Colby Cosh remembers Carl Sagan.:

He continued to expound the gospel even as improved modelling showed that the likely effect would be closer to "nuclear autumn." But his fancies came to an end in 1991 when he warned Western governments that ignition of the Kuwaiti oil fields by Saddam Hussein would be certain to induce the equivalent of nuclear winter. When Saddam lit the match, it was only Sagan's prestige that fell to below zero. In his 1996 book The Demon- Haunted World, he all but acknowledged that his own "baloney detector" had suffered interference from his personal politics. Yet contemporary iconographers now claim that Sagan's hypothesis, though wrong, frightened Mikhail Gorbachev so badly that Sagan can be credited with playing a "role" in ending the Cold War. (If you believe what the Soviet generals have to say on the subject, Ronald Reagan's investments in missile-defence research -- which Sagan fought to the point of civil disobedience-- were more persuasive.)

I find it interesting how, on one side of the spectrum, just about anyone and everyone can be credited with ending the Cold War except Ronald Reagan.

Gorby, for simply ending the Cold War.

Helen Caldicott, for alerting folks to the unwinnability of nuclear war.

Carl Sagan, for screwing up the science (and ignoring things like peer review) and publicizing Nuclear Winter in "Parade" magazine anyway.

International Physicians for Preventing Nuclear War, for alerting the top leadership that nuclear war was "bad."

Andrei Sakharov, for being a moral exemplar (except to parts of IPPNW, some of whose American members felt that he was a traitor who deserved domestic exile).

The American Left, for not allowing anti-Communism to interfere with sensible foreign policy.

But how is it possible that a ultra conservative right wing war mongering cowboy could have anything to do with ending any war?

Well, that's the mystery, innit, Cecil?

Which is why it's important to recognize that the Cold War was "won" in spite of Ronnie Raygun, not because of him.

(Which raises the question, who "won" the Cold War anyway?)

LO,
what an unmitigated crock of horse hockey!!

I worked at the Rand corporation in the mid 70s. That was when the CIA estimated that the Soviet Union was spending roughly twice it's GNP on defense vis a vis the United States. That was 13 percent verses 6 percent for the US and is a staggering percentage to spend on non-productive non-civilian programs. It was suggested by some policy experts of my aquaintance that the Soviet paranoia could be their downfall. The point being that if the US ramped up defense spending our technological advantage would be a lever to force them to spend even greater amounts and possibly bankrupt their economy. Reagan took up this concept and applied it strenuously. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Soviet economic experts testified to congress that at the end, the Soviet economy was devoting near 25 percent of the GNP to defense programs. Clearly, that's going to take an economy destroying bite.

I'm not surprised this isn't well known. The left, which includes most of the MSM, have studiously avoided making it common knowledge. The funny bit is that in the absence of any other credible reasons as to why the USSR went "poof" they give imbeciles like Helen Caldicot credit for influencing the Soviets, when in actuality, it was the other way around.

Thank God for Reagan!

Utterly unlike the false 'detente' which opened the world up to communist aggression, Reagan pressured the Soviets worldwide - even inside the iron curtain. Many clever operations by the Reagan administration were conducted such as sustaining the Polish solidarity labor resistance or planting trojan horse sabotage into targets of technology theft.

Reagan deserves great credit for applying at the appropriate times carrots or sticks towards the evil empire. Reagan also deserves great credit for his deft political outmaneuvering of various phony Soviet 'peace offensives'.

Reagan's zero option checkmated the 'nuclear freeze' movement, and his strategic defense initiative outflanked the 'fate of the Earth/better red than dead' panic.

Sagan's personal friend Freeman Dyson pointed out that the "nuclear winter" model made two assumptions that might have invalidated the results: (1) there are no oceans, and (2) it never rains. Dyson, attempting to find an explanation for these assumptions, could only speculate that Sagan was thinking about Mars, where indeed there are no oceans and it never rains.

Perhaps it was all that medical marijuana he was smoking?

Many clever operations by the Reagan administration were conducted such as sustaining the Polish solidarity labor resistance

Some say that this had more to do with the work of a certain jewish billionaire, but perhaps he was a CIA plant. He certainly wouldn't be the first completely batshit billionaire to be working under CIA cover.

I've heard the argument made that it was George H.W. Bush who "won" the Cold War, if anyone could be said to have won it, by persuading the Soviet leadership in 1989-91 that the US was committed to ending the Soviet state -- but not to denying the right to exist of Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia et cetera. The Soviet leadership may have been quite willing to abandon the wretched, unloved Soviet Union, that hideous monkey on all their backs, but they were also Russian etc. patriots and would have cheerfully taken the world into nuclear Armageddon in defence of the motherland if they'd been persuaded the West saw the USSR and its component states as necessarily sharing the same fate.

I'm not even sure Reagan had that much to do with it. People have said his SDI, by threatening a new arms race the Russians couldn't win, provoked them into finding a settlement. But I dunno...I think conditions had to have been pretty clearly hopeless inside the USSR for that argument to carry weight at the top. And if things were hopeless inside, then it didn't really matter whether SDI came along or not. I mean, kudos to RR for standing tall, but had he been a Kissingerian detentenik, then something else would have along anyway, sooner or later, to force the issue amongs the Politburo -- and then, once again, a successful non-violent end to the Cold War would require someone in the West capable of ending it gracefully.

I also think the West owes a lot more credit to the innumerable courageous Poles, to Walensa and Solidarnosc and even John Paul II, who lit the fire in the satellite states that the Kremlin just couldn't put out. We must remember they faced down the Soviet state without ballistic missiles of their own.

People have said his SDI, by threatening a new arms race the Russians couldn't win, provoked them into finding a settlement.

Yes, people in the Soviet military have said that, Carl...

Of course Reagan didn't do it singlehandedly, but he does, and should, get much of the credit. And the Carl Sagans of the world, regardless of their other worthy achievements, should get none at all, because if anything, they delayed the process.

I quite like this interpretation of the Reagan years.
www.psychohistory.org/reagan.rcontent.htm