Sarah Paine

And then here he is before the Brandenburg Gate.

This is in Berlin, long a symbol of German greatness, but then it was a locked gate on the Berlin Wall.

And here's Ronald Reagan.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, tear down this wall.

And who can forget the evil empire speech, which he gave to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, and they skipped Disneyland to hear it.

All right, Reagan did a very significant military buildup that actually had started under Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Big mistake, as we discovered.

and um he also uh invested deployed missiles in europe he was busy funding anti-communist insurgencies and also others who didn't like the soviet union all over the world starts doing more aggressive military patrolling patrolling and by the time he's out of office he's like half a dozen ships short of this 600 ship navy or whatever it is he was planning to make

And he also was trying to build a missile shield, his strategic defense initiative.

And the problem is the Soviets tried to match him on this.

And if you add up the GNPs of the United States, NATO allies in Japan, well, that would be seven times larger than the Soviet GNP.

And you got to be aware of symmetric strategy.

So

The CIA thought during the Cold War that perhaps Russia was spending up to a 20% part of its GNP on defense.

After the Cold War ended, when you're getting more accurate statistics, it turns out it was at least 40% or 50%.

And some people say it was up to a truly economy-busting 70% if you take into account all the infrastructure investments that were associated with military things.

If you look during the Cold War, the United States was spending less than

8%, Germany less than 6%, Japan less than 2%, and Nazi Germany, which is no piker, 55%.

So you look at all this and it was difficult.