Reagan deserves credit for forcing the USSR to abandon strategic competition with USA. Of course he didn’t do this alone, we were always ahead of the Soviets, but Reagan gave us a second wind and we pulled ahead even further. The Soviet leaders realized the game was up and sued for peace. Maybe the west would have won eventually, but Reagan won it quicker and conclusively.
What some Reagan supporters try to credit him with and he doesn’t deserve is the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nobody, and I expect not even Reagan himself saw that coming. That was entirely Gorby and Yeltsin’s stupidity, with a little bit of diplomatic finness by George Bush I. I’ve heard it argued that had Reagan presided during the fall of the wall, his antics would likely have caused a Soviet hardline backlash.
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