Oh yes, retroactively fulfilled prophecies. What the colleague here "analyzes" with Reagan and Bush and their supposedly perhaps much cleverer approach, others do in the same form: only "analyze" it so that Nostradamus was a clairvoyant ...
Sorry, but just because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Reagan was president at that time, doesn't automatically make the president and his policies the reason for the collapse. You could just as easily claim that Kohl brought about reunification - instead of the more correct analysis that he just happened to be Federal Chancellor at that time.
Someone is always American president or German Chancellor or great guru of Humba-Humba at the time of a major event. And someone will also implement some policy. So what?
Reducing major historical events to only the years before the event ignores the history and the internal development that underlies the whole situation. The changes in the USSR began independently of Reagan and even earlier. It's possible that the Americans' insane arms buildup was one factor - but certainly not the only one, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't even the most important one.
Ultimately, something shimmers through in the argument that has always annoyed me about history class: the reduction of history to the behavior of princes, kings, warriors or other big shots. Sorry, but that's nonsense.
At Ideas and Errors - Excursions through the New World Order there's the original article.