Reagan Didn't "Win" the Cold War

All right, enough already. Listen up, neocons, because I'm only saying this once: Ronald Reagan did not "win" the Cold War. To the extent that things got better in terms of the lessening of tensions, and they did, it was because Reagan had a counterpart in the Soviet Union who was willing to meet him way past halfway, i.e., Mikhail Gorbachev, the person whom most of the world sees as the most important statesman of that time.

Supposedly, Gorbachev was scared of Reagan's bluster and crumpled like a Dixie Cup. "Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev!" I don't think so. Gorbachev acted for his own reasons, pursuing a less militarized and totalitarian path for his country. This was called Glasnost. What if Reagan's counterpart had been a Soviet version of Ahmadinejad, bellicose, intransigent, and full of contempt for the U.S.? We can see how much good tough talk has done with Iran. What if the Soviet leader was an ideologue who preferred to see his country go down in flames?

American conservatives should actually revere Gorbachev for taking the first steps toward dismantling the Soviet Union, but doing so would shatter what Larison identifies as the dearly-held fallacy -- make that, delusion -- that the U.S. has unlimited power to shape internal events in other countries through blustering rhetoric and the advocating of ill-considered and foolishly aggressive foreign "interventions."