Ronald Reagan [Republican Party].

He is probably the most popular president in US of recent times. He is and will be remembered in future for one single achievement: Destroy communism and in the process destroy Soviet Union.

In this piece we will understand the strategy he used to Destroy communist USSR.

He was the first US president to understand that Communism cannot be defeated politically or militarily. He adopted the policy that “USSR shall be defeated financially”.

Lets see what all steps he took which resulted the fall of USSR.

  1. USSR attacked Afghanistan. USA did not directly attack Afghanistan, but gave training and arms to Mujhadis who fought with Soviet forces. Though they could not fully defeat USSR Army, they bled Soviet Army in the same manner USA had bled in Vietnam. Just like a mongoose tires a snake out, the Afghan war tired USSR resulting to its demise.
  2. Again at the same time, USA increased its Arms spending. With a strong US economy, it could afford to spend money on Arms. But USSR was going to intolerable economic hardships. When it tried to match up with USA, it had to spend a lot of money on Arms and hence the common public started suffering and eventually around 1988-90 they started to revolt.
  3. During his tenure, the first Gulf war (Iraq – Iran war) picked up speed. The financial backbone of USSR is Oil. With gulf war draining both Iraq and Iran, they produced more oil due to which Oil prices fell in international market. This resulted in big losses to USSR and USSR started getting financially weak. The Gulf war also weakened both dictators in Iraq and Iran to an extent. Saddam Hussain was defeated and killed. And Iran Mullah/Khamenei regime is now merrily heading for a disaster.

And finally USSR collapsed in 1991. And the saga of communism, the sorrow it had brought to mankind in forms of mass genocide, restriction of liberty got over.

Destruction of communism had many repurcasssions on India like:

  1. After destruction of USSR, Gandhis have never been in power directly.
  2. India started economic reforms.
  3. India’s relations with US, EU, Israel greatly increased.
  4. The clout of communist parties on Indian politics have reduced greatly.
  5. Lot of foreign and domestic investments started to come and India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world.

In all the above, Ronald Reagan has an indirect role by destroying USSR.

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