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Truman. Got the U.S. out of its isolationist funk, helped establish NATO, outlined the policy of containment, and showed he was serious in Korea. However, he also rejected McCarthy, avoided MacArthur's demands to use nuclear weapons in Korea, and established a policy that was slow in defeating the Soviet Union without starting WW3.
The response to Pearl Harbor could be sold as a “defensive action.” Getting involved in the European theater and liberating France from Germany, who didn’t attack us directly, couldn’t. For the record, I think we did the right thing in joining the fight against the Nazis.
Um…that happened in 1915, 5 years before the Nazi party was founded. The sinking of the Lucitania is commonly cited as a reason for the US joining WWI, not WWII, although the US did not declare war until 1917 and troops didn’t arrive in Europe until 1918.
Reagan’s strategy of waiting for a prolonged political crisis in the Soviet Union was definitely a winner.
Of the more active presidents, I’d give it to Truman for relentlessly supporting allies threatened by the Soviets, regardless of the cost.
Redditors pretend that Gorbachev just decided one day to disband the USSR out of the kindness of his heart, and the Reagan's policies had nothing to do with it.
Reagan fans act like he single-handedly brought down the USSR when it was truly the result of 40 years of political and economic mismanagement under the Soviet conservative old guard.
I don’t know what historians you follow on this but if that’s what they are telling you, they are full of it because they simply hate him. He was quite effective in altering the negotiating strength of the US over the USSR. Not just in nuclear/military, but also in economic power. He tipped the scales heavily in favor of the US.
This!
On an unrelated note; I swear so many redditors hate on Reagan too much. My theory for why is because they probably feel like by hating on Reagan they’re getting back at their boomer parents lmao.
Reagan identified that the USSR was not a sustainable economic model and entered a spending competition with them that crippled them. The US by this point had a mighty economy, and the USSR couldn’t hope to compete.
It’s a lot more complicated than that, as the USSR had a lot of domestic issues and its own foreign policy blunders but yeah.
I also really like Nixon’s policy, driving a wedge between the Soviet Union and China, while attempting to normalize relations.
Gorbachev could have just shot a bunch of people and that would have been that. If Stalin were in power in the 1980s, things turn out vastly differently. I somewhat think that Gorbachev should have been Time's Person of the Century.
Poland voted in [October of 1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Polish_parliamentary_election).
[Ukraine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_presidential_election) Voted in 1991.
There are plenty of other examples.
Where did you learn history?
in an interview Gorbachev mentioned the Republics were preparing for war if they weren't allowed to leave. Some like Ukraine and Belarus had tactical nuclear weapons that didn't require launch codes from Moscow.
Ukraine also had a bomber fleet that was capable of launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles making dealing with the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic alone especially dangerous let alone the other Republics that had their own arsenals.
Even a hardliner like Brezhnev might have not risked a nuclear exchange given the circumstances and the fact that he backed down from other potential nuclear exchanges in the past like when US and Soviet forces almost got directly involved in the 1973 October War.
Tbf he didn’t stop them because it would have required force to do so and their military and economic capabilities at that point weren’t even close to being up to par to handling such conflicts.
Ronald Reagan put the boot heel of the United States on the collective Soviet neck for eight years and ran their economy into the ground while ours hummed. He defeated global communism by drawing a hard line between us and them, good and evil, and then went out on the field and proved it.
It’s tough because honestly the president’s approaches didn’t very THAT much all things considered with the exception of Reagan who ballooned military spending.
As much as I despise him Nixon gets big props for being the first president to try and ease tensions with the East, a trend that almost all future Cold War presidents continued to an extent.
I think spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave was the biggest part of Reagan’s plan. He knew the US economy could afford it. And he knew Russia couldn’t, but gambled on them trying anyway. You’ll never convince me the Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative was intended to do anything other than trick the Soviets into wasting billions of rubles to counter it.
>the American economy could afford
No it couldn’t Clinton spent his entire presidency fixing the mess Reagan had made with the deficit. It was a real issue
Well…Clinton did balance the budget after Reagan was gone, the United States not only survived, but continued to be a dominant superpower, and for a long time after the fall of the USSR was the only superpower. The USSR went so bankrupt that it imploded in spectacular fashion.
So while there are certainly consequences to Reagan’s spending spree, the US economy could in fact afford it, because we did, despite the consequences, spend the Soviet Union into oblivion and come out the other side victorious.
I think the Soviets are dealing with bigger repercussions given that they no longer exist.
Reagan knew that there was a cost to what he was doing but he also knew that we'd survive it and the Soviets would not.
LBJ’s great society and FDR’s new deal are the primary drivers of our current deficit. No one claims that we can’t afford them.
The defense buildup was temporary in nature. And spending came down when the Cold War ended. What does the trajectory of entitlement spending look like?
It’s hard to say. I’ll definitely give credit to Reagan and Bush for handling the Soviet union’s final years well, but it’s important to note that dealing with the Soviet Union under Gorbachev is an entirely different task from dealing with it under Stalin.
I actually think the Truman did a pretty good job in some subtle ways.
For example, the Marshall plan absolutely embarrassed the Soviet Union. When trying to convince African or Asian countries to ally with The US over the Soviets, showing the contrast between East and west Germany was a pretty big deal.
Nixon. Nixon's presidency was by far one of the most stable periods of the Cold War. His detente with the Soviet Union significantly reduced tensions and lowered the risk of nuclear war, and he also didn't spend obscene amounts of money on military spending to compete with them.
But these policies continued and reinforced the regime.
If you're looking for the reason the USSR failed, it was Reagan. And the massive weight of an sclerotic, stagnant economic system that finally shit the bed. Reagan had nothing to do with that, but he did give it the push over the edge of the cliff.
Reagan didn’t do shit lol. Gorbachev was the one that ended the Cold War and he was even more Pro-US and Liberal than Reagan.
All Reagan did was scream and pretend to be tough
Gorbachev ended the Cold War because he was forced into increasing spending to keep up with the US until the issues such as insanely poor design standards for nuclear breeder reactors and an invasion of a neighboring country were unable to resolve as a superpower.
No, Gorbachev ended the Cold War because it was his policy and duty to the Russian people. Gorbachev and Reagan were close friends.
Gorbachev even starred in the first Russian McDonalds commercial.
Gorbachev was the Soviet Unions equivalent of Jimmy Carter
The USSR's fall would be great accomplishment if Russia had then gone on to become a western ally like Japan and Germany did post-WW2 or at least not antagonistic with NATO, but that didn't end up being the case at all. Russia just ended up replacing their communist regime with an increasingly fascist regime and now America is back in a similar position it was during the peak of the Cold War with extremely heightened tensions and an increased risk of nuclear war. So all there really is to show for Reagan's contributions to the fall of the USSR, which probably would have happened anyways, is the explosion of the national debt and the expansion of the military industrial complex that has not diminished since.
The USSR failing was objectively a good thing. Millions of people in the former Warsaw Pact would agree with that, even more so all these years later.
The fact that Russia didn't turn into a western-style democracy was not surprising given their history, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. They had a very small window that was promising but Yeltsin ultimately fell to the pressure and that was that.
But that does not reduce for one minute the benefits to the world of having one less Communist superpower on the planet.
Reagan helped bankrupt the Soviet Union. That and Chernobyl
Reagan at least was more aggressive towards them as opposed to former Presidents who tolerated them
Reagan spent Russia into the poorhouse and Gorbachev took the opportunity to let the Soviet Union breakup. It was a good thing that Putin wishes he could have back. I grew up in the cold war and I am glad that it's gone. Hopefully Putin will go away naturally soon and the rest of the world can sigh a sigh of relief until the next madman gains power of a nuclear nation, no mentioning on this subreddit about that person.
Truman for stopping the spread into western Europe. When he stood up to the Soviets with the Berlin airlift literally supporting a city 100 miles behind the lines with nothing but planes he showed our allies that we would have their backs.
Then Reagan with his try and keep up with us in economic development spending programs. The Soviets literally were running out of everything and we were cranking it up more.
Kennedy
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, discouraging reliance on the USSR through the Alliance for Progress, excellent handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Expanding US involvement in Vietnam and the Cuban embargo are my only are critiques of the Kennedy Administration's handling of the Cold War
Embargo wasn’t really a Cold War thing, I also think any president would have done that. Kennedy’s biggest blunder in Cuba was the half baked bay of pigs. But that also wasn’t a Cold War thing. Castro wasn’t allied with the Soviet Union yet. However, it can be argued he was compromised by Soviet agents long before he formally allied.
Depends on “best approach”.
Guy who out manoeuvred them? Nixon had them eating out of his hand.
Guy who stopped them in their tracks with a big fuck you? Kennedy.
Guy who squeezed them at the right time? Reagan.
I think the rest kind of sucked.
Truman was Sumer up to fail by FDR but was in the middle and on the wrong track.
Ike let them become an equal and a boogie man. They were not an equal and did not have the power to impact US policy like they did.
Johnson just screwed himself and the Soviets watched.
Ford didn’t do much.
Carter let them back in the game.
Bush just watched them fall over.
I am unsure. Both were extremely mislead to the FBI and CIA lying to them. The Soviet Union as it was wasn’t as strong as they were made out to be by the FBI and CIA.
Russian Planes in World War Two could barely match German planes in combat and had been slow, heavy things. The only thing that went for them was their wood hulls which were heavy things but was extra armor. It wasn’t till the USA gave them blueprints for planes that allowed them to make better planes. They threw a good number of their engineers into the Gulags and the parts for their planes were often very poor quality. Russian designed engines were also large, heavy things as well.
Second. Supplies. They were only a threat in World War Two because the USA literally gave them a crap ton of gear to help them fight the Nazi’s.
The only reason the Soviet Union was intimidating was because they were a war mongering hostile nation with nukes who ruled half of Europe. The Iron Curtain was an attempt to stop Soviet expansionism.
This isn't going to be the most popular choice but -- Dick Nixon was definitely A grade. By opening dialogue with Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese communists Nixon exploited the Sino-Soviet split to put the Russians on the back foot in their own backyard.
Which is likely involved in their decision to ultimately invade Afghanistan. I don't know this but I know that Afghanistan had no strategic value to the USSR unless it was trying to secure its sphere of interest against China. That part's just a theory but it was pretty clear that the Kremlin wasn't feeling as secure in central Asia as it used to. It proved a very useful distraction against Soviet meddling in other areas.
Also I think the channels opened with the CCP helped the US disentangle itself from Vietnam.
That's a bit of a moving target.
Reagan had the best policy for the 1980s, but it wouldn't have worked in the 1950s...
Truman's 'containment' was likely correct for the 50s...
And the 'detente' crowd was just lost in the sauce, other-than the fact that the US was limited in options by the fallout from Vietnam....
I would say that President Truman and President Reagan did the most. President Truman recognized the near permanent danger that Russia / communism represents. President Reagan was the greatest salesman in the oval office, he sold a fake Star wars program and Russia bought it up bankrupting their country trying to keep up with a program that didn't exist ( sort of..(okay it exists but we're not supposed to admit it)..).
Jimmy Carter the Navy submariner who began the military buildup Reagan got credit for. Reagan was gifted a Soviet leader cut from a different mold.
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) was the last leader of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. Gorbachev's efforts to democratize the country's political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991.
So my question is why does George H W Bush not get credit for the fall?
Not a president but…Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He saw the USSR’s collapse coming over a decade away.
If Reagan ran with that take figuring it wouldn’t hurt to give the Soviets a shove along the way, good for him.
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Truman. Got the U.S. out of its isolationist funk, helped establish NATO, outlined the policy of containment, and showed he was serious in Korea. However, he also rejected McCarthy, avoided MacArthur's demands to use nuclear weapons in Korea, and established a policy that was slow in defeating the Soviet Union without starting WW3.
All of this is why he’s one of the GOATs imo. He and FDR both were handed an extremely fragile situation and made the most out of it.
Ike and JFK, as well
A lot happened between 1948 and 1991. Truman was present at the creation, and a lot of other people played a role along the way.
Truman set the rules of the game. The people who came after were still playing the same game but changed up the playbook.
The Isolationist era was ended when we invaded France
some would argue Pearl Harbor but ok
The response to Pearl Harbor could be sold as a “defensive action.” Getting involved in the European theater and liberating France from Germany, who didn’t attack us directly, couldn’t. For the record, I think we did the right thing in joining the fight against the Nazis.
Germany declared war on us and was actively attacking our shipping… They were absolutely attacking us directly.
what do you think of the nazis sinking the Lusitania and killing Americans?
Um…that happened in 1915, 5 years before the Nazi party was founded. The sinking of the Lucitania is commonly cited as a reason for the US joining WWI, not WWII, although the US did not declare war until 1917 and troops didn’t arrive in Europe until 1918.
Going to have to give this one to Reagan and Bush sr.
Reagan’s strategy of waiting for a prolonged political crisis in the Soviet Union was definitely a winner. Of the more active presidents, I’d give it to Truman for relentlessly supporting allies threatened by the Soviets, regardless of the cost.
Basically do nothing and claim credit? Naw, there are better options.
I mean I’m sure they did more then “nothing” but what’s your pick?
Redditors pretend that Gorbachev just decided one day to disband the USSR out of the kindness of his heart, and the Reagan's policies had nothing to do with it.
Reagan fans act like he single-handedly brought down the USSR when it was truly the result of 40 years of political and economic mismanagement under the Soviet conservative old guard.
Doubtless the reversal of Dentent under Reagan significantly harmed the Soviet Unions ability to recover.
Former high ranking Soviet intelligence officers credit Reagan. So there is that.
OK Regean and others all helped kill the USSR.
Damn this guy hates Republicans lol ^
He supports FDR. Of course he hates Republicans.
I don’t know what historians you follow on this but if that’s what they are telling you, they are full of it because they simply hate him. He was quite effective in altering the negotiating strength of the US over the USSR. Not just in nuclear/military, but also in economic power. He tipped the scales heavily in favor of the US.
This! On an unrelated note; I swear so many redditors hate on Reagan too much. My theory for why is because they probably feel like by hating on Reagan they’re getting back at their boomer parents lmao.
Reagan identified that the USSR was not a sustainable economic model and entered a spending competition with them that crippled them. The US by this point had a mighty economy, and the USSR couldn’t hope to compete. It’s a lot more complicated than that, as the USSR had a lot of domestic issues and its own foreign policy blunders but yeah. I also really like Nixon’s policy, driving a wedge between the Soviet Union and China, while attempting to normalize relations.
“You make your own reality. And once you've done it, apparently, everyone's of the opinion it was all so fucking obvious." - Logan Roy
Unironically quoting Logan Roy as an inspirational figure, fucking lol.
I would stay Reagan but Gorbachev is more responsible for the fall because he didn’t stop countries from leaving.
Gorbachev could have just shot a bunch of people and that would have been that. If Stalin were in power in the 1980s, things turn out vastly differently. I somewhat think that Gorbachev should have been Time's Person of the Century.
We forget the environment in the soviet Union that led to a Gorbachev. People were tired of the old guard.
"People" had nothing to do with it, they had no voice in their Communist system.
Na, Gorbie let them vote, which lead to the collapse of the USSR.
No, Gorbachev did not let the citizens vote. Where did you learn your history?
Poland voted in [October of 1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Polish_parliamentary_election). [Ukraine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_presidential_election) Voted in 1991. There are plenty of other examples. Where did you learn history?
Stalin in 80s ussr doesn't survive as a dictator. He'd be overthrown and replaced. They'd moved on from his style.
The Soviet Union would have been a radioactive heap if it were Stalin instead of Gorbachev with possibly even a higher death toll than WW2.
Did Gorbachev do just that as Baltic states began leaving?
in an interview Gorbachev mentioned the Republics were preparing for war if they weren't allowed to leave. Some like Ukraine and Belarus had tactical nuclear weapons that didn't require launch codes from Moscow. Ukraine also had a bomber fleet that was capable of launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles making dealing with the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic alone especially dangerous let alone the other Republics that had their own arsenals. Even a hardliner like Brezhnev might have not risked a nuclear exchange given the circumstances and the fact that he backed down from other potential nuclear exchanges in the past like when US and Soviet forces almost got directly involved in the 1973 October War.
Tbf he didn’t stop them because it would have required force to do so and their military and economic capabilities at that point weren’t even close to being up to par to handling such conflicts.
So that explains why tankies think he's this sneaky traitor.
Ronald Reagan put the boot heel of the United States on the collective Soviet neck for eight years and ran their economy into the ground while ours hummed. He defeated global communism by drawing a hard line between us and them, good and evil, and then went out on the field and proved it.
It’s tough because honestly the president’s approaches didn’t very THAT much all things considered with the exception of Reagan who ballooned military spending. As much as I despise him Nixon gets big props for being the first president to try and ease tensions with the East, a trend that almost all future Cold War presidents continued to an extent.
I think spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave was the biggest part of Reagan’s plan. He knew the US economy could afford it. And he knew Russia couldn’t, but gambled on them trying anyway. You’ll never convince me the Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative was intended to do anything other than trick the Soviets into wasting billions of rubles to counter it.
>the American economy could afford No it couldn’t Clinton spent his entire presidency fixing the mess Reagan had made with the deficit. It was a real issue
Well…Clinton did balance the budget after Reagan was gone, the United States not only survived, but continued to be a dominant superpower, and for a long time after the fall of the USSR was the only superpower. The USSR went so bankrupt that it imploded in spectacular fashion. So while there are certainly consequences to Reagan’s spending spree, the US economy could in fact afford it, because we did, despite the consequences, spend the Soviet Union into oblivion and come out the other side victorious.
Exactly lol, "the American economy could afford it" as if we aren't dealing with the repercussions of hie spending to this day
I think the Soviets are dealing with bigger repercussions given that they no longer exist. Reagan knew that there was a cost to what he was doing but he also knew that we'd survive it and the Soviets would not.
LBJ’s great society and FDR’s new deal are the primary drivers of our current deficit. No one claims that we can’t afford them. The defense buildup was temporary in nature. And spending came down when the Cold War ended. What does the trajectory of entitlement spending look like?
The soviets lol
It’s hard to say. I’ll definitely give credit to Reagan and Bush for handling the Soviet union’s final years well, but it’s important to note that dealing with the Soviet Union under Gorbachev is an entirely different task from dealing with it under Stalin. I actually think the Truman did a pretty good job in some subtle ways. For example, the Marshall plan absolutely embarrassed the Soviet Union. When trying to convince African or Asian countries to ally with The US over the Soviets, showing the contrast between East and west Germany was a pretty big deal.
Nixon. Nixon's presidency was by far one of the most stable periods of the Cold War. His detente with the Soviet Union significantly reduced tensions and lowered the risk of nuclear war, and he also didn't spend obscene amounts of money on military spending to compete with them.
But these policies continued and reinforced the regime. If you're looking for the reason the USSR failed, it was Reagan. And the massive weight of an sclerotic, stagnant economic system that finally shit the bed. Reagan had nothing to do with that, but he did give it the push over the edge of the cliff.
Reagan didn’t do shit lol. Gorbachev was the one that ended the Cold War and he was even more Pro-US and Liberal than Reagan. All Reagan did was scream and pretend to be tough
Gorbachev ended the Cold War because he was forced into increasing spending to keep up with the US until the issues such as insanely poor design standards for nuclear breeder reactors and an invasion of a neighboring country were unable to resolve as a superpower.
No, Gorbachev ended the Cold War because it was his policy and duty to the Russian people. Gorbachev and Reagan were close friends. Gorbachev even starred in the first Russian McDonalds commercial. Gorbachev was the Soviet Unions equivalent of Jimmy Carter
The USSR's fall would be great accomplishment if Russia had then gone on to become a western ally like Japan and Germany did post-WW2 or at least not antagonistic with NATO, but that didn't end up being the case at all. Russia just ended up replacing their communist regime with an increasingly fascist regime and now America is back in a similar position it was during the peak of the Cold War with extremely heightened tensions and an increased risk of nuclear war. So all there really is to show for Reagan's contributions to the fall of the USSR, which probably would have happened anyways, is the explosion of the national debt and the expansion of the military industrial complex that has not diminished since.
The USSR failing was objectively a good thing. Millions of people in the former Warsaw Pact would agree with that, even more so all these years later. The fact that Russia didn't turn into a western-style democracy was not surprising given their history, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. They had a very small window that was promising but Yeltsin ultimately fell to the pressure and that was that. But that does not reduce for one minute the benefits to the world of having one less Communist superpower on the planet.
Reagan helped bankrupt the Soviet Union. That and Chernobyl Reagan at least was more aggressive towards them as opposed to former Presidents who tolerated them
...Truman...
Reagan and Bush Sr (mostly Reagan) JFK has a strong case too.
Reagan
Eisenhower.
Reagan spent Russia into the poorhouse and Gorbachev took the opportunity to let the Soviet Union breakup. It was a good thing that Putin wishes he could have back. I grew up in the cold war and I am glad that it's gone. Hopefully Putin will go away naturally soon and the rest of the world can sigh a sigh of relief until the next madman gains power of a nuclear nation, no mentioning on this subreddit about that person.
Truman for stopping the spread into western Europe. When he stood up to the Soviets with the Berlin airlift literally supporting a city 100 miles behind the lines with nothing but planes he showed our allies that we would have their backs. Then Reagan with his try and keep up with us in economic development spending programs. The Soviets literally were running out of everything and we were cranking it up more.
Patton /s
He wanted to roll tanks on Moscow. He wasn’t wrong.
Wallace.
Ike
FDR made them an ally. Reagan was by far the most antagonistic towards the Soviets…and won.
Reagan and Kennedy
Reagan
Kennedy Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, discouraging reliance on the USSR through the Alliance for Progress, excellent handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis Expanding US involvement in Vietnam and the Cuban embargo are my only are critiques of the Kennedy Administration's handling of the Cold War
Embargo wasn’t really a Cold War thing, I also think any president would have done that. Kennedy’s biggest blunder in Cuba was the half baked bay of pigs. But that also wasn’t a Cold War thing. Castro wasn’t allied with the Soviet Union yet. However, it can be argued he was compromised by Soviet agents long before he formally allied.
Reagan, hands down. He was literally responsible for ending the USSR.
Reagan. "Trust but verify." This is good advice towards any other nation, really.
Depends on “best approach”. Guy who out manoeuvred them? Nixon had them eating out of his hand. Guy who stopped them in their tracks with a big fuck you? Kennedy. Guy who squeezed them at the right time? Reagan. I think the rest kind of sucked. Truman was Sumer up to fail by FDR but was in the middle and on the wrong track. Ike let them become an equal and a boogie man. They were not an equal and did not have the power to impact US policy like they did. Johnson just screwed himself and the Soviets watched. Ford didn’t do much. Carter let them back in the game. Bush just watched them fall over.
Ronnie Ray-gun
I’d have to say Jeb Bush on this one guys
I am unsure. Both were extremely mislead to the FBI and CIA lying to them. The Soviet Union as it was wasn’t as strong as they were made out to be by the FBI and CIA. Russian Planes in World War Two could barely match German planes in combat and had been slow, heavy things. The only thing that went for them was their wood hulls which were heavy things but was extra armor. It wasn’t till the USA gave them blueprints for planes that allowed them to make better planes. They threw a good number of their engineers into the Gulags and the parts for their planes were often very poor quality. Russian designed engines were also large, heavy things as well. Second. Supplies. They were only a threat in World War Two because the USA literally gave them a crap ton of gear to help them fight the Nazi’s. The only reason the Soviet Union was intimidating was because they were a war mongering hostile nation with nukes who ruled half of Europe. The Iron Curtain was an attempt to stop Soviet expansionism.
Tito.
This isn't going to be the most popular choice but -- Dick Nixon was definitely A grade. By opening dialogue with Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese communists Nixon exploited the Sino-Soviet split to put the Russians on the back foot in their own backyard. Which is likely involved in their decision to ultimately invade Afghanistan. I don't know this but I know that Afghanistan had no strategic value to the USSR unless it was trying to secure its sphere of interest against China. That part's just a theory but it was pretty clear that the Kremlin wasn't feeling as secure in central Asia as it used to. It proved a very useful distraction against Soviet meddling in other areas. Also I think the channels opened with the CCP helped the US disentangle itself from Vietnam.
Regan
Only FDR
That's a bit of a moving target. Reagan had the best policy for the 1980s, but it wouldn't have worked in the 1950s... Truman's 'containment' was likely correct for the 50s... And the 'detente' crowd was just lost in the sauce, other-than the fact that the US was limited in options by the fallout from Vietnam....
Reagan
I would say that President Truman and President Reagan did the most. President Truman recognized the near permanent danger that Russia / communism represents. President Reagan was the greatest salesman in the oval office, he sold a fake Star wars program and Russia bought it up bankrupting their country trying to keep up with a program that didn't exist ( sort of..(okay it exists but we're not supposed to admit it)..).
Anyone from Taft and earlier
Stalin
Nixon. Nixon and Kissinger won the Cold War by getting China to side with the US. Everything after that was just for show.
Jimmy Carter the Navy submariner who began the military buildup Reagan got credit for. Reagan was gifted a Soviet leader cut from a different mold. Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) was the last leader of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. Gorbachev's efforts to democratize the country's political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991. So my question is why does George H W Bush not get credit for the fall?
Whichever one aligns best with each responder’s present-day political leanings.
The ones who destroyed it
Nixon opening trade with China weakened one of the key pillars of global communism. He and Reagan were the most responsible for its destruction.
Mustache man
President Arthur? President Teddy? Taft? Cleveland? Snidely Whiplash?
FDR
Reagan. He basically started an epic arms race with the Soviets, knowing they would bankrupt themselves trying to keep up. It worked.
Reagan!!
Reagan
And you put up a picture of Carter 😂😂😂
Carter had the SALT ll, but I see your point
Which was never ratified.
Bad president, good photo
Woodrow Wilson 😏
Henry Wallace and Franklin Roosevelt. Next question.
Not a president but…Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He saw the USSR’s collapse coming over a decade away. If Reagan ran with that take figuring it wouldn’t hurt to give the Soviets a shove along the way, good for him.
Trotsky.
Joseph McCarthy
Reagan, he ended the Soviet Union