What was the Reagan Revolution about?
What was the Reagan Revolution about?
Paul Craig Roberts
It depends on whether you were part of it or viewed it through the eyes of the liberal media.
I was a part of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan adopted the Kemp-Roth bill and the supply-side policy it represented as his economic policy to cure stagflation. As I had written the bill and had built as a member of the Congressional staff support for it among House Republicans and Senate Republicans and Democrats, Reagan reasoned that I had a stake in his economic policy and would get it unmolested out of his administration so that Congress could vote on it.
Reagan explained to me that he had two goals. The first was to end the “stagflation” that forced the US economy to pay for economic growth with higher inflation. Once the US economy was repaired, Reagan’s second goal was to use the power of the US economy to end the Cold War.
The Soviet economy was dysfunctional and within its paradigm could not be repaired. Reagan’s plan was to fix the US economy and then challenge the Soviets to an arms race in order to bring them to the negotiation table to end the Cold War. Reagan thought that the destructive power of nuclear weapons was too great to risk distrust and tension between the US and the Soviet Union.
Reagan accomplished both of his goals, and he has not been given credit. I was involved in both. I got Reagan’s supply-side policy out of his administration, and Congress passed it. Next as a member of a secret presidential committee I helped to move the CIA out of the way of Reagan’s intention to end the Cold War. The CIA argued that the Soviets would win an arms race because their economy was
centrally planned and could put more resources in the military than could Reagan. Reagan believed the Soviet economy was broken and could not be fixed. The secret presidential committee, after reading the CIA’s analysis and interviewing CIA officials, concluded that Reagan was right. The committee told Reagan that the CIA was protecting its budget and power by trying to prevent the end of the Cold War.Americans do not understand how many influential institutions have an interest in war and how few have an interest in peace. What do you think the political campaign contributions from peace groups are compared to those of the military/security complex?
Ask yourself why Washington has wasted billions and billions of dollars in such immoral uses as funding a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and in funding Israel’s attempted genocide of Palestine when, all the while, US infrastructure is hurting, when homelessness on our cities’ streets is growing, when health care is substandard and unavailable to many, and when Washington’s open borders policy is bringing in 3.6 million people annually that need support for housing, food, medical care, and education. The war lobby rules over every other budget category.
Look at the eight years of Hell the military/security complex put Trump through just because he said he was going to “normalize relations with Russia.” The last thing the military/security complex can afford is to have their enemy taken away.
War has a grip on America. It is Washington’s main purpose. Every tension-reducing agreement 20th century US presidents made with the Soviet Union was repealed beginning with Clinton in the 1990s and completed by George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
It is extraordinary that the United States rapidly disintegrating into a tower of babel is simultaneously provoking conflict with Russia, Iran, and China. Clearly, Washington’s priority is the same as that of the military/security complex. Washington’s agenda is war. The Cold War that Reagan ended has been resurrected and is entering a hot phase.
An afterthought: Today would Reagan be arrested and indicted for endangering US national security by trying to make peace with Russia?
Putin Relies on Reason which the West Has Abandoned
Putin Relies on Reason which the West Has Abandoned
Paul Craig Roberts
Vladimir Putin is an old-fashioned American liberal. He believes in reason, good will, working things out, and agreements despite having zero evidence that any such reciprocating belief exists in the West.
Putin’s illusions have caused him and Russia extraordinary difficulties. Russia is currently at war in Ukraine, although Putin still doesn’t seem to realize it, referring to it as a “limited military operation” despite the obvious fact that Russia is at war with NATO which includes the US.
It is sad that Putin, a person with good intentions, doesn’t have his counterparts in the Western world.
Now it comes to light that the British and Ukrainian governments planned to assassinate both Russia’s President Putin and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov at the Navy Day parade in St Petersburg. https://news.mail.ru/politics/62240282/?frommail=1
In my columns I have several times mentioned that Putin and Trump are candidates for assassination. The recent attempt on Trump, which has been removed from the “news,” has now been matched by the statement of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, on Russian national television that Belousov called US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and squashed the assassination plan, explaining, apparently, that World War III would be the result.
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry said: “There is no doubt that the assassination attempt was planned with the participation of the Anglo-Saxon masters of Kiev.”
Still, Putin wants to negotiate the end of the Ukrainian conflict. How precisely do you negotiate with people who are trying to assassinate you?
Dmitry Medvedev, President of Russia during the Putin Interregnum, currently deputy chairman of the Russian National Security Council, seems to have come to a clear vision. Here are his latest words, and one wonders if Putin hears them:
“From this moment, the special military operation should become openly exterritorial in nature. We can and should go further into what still exists as Ukraine. To Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev. To Kiev and further. There should be no restrictions in terms of recognized borders.”
In other words, the nonsensical “limited military operation” should be over and done with. It is time to get serious.
The liberalism in which Putin believes no longer exists in the West. So why is Putin relying on it?
I raise these questions because it appears that the combination of Washington’s provocations and Russian restraint is leading to a terrible war that is in no one’s interest.
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