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PETER SCHWEIZER, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press), 284 pp. $22.00 Cloth (ISBN 0-87113-567-1).
Historians will undoubtedly recognize Ronald Reagan's two terms as President of the United States for two major victories: the rebirth of a spirit of American pride and nationalism and the winning of the Cold War with the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Peter Schweizer has addressed the latter of these victories in his book aptly entitled Victory.
Schweizer has demonstrated in a comprehensive well-documented work that the downfall of the Soviet Union was not an accidental aftermath of the Reagan Presidency but the result of a carefully planned and executed program designed to force the Soviet leaders to divert resources needed for the maintenance of a standard of living at home to "guns" rather than "butter"--to use the standard analogy of academic economists.
William J. Casey had a unique relationship with Reagan. Although they barely knew one another prior to the 1980 election, when the Reagan campaign was in "deep trouble" early in 1980, then Governor Reagan tapped Casey to serve as Campaign Manager to bring together a divided and financially strapped...