Brilliant observation!
The Cold War ended because the Soviet Union imploded. The American economic system was able to support an arms buildup that the Soviet economic system simply couldn't match and eventually the Soviet house of cards came tumbling down.
Being a teenager at the time, my impression was that the Reagan administration was scrambling to keep up with a changing world. They reacted to events. They didn't anticipate them.
As for the Kennedy-Khrushchev analogy, the key issues there are that Khrushchev had the power to get those missiles out of Cuba and it was a negotiation between equal powers. Do we know who in Iran has that kind of power to make things happen? Can we assume that Iran will be politically stable enough for a deal to be carried out?
Given the absence of diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, a more accurate analogy seems to be, "Nixon went to China and brought China into the global economy." But, what presidential candidate wants to associate himself with Nixon?
Commenting by HaloScan
