In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Nicaragua became a Soviet client state, Angola was engaged in a Cuban-directed civil war, and Poland was placed under a Soviet- devised military dictatorship. At least 25,000 nuclear warheads were targeted at the United States. That year Jean-Francois Revel, in his best seller “How Democracies Fail,” declared the West was doomed to failure in a contest of wills with Soviet totalitarianism – a pessimism shared by many analysts who believed the Soviet juggernaut was unstoppable. A mere dozen years later, however, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Western democratic ideal was a guiding force around the world.

When Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985, the Soviet Union was still considered a superpower. The Red Army was often estimated by Western analysts to be superior to NATO forces and the Soviet economic system was held by many as the most equitable in the world. Yet Gorbachev almost immediately set the Soviet Union on a path of economic and political reform that led to the end of the Communist Party and his tall from power. Why would Gorbachev have set out on this risky path when the U.S.S.R was apparently competing so well with the West?

The simple answer is Gorbachev understood that Soviet military power was vastly inferior to Western forces and that, with the decrepit Soviet economic system, ~-here was no hope of narrowing the gap. While unclear from the outside, Soviet non-competitiveness was blatantly obvious to Gorbachev. Without an effective military machine, the U.S.S.R. would be no more than an overgrown Third World nation.

Until 1982, when President Reagan announced development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), both the United States and the Soviet Union depended on a principle called mutual assured destruction (MAD) to prevent nuclear war. The theory behind MAD was that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could risk launching a first-strike because of the retaliatory forces of the other. If, for instance, the Soviets were to launch a sneak attack against the United States, American forces would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Effect: Everyone loses. Arguably, MAD prevented World War III. By the early ’80s, however, weapons advancements had made MAD just about obsolete.

Advanced global positioning software, satellite navigation systems and all around better ICBM guidance had decreased targeting error from thousands of meters to mere hundreds. This meant the probability of a successful preemptive first strike had increased dramatically. If the Soviets believed they could knock out United States retaliatory forces with a first strike, the American strategic position would be seriously diminished. In fact, some analysts argued that, the probability of first-strike success had increased enough to cause the U.S.S.R.’s leaders to be much more bold in expanding Soviet influence the world over.

The key to eliminating the threat of Soviet nuclear blackmail was to lower the probability of a successful first strike. The means to accomplish this was the Strategic Defense Initiative, a broad-based defensive network designed to destroy incoming warheads in space before they re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, Ronald Reagan announced SDI to the American people during a televised address in early 1982. Reaction to the initiative was varied, Some hailed the end to the “MAD Mexican standoff,” Others, including some notable scientists, strongly criticized the plan as unworkable, claiming Reagan’s nuclear umbrella would “leak like a sieve,” Some of the more charitable claimed it would not stop more than 10 or 20 percent of incoming missiles. Others argued it would not stop the Soviets from launching a submarine-based attack either with ballistic missiles or with “inflated boats with outboard motors and atomic bombs.” These critics, however, failed to see the broad strategic significance of SDI.

Imagine a scenario which Soviet strategists decide a first-strike success probability rate of 98 percent might warrant use of nuclear weapons to pressure Western leaders to accept Soviet military adventurism. If that perceived success probability rate, due to advances in technology, began to approach 98 percent, thee threat of nuclear war would escalate. Both U.S. and Soviet strategists might begin to regard nuclear weapons as a viable tool of foreign policy, and the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight.

Now introduce SDI into the equation. Even if the calculated success rate of SDI systems in destroying incoming missiles is only 15 percent, the Soviet first strike success probability rate would drop well below the hypothetical 98 percent needed for an effective preemptive strike. Thus the probability of nuclear war falls to MAD levels or below. Limited SDI success is translated into total strategic success.

Soviet strategists saw this not as a return to MAD but rather SAD – Soviet assured destruction. Since SDI would allow the hypothetical equation’ for a successful first strike against the Soviet Union to reach and surpass 98 percent.

When Gorbachev met Reagan’ at Reykjavik in 1986, he tried desperately to bargain SDI away. President Reagan, however, was determined to stay the course, enduring the continual ridicule of scientists and others blind to the strategic significance of SDI.

Gorbachev understood that if the Soviet, Union could no longer compete militarily with the West, it would not be the recognized superpower equivalent of the United States. He also understood that the dysfunctional Soviet economic system could not possibly support a project on the scale of a space-based defense system. Thus he set out on a path of economic and political reform that eventually led to his destruction.

The Reagan administration’s brilliant strategic maneuvering – both with SDI and the intermediate range ballistic missile deployment in Europe – can be directly credited for the destruction of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War.

This lesson was not lost on the Russians and today they find themselves negotiating, not with Ronald Reagan, but with the naïve and inexperienced Barack Obama. Remembering their history better than the American president, they wish to accomplish two goals.

First, they wish to restrict nuclear weapons to a fixed number. This provides them with weapons parity with the United States without the need to build and deploy new weapons. On Monday Obama and Russian President Dimtry Medvedev were prepared to sign an agreement lowering both the number of warheads and delivery vehicles. Both countries will retain enough nuclear weapons, as Winston Churchill famously stated, “to make rubble bounce.” Nevertheless, the Russians will be released from the need to scramble to maintain parity with the United States. This is a great relief to the Russians.

The second goal of the Russians is to undo the strategic disadvantage that Reagan’s SDI caused them to find themselves. They continue to attempt to tie various goals of the United States to the non-deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. Last week a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister and former president, said the Kremlin would not negotiate further weapons reductions unless Obama ended plans for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama has stated that he is open to negotiations on missile defense deployment in those countries.

Today the United States stands on the brink of dismantling one of the greatest strategic defense victories in human history. Today in a speech before the New Economics School in Moscow Obama said this:

Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

This is revisionism pure and simple. Not that we should be surprised.   Sunday the New York Times reported that in 1983, as a Columbia undergraduate, Obama wrote an article for a campus newspaper expressing smug disparagement of Reagan’s defense policies.  The reality is that the Cold War ended because the Soviets and their allies collapsed under the unrelenting pressure of the West in general and the United States in particular. Heroes Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa engaged the Evil Empire on strategic, tactical and human levels that caused the rotten foundation of the empire to crumble. The people of Russia watched in despair. Some of them took notes so as not to make the same mistake again.

Now an America despising naïf who is more comfortable with dictators and tyrants than with freedom is representing the United States before the Russian bear. He is on the verge of dismantling and destroying that which was bought with the blood and treasure of generations who came before us. The world has been turned upside down. Welcome back to 1979.

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