The Cold War and Reagan...
I had the honor of having started my military service during the Reagan years and I remember... I remember the Soviet submarines right off Long Island with their nuke missiles pointed at us, and us having to go out there and chase them off!! I remember the Bear Soviet bombers doing "bombing runs" in the Atlantic, etc… but more on that later.
First let’s go back a little, let’s go back to the 1970’s. People need to be reminded that Reagan came to power due to the complete disillusion the American people had in ourselves at the end of the 1970’s, due in part to the loss in Viet Nam, the country generally in a decline mode, and more below; just watch the Movie “Miracle” with Kirk Russell to be reminded a bit on how bad things were here in the US…
For starters, Carter and the gas/oil crisis…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis
…then, the economy in recession/pieces…
...in addition to a “Hollow military”, a military with very low moral, equipped poorly with aging tanks and aircraft, cut down too small for the dangers of the times and future dangers we were facing at that time, which coincidentally is the same thing we did again at the end of the 1990’s…:
Then, the USSR on the “march” from Afghanistan (an Afghan government coup, then a Soviet invasion)…
… to Africa, were the increasing influence/interventions of the Soviets were even noted in the TV world about that Soviet/communist Cuba involvement in Africa…:
…Communist Soviet and Communist Cuban troops and armament intervention in Ogaden war 1976-1978 (Somalia-Ethiopia), were on top of the soviet T-34 tanks and soviet Mig fighter planes supplied to the communist forces, 150,000 Cuban troops also INTERVINED and fought on the communist side:
https://www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/index1970.htm
…And the interventions/take-over of countries in Latin America like Nicaragua and later their attempt at taking over Colombia and El Salvador with the help (again) of Communist dictator Castro of Cuba, which mandates “Proletarian Internationalism”, as expressed in the Cuban Constitution, even though in 1975, for example, the United States voted in the Organization of American States to lift sanctions imposed on Cuba in the early 1960s, proving that even being “nice” and “engaging” to them does not work!
We even have ADMISSIONS by some of the major communist players, even terrorist players allied to the Soviets that they were in there making the take over happen, examples:
June 19, 1981---German Social Democratic leader Hans- Jurgen Wischnewski states at a press conference in Bonn that Fidel Castro had admitted to him that Cuba had shipped weapons to the Salvadoran guerrillas.
March 18, 1982--The New York Times reports that the Salvadoran guerrillas now concede that Cuba supplied arms for the January 1981 "final offensive" through Nicaragua.
September, 28, 1981 and October 29, 1981--Cuban vice president, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, confirms in interviews given to Der Spiegel and to El Diario of Caracas that Salvadoran guerrillas are trained in Cuba.
March 11, 1981--Sandinista defense minister, Humberto Ortega, in a speech in Hanoi gives thanks for the support given by the Vietnamese.
September 24, 1981-- William Shawcross says in New York Review of Books that Col. Bui Tin had acknowledged to him during a visit to Vietnam that American weapons left in Vietnam had been sent to El Salvador, saying, "We do our best to support revolutionary movements in the world."
January. 11, 1982--PLO chief Yasser Arafat confirms to a group of journalists in Beirut that "there are Palestinian pilots in Nicaragua, there are Palestinian revolutionaries with the revolutionaries in El Salvador." None of these reports were mentioned in the 90-minute CBS documentary.
And then, on top of all that, the American hostages fiasco in Iran in 1979, in which Carter looked incompetent, and the US looked weak once again…
Generally, the Cold War was in full swing and we were losing!
Then Reagan came into the scene, and with his convictions and general idea of no retreat, but to push forward, to rebuild the military, and Reagan’s belief in victory through strength, the Cold War started to turn into our favor and ultimately won, more on it:
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1957.html
Reagan military build up paid off decisively even later on, during the 1991 Gulf War, a victory mostly based on his weapons buildup, even News organizations like the Washington Post recognized it. All those F-117s, M-1 tanks and other amazing weapons we used to win that war were bought by the Reagan build up!
But the main effect of this buildup was to bring the economy of the then USSR down, by having them have to spend money in their military in a futile attempt to keep up, an attempt they could never have been able to keep up since their economy was a mess, due to their centralized, unopened communist system economy. He called them for what they were “An Evil Empire”, and also set in motion internal forces inside the Soviet/Eastern block for change and the destruction of the USSR and its satellites nations system, forces like "Solidarność"…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity
His alliance with Britain Margaret Thatcher,.which was a strong allied against world communism, together with Reagan and the Pope, John Paul, who also put pressure in the Eastern Europe satellite countries with his message of free worship and freedom from oppression.
Reagan and Thatcher: 'Political soulmates' (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/politics/thatcher-reagan/
The Pope even endangered himself after joining this fight to the extend that his life was threatened by the KGB, who we now know tried to have him killed, a KGB plan acknowledged by Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview to the Italian magazine Il Tempo.
All of this made a solid front against the Soviets, a front the Soviets had not gone against before, and that, coupled with some bad political moves by the Soviets and their puppet regimes, such as the one in East Germany near the end of allowing free move/travel across the "Wall" ultimately would bring their system down in 1989.
Reagan also brought the United States out of that self-pity of the late 70’s and into believing in ourselves again, with his vision of seeing America as a "shining city on a hill", he also got the economy moving again, and the country moving towards the better, this point made clear by his re-election in the landslide of 1984, when the majority of American answered with a resounding "yes"! with his question of "Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago", a fact no one can deny!
Reagan turned around the Cold War in our favor, and with the help of key allies in the world, both outside the Soviet block and inside the Soviet block won the Cold War, a war we were losing until 1980!
Finally, here is Reagan in his own words:
http://www.ronaldreagan.com/ussr.html
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