What did Reagan see that others, including the Central Intelligence Agency, did not?
Reagan realized that the Soviet Union did not have a balanced economy. The USSR was putting its military and empire ambitions first while average Russians were living in inadequate housing, lacked hot water and often had no indoor plumbing. Hours were spent in line trying to get food and other essentials. Reagan thought it was foolish to be providing loans and technology to a country with a system that was endangering the world. By installing intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe, the USSR was well on the way to getting a majority of West Germans so frightened that they would favor being neutral. By shipping or smuggling arms into various African, Central American and South American nations, the USSR was building cadres that could later start so-called liberation uprisings. The goal was to get to be part of a coalition government that in time could become Communist dominated. Nicaragua had gone this path. Reagan felt that the Soviet Union was vulnerable right then to a confronta
