‘He challenged the conventional wisdom on arms-control, on the possibility of movement towards freedom in the Communist-dominated world, on the superiority of market – and enterprise – based economies.’ Reagan’s great virtue was that he ‘did not accept that extensive political opposition doomed an attractive idea. He would fight resolutely for an idea believing that, if it was valid, he could persuade the American people to support it.’ (George Shultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State).
Reagan’s essential achievement was to restore the will and self-confidence of the American people.
In a desperate attempt to match the US technological effort in defense – the Reagan rearmament program, and especially the Strategic Defense Initiative – the Soviet leadership did the unthinkable: it attempted to reform the Marxist-Leninist economy in the hope of reinvigorating it. In the process they lost control of the system as a whole, saw the Evil Empire disintegrated, and watched, almost helpless, as the great monolith of USSR collapsed. So Communism was submerged, the Cold War ended, and the United States became the world’s sole superpower. The effect of SDI was to add to the stresses on the Soviet economy and thus eventually destroy the totalitarian states.
'We meant to change a nation and instead, we changed a world.' (Ronald Reagan's Farewell Speech).
The end of the Cold War began on September 12, 1989 when the first non-Communist government took over in Warsaw, continued with the destruction of the Berlin Wall on the night of November 9-10, and culminated in the first half of 1991, when the Soviet Union was abolished and Boris Yeltsin was elected first democratic President of a non-Communist Russia.
The Gulf War was one of the most brilliant military campaigns in US history, which demonstrated the power and efficacy of the new generation of sophisticated weapons produced by Reagan’s rearmament program.
