We give Reagan a lot of credit for breaking the Soviet Union using the the arms buildup. The ulitmate short term goal. Flood the world with nuclear weapons. Let the two biggest powers use all their resourses to create massive stock piles of thermonuclear missiles.
Make the USSR spend so much money trying to keep up with our build up that we will break their economy, leaving them broke with nothing to sell, except their arsenal.
We did this because we were told the only threat out there was communism. Everyone else loved us, we were told. Of course college educated people understood this was not the case. But America tends to view educated people as gay or communist. So again the villagers with their pitchforks and torches got their way.
Bush tried to push another nuclear buildup and he and McCain tried to get us into conflict with Russia but it was a tired effort.
I know I am liberal but the problems in the world are not there because we don't have enough missiles.
