Ronald Reagan

[ila]

Originally Posted by smc

I think he just happened to be in the presidency at a time when two forces of history collided. The first was that the arms race was bankrupting the Soviet Union, and the second was that Mr. Honecker took one step too far in the GDR and finally precipitated the German people to tear down the Berlin Wall. That Reagan made a speech with a famous line in it a two years earlier ("Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall") is, I believe, largely coincidental.

But was the arms race bankrupting the Soviet Union because Reagan was spending massive amounts on the military or was the Soviet Union going bankrupt trying to get ahead of the US before Reagan's presidency?