from the mild detente of the Jimmy Carter administration.

In 1981, Reagan backed his rhetoric with a trillion dollar defense buildup. U.S.-Soviet arms control talks collapsed, and the two nations targeted intermediate-range nuclear missiles at each other across the Iron Curtain in Europe.


The deployment of the U.S. missiles in Europe rattled the Kremlin’s nerves, because of the shorter time they needed to reach targets in the Soviet Union compared to intercontinental missiles deployed in the United States.

In an even bigger shock to the Kremlin, Reagan in 1983 launched an effort to build a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles involving space-based weapons.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars,” dumped the previous doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction that assumed that neither side would start a nuclear war because it would not be able to avoid imminent destruction.

Even though Reagan’s “Star Wars” never led to the deployment of an actual missile shield, it drew the Soviets into a costly effort to mount a response. Many analysts agree that the race drained Soviet coffers and triggered the economic difficulties that sped up the Soviet collapse in 1991

I remember all of that like it was yesterday! "Star Wars" was going to be a space-based laser platform that could intercept Russian ICBMs "at the speed of light", but in reality, we were nowhere close to that kind of technology.

But after the great success of the moon landings and the first flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, the Russians believed we could build the "Star Wars" system and put it all up there with the new Space Shuttle, and that scared the hell out of them...

But I must say that "whose leaders gave themselves the right to commit any crime" sounds very familiar here in America...

 

[paul1598419]

In Russia, Reagan remembered for helping bring down Soviet Union.​

He stunned the Soviet Union with his tough rhetoric, calling it an “evil empire” whose leaders gave themselves the “right to commit any crime.”

His famed “Star Wars” program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn’t afford. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War.


Ronald Reagan’s determination to destroy communism and the Soviet Union was a hallmark of his eight-year presidency, carried out through a harsh nuclear policy toward Moscow that softened only slightly when Gorbachev came to office.

He is vividly remembered in Russia today as the force that precipitated the Soviet collapse.

“Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal,” said Gennady Gerasimov, who served as top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.

Reagan’s agenda toward Moscow started shortly after the start of his first term — and marked a major departure from the mild detente of the Jimmy Carter administration.

In 1981, Reagan backed his rhetoric with a trillion dollar defense buildup. U.S.-Soviet arms control talks collapsed, and the two nations targeted intermediate-range nuclear missiles at each other across the Iron Curtain in Europe.


The deployment of the U.S. missiles in Europe rattled the Kremlin’s nerves, because of the shorter time they needed to reach targets in the Soviet Union compared to intercontinental missiles deployed in the United States.

In an even bigger shock to the Kremlin, Reagan in 1983 launched an effort to build a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles involving space-based weapons.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars,” dumped the previous doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction that assumed that neither side would start a nuclear war because it would not be able to avoid imminent destruction.

Even though Reagan’s “Star Wars” never led to the deployment of an actual missile shield, it drew the Soviets into a costly effort to mount a response. Many analysts agree that the race drained Soviet coffers and triggered the economic difficulties that sped up the Soviet collapse in 1991

SDI was a total failure. Reagan, the actor, thought laser weapons would be formidable. He was absolutely wrong. Yes, he made a speech telling Gorbachev to tear down the German wall, but that had nothing to do with what transpired. I remember when Reagan was governor of California. He was against war protestors like myself. He did manage to waste a lot of money though.