Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union [Paperback]

Peter Schweizer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

Victory tells the story of a secret U.S. strategy developed in the Reagan White House in early 1982 that hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. In this explosive book, Peter Schweizer provides the riveting details of how the Reagan administration undermined the Soviet economy and its dwindling resource base while subverting the Kremlin’s hold on its global empire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning in 1982, according to the author, then President Ronald Reagan and his senior advisers mapped out a systematic strategy to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union by attacking its fundamental economic and political weaknesses. In a convincing, startling expose that reads like a spy thriller, Schweizer ( Friendly Spies ) draws on interviews with Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, KGB generals, Politburo members, Reagan advisers and others to show how the Reagan administration used covert operations, hidden diplomacy, military build-up and policy maneuvers to exacerbate the Soviet crisis in natural resources, sow political discord and weaken the Soviet empire. The Reagan strategy, as revealed here, included restricting Soviet access to Western credit and technology, covert financial and logistical support to Poland's Solidarity movement and to the Czech underground, a campaign to slash Soviet hard currency earnings by driving down the price of oil with Saudi cooperation, and substantial covert aid to the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviet invasion.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

To exhaust the Soviet economy, the Reagan administration tightened technology export controls, launched SDI, funded Afghan resisters, and induced the Saudis to keep oil prices low. The unfolding of this not-so-secret strategy, in which CIA director William Casey took a leading role, is admiringly recounted by the author of Friendly Spies (Atlantic Monthly, 1993) with "re-created" dialogs and homey details of Casey's secret meetings with friendly despots like Pakistan's General Zia and the Saudi royal family. Specifics of the CIA's technology disinformation program and of its relationships with the Vatican, Solidarity, and the Voice of America make interesting reading. Otherwise, there's little new here other than the notion that Casey's maneuvers were key to the demise of the Soviet empire, which, as Schweitzer admits, was already in deep economic trouble by the end of the Carter administration. For general readers with a taste for tabloid history-Robert Decker, Palo Alto, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871136333
• ISBN-13: 978-0871136336
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and is the author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. He lives in Florida with his wife and sons.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How the Cold War was won., April 7, 2001

By 

miked99 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback)

In this book, Peter Schweizer not only gives detailed accounts of the behind-the-scenes strategies on how the Reagan Administration finalized the downfall of the Soviet Union, he thouroughly documents his sources. Schweizer conducted numerous personal interviews with high-ranking officials that worked during the 1980s at the CIA, National Security Administration, and the State Department. From those he lays out how the Reagan teamers put the Soviet Union in a fatal chokehold through three main areas: 1) bargaining with Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices down, ruining Russia's main source of revenue, 2) covert operations to supply the mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan with the arms to expel Russian forces from their country, and 3) underground support for Solidarity members in Poland.

A student friend of mine was taking a course in which his professor was a former head of counterintelligence at the CIA, so I had my friend ask his professor to verify the legitimacy of Schweizer's book. My friend reported back that the professor, who says many reports have been almost fictional, said that he HIGHLY recommends this book for the most honest assessment of how Ronald Reagan and his team won the Cold War.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Puts in place many pieces of the puzzle of global politics., October 9, 1998

By 

Timothy Ritter (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback)

Once in awhile a book comes along that has that special quality of illuminating a real world mystery. Robert Caro's biography of Johnson and Albert Speer's memoir are two such works. Peter Schweizer's Victory is another.

For years I wondered, as I read news accounts and histories, why no one had a logical explanation for why oil prices had dropped so dramatically in 1985, when just a couple years earlier pundits were saying the sky was the limit for oil. And why, shortly thereafter, did the Eastern Bloc begin to crumble, soon to be followed by the Soviet Union itself? Then why did the Bush Administration see fit to conduct a war to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia? And were all these momentous events related? The answer is yes. Victory describes clearly how they all were indeed closely related.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was worried that he would be overthrown as the Shah of Iran had been, either by Muslim extremists, or by Soviet backed revolutionaries. At the same time, the Reagan Administration was interested in the economic strangulation of the Soviet Union. The source of most of the USSR's hard currency was the sale of its oil on international markets. So a deal was struck.. The US would guarantee the security of the Saudi monarchy with AWACS jets and Stinger missiles and, ultimately, US armed forces. In return, Saudi Arabia would flood the market with oil, driving the price for a barrel of crude from $35 down to $10.

With its oil income cut by 70%, Moscow could no longer buy the technology it needed to keep pace in the arms race, let alone dole out largesse to Poland or East Germany. And when Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia's tiny neighbor Kuwait, it was time for the US to uphold its part of the bargain.

Victory aptly describes this and other maneuverings to win the Cold War, such as the support of the mujahedin in Afghanistan and of the Solidarity movement in Poland. It is based largely on interviews with such key players as Caspar Weinberger, Robert MacFarlane, George Schultz, Richard Pipes, Herb Meyer, and Richard Allen, so that it provides an almost palpable sense of being in the White House as the strategy was crafted. It effectively gives the lie to those facile commentators in the media who claim the Soviet Union fell of its own weight. It didn't. It was pushed.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy start..., November 14, 2002

By 

Harold C. Hutchison "Author, Strike Group Reagan" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback)

Peter Schweizer's first contribution to the telling the untold stories of the efforts of the Reagan Administration is quite stunning - offering a uniques inside perspective to the operations and the planning of them that led to the memorable scenes of the Belrin Wall falling.

"Victory" is the story of what happened, and the planning that went on behind the scenes, orchestrated by then-DCI William Casey, who took lessons learned while fighting Adolf Hitler as part of the OSS in World War II, and applied them to fighting the Soviet Union.

Casey will probably go down in history as one of the America's great unsung heroes, joining men like Edwin T. Layton and Joe Rochefort. Schweizer's efforts have laid out this untold story, fought in the shadow world of espionage and covert operations in an engaging story.