Ronald Reagan may have helped bankrupt the Soviet Union but the way he did it created the nuclear threats, terrorism, massive wealth and income inequality, drug addiction, and mass incarceration we are still dealing with today. First, in 1983 Reagan scared the Soviet Union into nearly launching a pre-emptive nuclear war. Based on that he changed the National Security Policy to bankrupt the Soviet Union and stop the spread of Communism around the world. That policy was then used to justify some pretty horrible things that were probably meant to be temporary but have continued to damage our government and our country to this day.
1. Exploded Our Debt - Reagan was the father of massive government debt spending. He exploded the arms race with the Soviet Union and got our country hooked on debt spending and tripled our debt. It may have contributed to bankrupting the Russians but it also created the massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons that are the source of destabilization and growth of terrorism around the world.
2. Opened the Border with Mexico - Reagan used a National Security Executive Order to reclassify Title 8 USC 1325 "Entry Without Inspection" from a misdemeanor to an administrative fault, which has no penalty, fine, arraignment or records. This created a legal gray area that made it possible for millions of non-union workers to cross the US border and cripple labor unions and by extension weaken the Democratic party.
3. Funded Anti-Communist Armies with Cocaine - Reagan's CIA helped Nicaraguan drug cartels flood US streets with massive amounts of cocaine to finance anti-communist armies in South America. This did help stop the spread of Communism and bled the Soviet Union dry. However, it also created a massive drug addiction problem in the US, which exploded gang violence, created a massive policing problem and led to the mass incarceration of black people, all of which we are still dealing with today.
4. Helped US Companies Move Overseas - Reagan, with the help of the Heritage Foundation, created the “Council on Competitiveness" which spawned the organizations that helped US companies move millions of our jobs overseas. These organizations did the legal research in international law and trade agreements to ensure US companies could avoid all possible employee and environmental protections to achieve the highest possible profits. It was small potatoes during the Reagan years but grew over time until George Bush gave them the tax cuts to finish the job of gutting our middle class.
5. Crippled Labor Unions and Lowered Everyone's Wages - All of the above may have helped bankrupt the Soviet Union but it also strangled our government into failure, crippled labor unions and lowered all of our wages across the board and that created the massive wealth and income inequality we are still dealing with today as well as just about every major problem we face today.
In contrast, after eight years under a Democratic president and successful negotiated worldwide sanctions against Russia and Iran, Russia is facing a depression which forced Iran to agree to a nuclear deal that they are ahead of schedule implementing. Crashing the price of oil was a matter of manipulating the exploration, extraction, transport, refining and storage of oil and gas and it was no accident. Crashing most things like commodities is a matter of de-regulating or holding back the enforcement mechanism, letting the greed run wild and pitting the competing players against each other and the US has been doing this for a long time. Sometimes for good and sometimes not. It’s also no accident that the crash of oil prices has made the extraction of tar sands oil in Canada and the XL pipeline irrelevant for a long time. It’s also no accident that with the crash in natural gas prices means power companies are no longer able to afford opening new coal fired power plants. All of the above is giving clean, renewable energy alternatives space to expand and fill the void. All of this while the US economy is growing and our deficits are shrinking and that is the way it is supposed to be done.