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Summary: The Greatest Victory of this past Century's Second Half
Review: As the son of one who fought the Soviets in the CIA for 25 years, I was especially happy to give him this book for his recent birthday-after reading it first. The breathtaking tour de force engineered by Bill Casey as CIA chief at such a small investment to bring down the mighty Soviet empire is finally acknowledged. Thank God he was spared the inquisitorial attacks of Lawrence Walsh who falsely accused great patriots like Casper Weinberger and Elliott Abrahms who also worked so hard for that noble effort. It is very instructive to see how men who refused to bow before the Holy Grail of the arms control community were able to achieve in less than a decade what the Whiz Kids could not achieve despite spending far more blood and treasure of ours. Can you guess which group is lionized by much of the mainstream media?
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Summary: Right Leader for His Times
Review: At times, it is easy to question the wisdom of the American electorate. Yet at truly critical junctures, the voting public has shown an uncanny knack for electing leaders who were ideally suited for the challenges of the times. Certainly, that was the case in 1932, with the election of FDR, and again in 1980, with the rise to prominence of Ronald Reagan. The origin of the demise of the Iron Curtain -- and ultimate break-up of the Soviet Union -- can be traced to Reagan's arrival on the world geopolitical stage in the early 1980s. Author Peter Schweizer provides copious evidence for how the Reagan Administration's policies contributed to the collapse of the USSR. Some of these policies included: covert support for Afghan rebels and the Polish underground; the unprecedented military build-up and technology commitment (including SDI); the efforts to stem technology transfers and subsidized financial credits to Eastern Bloc nations, and significantly, to hobble the development of the Siberian natural gas pipeline; the "special relationship" forged with the Saudis, which ultimately led to the precipitous decline in oil prices (costing the USSR billions in lost hard currency). Reagan's policy of active confrontation with the Soviet Union was a stark departure from bi-partisan orthodoxy, which had attempted to "accommodate," or, at best, "contain" Soviet expansion.
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Summary: topnotch
Review: Bill Casey is a true American patriot. God took him just beofre the Lawrence Walsh inquisition started. Because of Reagan, Casey, Cap Weinberger, the Pope, Poland's Solidarity, and Afghan freedom fighters, the mighty Soviet Empire fell-a feat said to be impossible by the media community (like James Bamford).
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Summary: Con Men
Review: If you are a right wing Republican you are going to love this book. Zbigniew Brzezinski, during the Carter Administration and earlier, was writing detailed articles in Foreign Policy Magazine and other journals that most people don't read unless they're Political Science Majors in College about the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Before the millenium, Brzezinski maintained, the Russians would internally crumble into oblivion. There were already signs of disintegration. Leave it to the Bush Wackos to take Right Wing Credit for the Soviet wipeout. Sadly, I am certain that Peter Schweizer is keenly aware of Brzezinski's forecast. But because this author is prettier than Brzezinski, more popular, and does great on the talk circuit where most Americans never heard of Czechborn ZB, he will be the voice that is heard. Sorry, neither the Alzheimer-brained Reagan nor his cabinet gets a molecule of credit from me or anyone else who HAS watched politics over the decades. Dream on.
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Summary: How the Cold War was won.
Review: 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.
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Summary: The greatest 'spy' story of them all!
Review: James Bond, step aside. You are strictly small potatoes compared to this story. President Reagan has been panned by the media for several things. However, this fresh, startling story of a courageous president, acting on faith and convition, going where no President had gone before, giving a big push to the tottering Soviet Socialist empire, shows him as (in my opinion) the greatest President of the century. The book is written in an easily readable style which kept me riveted right through to the end. If you want to know why our biggest nightmare went away in a matter of months, this book is an absolute must. The book shows President Reagan as a master conductor, leading his 'orchestra' of hand-picked cabinet men to missions all over the world including Poland, the Vatacan, China, Saudi Arabia, and other locations to put the ultimate financial 'sleeper hold' on the Evil Empire. It is a story of courage, initiative, brilliance, innovative thinking, the highest stakes poker game, and the victory of freedom over opression. It is without a doubt, one of the finest, most interesting books on history that I have ever read.
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Summary: Puts in place many pieces of the puzzle of global politics.
Review: 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.
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Summary: Excellent analysis of end of the Cold War
Review: Peter Schweizer is to be highly praised for this detailed, well-written and exhaustively researched study of the Reagan Administration's efforts to bring down the Soviet Union peacefully through economic and other means
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Summary: A worthy start...
Review: 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.
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Summary: Great!
Review: Reading this book made me proud to be an American, and proud to have voted for Ronald Reagan every time out. The negative reviews and comments listed here and elsewhere are but another reminder that the liberals, socialists, and communists that still exist in American and western society know deep in their hearts that Reagan, Casey, Weinberger, and the rest, destroyed forever their dreams of the socialist utopia, and they will never forgive them or stop trying to denigrate them. But the facts are: We won! The world won! Freedom won! When we needed a real president, we had one.
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