That was part of it.  The Soviets had put an <i>immense</i> amount of money into their Strategic Rocket Forces, and even a modest implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, let&#x27;s not use the name chosen by those who attacked it) would have negated it, because a (first strike) attacker can&#x27;t chose which warheads get taken out.<p>We also hit them hard in the pocketbook: convinced OPEC&#x2F;the Saudis to lower the price of oil, directly sabotaged their gas exports to Western Europe, otherwise denied them technology that would have improved their economy, and made Afghanistan their Vietnam.<p>And then the moral aspect; I haven&#x27;t read the fine article, but Reagan wasn&#x27;t afraid to correctly refer to the Soviet Union as an &quot;Evil Empire&quot;, told Gorbachev to &quot;Tear down this wall!&quot; (separating East and West Germany).  I&#x27;ve also read from accounts inside the Iron Curtain that our invasion of Grenada was a <i>massive</i> shock, this was the first time ever that the West had taken back a Communist nation, explicitly denying the Brezhnev Doctrine, which we also attacked in many ways in Eastern Europe.<p>Bottom line was that Reagan was the first US President to decide to destroy, rather than merely contain, the Soviet Union, and despite the wavering of George H. &quot;Chicken Kiev&quot; W. Bush, succeeded shortly after leaving office.  This, without massive bloodshed, is hands down the greatest geopolitical achievement in post-WWII 20th Century history.