Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union

EDITED: In light of new information that I've gathered recently, I've decided to change my rating of this book. Apparently the information that Schweizer imparts in this book is mostly hokum. As such I've downgraded my rating of it to 1/2 star.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of discussion as to what was more responsible for it occurring: American policies or Mikhail Gorbachev's refusal to use force to maintain Russian hegemony. With Victory Peter Schweizer may not be in the group that says it was all American policies that brought down the Soviet threat, but he does put forward a convincing argument that U.S. foreign policy did speed up the Soviet downfall.

The gist of Schweizer's argument is that Reagan show more administration officials recognized that the Soviet economic system was inherently unstable and would be quick to fall apart if the right amount of pressure were applied. Entering the 1980s, the Soviet economy was staying afloat primarily because of its ability to export large amounts of oil and gold for a very high price. U.S. policy amounted to trying to bring down the price of each item so that the Soviets would have a difficult time earning enough foreign credits to import key goods. This would cause a crisis by forcing the Soviet government to either reduce the availability of consumer goods for the Soviet people, which would cause civil unrest or to reduce military spending, which would reduce the Soviets ability to compete with the U.S.

The Reagan administration accomplished this policy goal by taking the hard choice to cozy up to some unsavory regimes, like South Africa's Apartheid and the Saudi regimes, despite the large amount of grief it got them around the world and in the U.S. Reagan made the decision that rolling back Soviet power was the more important goal and that the U.S. could deal with these other repressive regimes once the Soviet threat had been dealt with.

Above all, this book shows the importance to any country's foreign policy of setting priorities with a clear hierarchy. You have to decide what the biggest threats are facing the country and deal with them first. A country that doesn't set its priorities cannot be said to have a foreign policy at all. show less

Scholarly review of the people and policies of the Reagan Administration to counter Soviet influence in the world. There were other reasons for the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union besides the policies of the Reagan Administration, however the focus of Reagan and his advisors toward blocking Soviet aims and expansion was relentless, and certainly was a huge contributor to the breakup of the USSR. Schweizer explains how Reagan provided additional military support to Afghanistan to help lead to unsustainable soviet troop losses in that ongoing war, how our increases in military spending forced the Soviets to divert money from other needed programs. Additionally, Reagan political policies and restrictions on advanced technology show more exports impacted the modernization of soviet military and business. These influences ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Left unsaid is that these same combined pressures, e.g., an already weakened domestic economy, increases in military spending, an unsustainable limited war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in the borders of Pakistan could lead to further pressure on our economy if our leaders fail to make the tough choices and take effective steps to resolve these problems. show less