Who won the Cold War? Nobody really WON the Cold War, but just to maintain the delusion, let's assume that the Cold War was in fact WON. So who won it? Two men are ultimately responsible for "winning" the Cold War, and they are John F. Kennedy and Mikhail Gorbachev. The claim that Ronald Reagan brought down the wall in a single speach is a wonderful, delusional myth.To put it very simply, Ronald Reagan was a wonderful man who gave Cold War zealots like Richard Nixon and Oliver North the unfettered opportunity to exercise their wacky, Cold War schemes.
The Cold War is a complex history that is dominated by heaps of misinformation.
Crediting Ronald Reagan for winning the Cold War is like crediting Richard Nixon for opening the door to China. Reasonable people who acknowledge history understand the fact that Nixon did not open the door to China. He produced the hysteria that kept it closed until the thick-skulled, anti-Communist fanatic finally got the message that it was better to engage than to isolate China. Reasonable men like Adlai Stephenson had talked about opening the door to China as early as the 1950's, but Richard Nixon wanted to drag out the Cold War for as long as possible because it made him feel relevant.
The key to understanding the end of the Cold war as we know it, is found in USSR Minister of Foreign affairs, Andrei Gromyko's press conference in Moscow on April 2, 1983, when he said:
"The Soviet Union has unilateraly assumed an obligation not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. It did not wait for the consent of other powers to that. This was a resolute and bold step. I think everybody present here will probably agree with this."
We like to assume that Ronald Reagan is responsible for ending the Cold war. The fact is, the reasonable policies of reasonable people ended the cold War, and Ronald Reagan is an irrelevant footnote in that regard.
History's fanatics, Richard Nixon and media tyrants like Rupert Murdoch in particular, will invariably hog the spotlight, but reasonable people like John F. Kennedy, Andrei Gromyko and Mikhail Gorbachev deserve credit for ending the Cold War.
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