Tom Brosz wrote:

>"Fortunately" the Soviet Union imploded, apparently for no
>discernable reason, and we were "incredibly lucky." Of
>course, the other theory is that Reagan's policy worked,
>and the Soviet Union was, as you say, forced "into
>redirecting the last meager parts of their economy towards
>strategic weapons thus insuring their economic collapse."

The best histories about the Civil War were written long after the actual players had died from old age. The best histories about World War II are being written now. Most of the really interesting information about the Cold War is still classified or buried in archives. A truly valid judgement about Reagan's presidency won't appear until we're long dead.

However having said that, I think the Soviet Empire did not collapse for "apparently no discernable reason". I used to live in Goettingen, Germany about 20 km. from the East/West German border (the "Iron Curtain"). I toured Eastern Europe extensively while the communists still ruled. Many of my wife's family lived in the former East Germany. I'm an eye witness to the fact that the Soviet Empire collapsed from utter exhaustion. The whole infrastructure had been run into the ground through gross mismanagement by communist governments. The buildings in venerable cities like Prague, Halberstadt and Cracow were literally falling down. Communism failed because it was unable to provide for the basic needs of its people. The miracle is it failed with a whimper rather than in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear holocaust.

Tom Brosz also said:

>We will never lose the need for at least a nominal nuclear
>retaliatory force. I would make one major change to this
>statement, in that I would also include manned bombers as a
>major portion of this retaliatory force, and not just >missiles. Manned bombers have a much more flexible response
>capability, and would also be part of a non-nuclear
>response

Bombers are fine for non-nuclear weapons after air superiority has been established as was the case in the Persian Gulf War. However the B-2 is so expensive that is almost unusable as a weapon. The problem with blasting someone who has just nuked New York with a terrorist bomb is we wouldn't have immediate air superiority. In truth we would not want to exterminate or even conquer a miscreant rouge state (too much trouble and expense). All we really would want to do is promptly destroy their ability to produce and launch weapons of mass destruction. SLBMs armed with highly accurate maneuvering reentry vehicles would be ideal for that application. Also having our nuclear force in submarines is desirable because the subs would be far from our population centers. If someone did try to destroy our nuclear weapons capability, at least we would have the option of responding with most of our population left alive. This concept of keeping the nukes far from our population is the main reason why most of our Minute Man III silos were located in North Dakota.

Gary