From Canada: "Europe Reaps What It Sowed"- barely 30% of Europeanswork

On May 16, 6:46*pm, "O'Donovan, PJ, Himself"
wrote:
On May 16, 6:13*pm, "O'Donovan, PJ, Himself"
wrote:





On May 16, 5:39*pm, "O'Donovan, PJ, Himself"
wrote:

On May 16, 4:23*pm, "O'Donovan, PJ, Himself"
wrote:

On May 16, 3:51*pm, wrote:

freeisbest wrote

* * *YOU rightards spent out the U.S. Treasury because YOU wanted
soviet free-market-hating godless evil commonists absolutely
destroyed... and the Soviet Union was absolutely destroyed. *YOU
turned Russia into a desperate free-market sewer.
* * *Now you're blubbering about it... and at the same time planning
to bring down Europe if you can.
* * *Unbelievable.

Reagan Cold War Myth

Under the assumption that the Soviet Union could not then outspend the US
government in a renewed arms race, Reagan strove to make the Cold War
economically and rhetorically hot. Many analysts argue that the eventual
collapse of the Soviet Union was due more to the re-emergence of separatist
movements under glasnost, an inherent weakness in communist economic theory,
and the depressed global price of crude oil, on which the Soviet economy
during those years depended heavily. Furthermore, Reagan's much heralded
military buildup that increased American military spending by 8% per annum in
fact did not appear to have the planned effect of forcing the Soviets to
mirror American growth: according to CIA estimates, Soviet military spending
leveled off at a growth rate of 1.3% per annum in 1975 and remained at that
level for a decade, although it more than tripled to approximately 4.3% in
1985 through 1987 (though spending on offensive strategic weapons continued
to grow at 1.3% during that period), before returning to 1.3% in 1988.

Perhaps more startling, Reagan's military build up, coupled with his fierce
anti-soviet rhetoric, contributed to Soviet near-panic reaction to a routine
NATO exercises in November 1983, ABLE ARCHER 83. Though the threat of nuclear
war ended abruptly with the end of the exercise, this historically obscure
incident illustrates the possible negative repercussions of Reagan's
"standing tall" to a nuclear power. Some historians, among them Beth B.
Fischer in her book The Reagan Reversal, pin ABLE ARCHER 83 as an incident
which had a profound effect on President Reagan and his turn from a policy of
Confrontation towards the Soviet Union to a policy of rapprochement.