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Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union Hardcover – January 1, 1994
- Print length284 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAtlantic Monthly Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1994
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100871135671
- ISBN-13978-0871135674
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Product details
- Publisher : Atlantic Monthly Pr; First Edition (January 1, 1994)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 284 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0871135671
- ISBN-13 : 978-0871135674
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #354,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #803 in Political Commentary & Opinion
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer's most recent book, the #1 New York Times bestselling "BLOOD MONEY: How the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye to China Killing Americans," will shock Americans with the extent of China's hidden war on America. His books have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list eight times, including for "Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win," as well as "Profiles in Corruption," "Secret Empires," and "Clinton Cash," all bestsellers.
Peter founded the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in 2012, Previously, he was a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House for President George W. Bush. He has also served as a member of the Ultraterrorism Study Group at the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratory and is a former consultant to NBC News. His books have been translated into eleven languages and he is a frequent guest commentator on television networks, radio talk shows, and podcasts. He is also the host of GAI’s own weekly podcast, The Drill Down, which relentlessly exposes cronyism and corruption in Washington.
Peter is also the author of the book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. Both Extortion and the preceding book, Throw Them All Out, were featured in segments on CBS’s 60 Minutes program.
His other nonfiction books include Reagan’s War (Doubleday, 2002), which the Washington Post praised as “a fascinating, well-written, useful and important look at one of the three or four most important American political leaders of the 20th century. No serious assessment of the 40th president of the United States can ignore the central importance of anti-communism in his career; after Schweizer none will.” The Los Angeles Times called it “A rousing and compelling case that Reagan’s personal and political odyssey…was central to bringing down the ‘evil empire.” He is also the co-author of The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (Doubleday, 2004), which the New York Times called “Fascinating…Provides illuminating insights into the internal dynamics of the Bush family dynasty.” The New York Post declared “If you want to know as fully as can be told the story of how the Bushes rose from Midwestern obscurity to equal the records of families like the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Adamses — this is the book.”
Other nonfiction works include Architects of Ruin (Harper, 2009) Victory (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) , Do As I Say (Not As I Do) (Doubleday, 2005), and Makers and Takers (Doubleday, 2008).
His academic books include Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and The Fall Of The Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). He was also a contributor to Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2008)
His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs.
Peter received his M.Phil. from Oxford University and his B.A. from George Washington University. He lives in Florida with his wife, Rhonda, and his children.
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This book documents the broader aspects of the "game". Great detail is provided on the personalities and tactics employed by the Reagan team, especially in Afganistan, Poland and with the Arab world to manage the world oil price to assist in the bankrupting of the Soviet Union.
I couldn't put this book down until I finished it! Nor could I prevent myself from lamenting the disastrous decline of direction that has affected America since the Reagan years. The current inhabitant of the White House is not even in the same ballpark as Reagan. A pity!
I loved this book and the revelations on how American policy caused the Soviet regime to be consigned to the ash heap of history. A solid read about how policies truly due matter.
Ed Cummins Houston, TX
"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.
This was effected: by manipulating oil prices (a vital Soviet export) in collusion with the Saudis (who in exchange received much needed military support and a guarantee of American intervention in case their position was seriously threatened); by denying the Soviets access to Western technology; and, most of all, by effecting heavy investments in military technology, spearheaded by the SDI project. The idea was to start an arms race that shifted the confrontation from quantity to quality and from mass production to high-tech innovation – a dimension that the Soviet economic system was ill-suited to cope with.
My problem with the book is that it is so repetitive. It basically mulls over the same points in nearly all chapters, constantly adding minor details as it follows a chronological timeline. This book might be cut down to half its size with no appreciable loss of content.
As an European, however, I was impressed by the fact that, if the author is correct, back in the eighties the Soviets and the European pacifists were right in denouncing the aggressive intentions of the Reagan administation. Contrary to what was purported by Western governments and medias, the Star Wars project, the deployment of the Pershing and Cruise missiles and the support to the Afghan resistance WERE part of a belligerent crusade aimed to subvert the strategic balance between the superpowers and strike at the foundations of Communism. For example, Schweizer details how Reagan regarded Afghanistan as an opportunity window to create a generation of Islamic extremists eager to declare a holy war against atheism and so bring war and terrorism into the enemy’s “soft belly” – the Soviet Islamic provinces of Central Asia. (The nation that invented the ‘war on terrorism’ was never shy of wielding it against others.) It was never a matter of reacting to Soviet assertiveness; the administration’s intents were aggressive from start, and the president was eager to fight to the last Afghan in order to advance his agenda.
Schweizer also reports how Reagan made his purpose clear to his closest ally, Margaret Tatcher, and that she recommended to carefully downplay the ideological undertones inherent to his crusade in order to make the endeavour more palatable to other European governments. These paladins of freedom and democracy purposefully deceived public opinion and warped the minds of hundred of millions of their own (as well as foreign) citizens in order to further their planes – and the controlled medias played along all the time.
The medias’ connivance comes as no surprise to the reader who learns that in Reagan’s time “in addition to sharing information, nearly 200 major US corporations were providing cover for CIA agents” (p.187). The Wikileaks and Snowden scandals, plus the role played by NGOs in the color revolutions engineered by the American government worldwide (along with the support lent by social networks to them), should be read under this light.
Contrary to the author’s very intentions, this book can be a revealing medium to lift the mask of hypocrisy that to this day shrouds the robber nature of the American empire.
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Thank you
l'ancien secrétaire de l'énergie de Reagan Hodell a déclaré en 1995 que c'est en lisant ce livre qu'il a compris ce qu'ont fait en secret Reagan et la CIA


