Kaplan emphasizes Gorbachev's role, but I'd go further: Gorbachev, quite despite himself, destroyed the USSR. As Alexis de Toqueville pointed out, "The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects." The USSR was unreformable; attempting to do so only cracked it open.
What-if games are always tricky; but I don't see a strong case that a President Mondale would have been unable to give Gorbachev the external security he needed to encourage perestroika. On the other hand, if the Soviets had trotted out another leader of the vintage of Chernenko or Andropov, or if Yegor Ligachev were in power, it's unlikely that Reagan's arms buildup and nukes proposals would have had much effect.
Reagan's domestic legacy is appalling, however. His presidency was the signal to the business class that it need no longer share with the middle class. So far as I can see, if Reagan helped destroy the world's nastiest economic system, he also helped destroy its best one.
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Kaplan emphasizes Gorbachev's role, but I'd go further: Gorbachev, quite despite himself, destroyed the USSR. As Alexis de Toqueville pointed out, "The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects." The USSR was unreformable; attempting to do so only cracked it open.
What-if games are always tricky; but I don't see a strong case that a President Mondale would have been unable to give Gorbachev the external security he needed to encourage perestroika. On the other hand, if the Soviets had trotted out another leader of the vintage of Chernenko or Andropov, or if Yegor Ligachev were in power, it's unlikely that Reagan's arms buildup and nukes proposals would have had much effect.
Reagan's domestic legacy is appalling, however. His presidency was the signal to the business class that it need no longer share with the middle class. So far as I can see, if Reagan helped destroy the world's nastiest economic system, he also helped destroy its best one.