Ronald Reagan deserves credit, not Mikhail Gorbachev

On the occasion of Mikhail Gorbachev’s death, he is being credited for allowing the Soviet Union and its Evil Empire to unravel peaceably. In fact, thanks to Ronald Reagan, as a practical matter, he had little choice.

To be sure, the Soviet army still had many weapons with which to kill and oppress. But thanks to President Reagan’s determination to roll back the USSR – something he pledged to do in the 1980 campaign and then accomplished with a comprehensive strategy aimed at bankrupting the Kremlin’s communist system – Gorbachev was reduced to presiding over a national Chapter 11.

We’ll be unable to achieve a similar victory over the Soviet Union’s successor as what Ronald Reagan would call our time’s “existential threat to freedom” – namely, the Chinese Communist Party – as long as we persist in underwriting and otherwise propping it up via “engagement.”

This is Frank Gaffney.