On A Contradiction in US Cold War Grand Strategy

Reagan Kept Faith in America, BigPeace, February 6, 2011. "One of Reagan’s greatest contributions was to return to the commonsense faith that America worked, that the Soviet Union could not, and that we should, and could, win the Cold War by playing to our strengths and against their weaknesses. He was a remarkable orator, and one who was not afraid to speak simple truths plainly: his statement that the Soviet Union was an evil empire shocked an intelligentsia unused to hearing the obvious about an enemy that many no longer regarded as such. But he was more than an orator. Reagan believed that values could drive strategy, that if the U.S. and the West returned to freedom, if they abandoned the controls of the Nixon and Carter era, if they reduced taxes, if they put government back in its proper place, the U.S. would not only be doing the right thing. It would be fighting the Cold War to win."