re: #232 William Barnett-Lewis

Does it talk about how Gorbachev played him like a cheap fiddle?

The article takes a different perspective….

In the Reagan myth that conservatives have constructed since the Cold War’s end, all this never happened. It’s as if Reagan jacked up defense spending, called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” hatched the Strategic Defense Initiative, sent some guns to the Contras and mujahideen, and poof, the Soviet empire dissolved. But without Reagan’s dovish turn, it’s unlikely he and Gorbachev would have ended the Cold War. Gorbachev wanted to slash military spending and end Moscow’s costly hold over Eastern Europe in order to revive the Soviet economy. But to disarm and retrench, he had to convince Kremlin hard-liners, long fearful of a Western attack, that the United States would not prey on Moscow’s weakness. By jettisoning the aggressive rhetoric and cutting U.S. nuclear stockpiles, Reagan helped Gorbachev win at home. “If Reagan had stuck to his hard-line policies in 1985 and 1986,” wrote longtime Soviet ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin, “Gorbachev would have been accused by the rest of the Politburo of giving everything away to a fellow who does not want to negotiate. We would have been forced to tighten our belts and spend even more on defense.”