I really never bought into the tale…

…that Ronald Reagan 'won' the Cold War. There were any number of factors that contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, and while Reagan's economically crippling levels of military investment may have made a contribution, I'm not at all sure that it was particularly decisive.

As time has gone on, it's become increasingly unclear that there was a victory in any meaningful sense at all. Some analysis of our present condition by Dave Johnson makes the key points plain.

So how is the neo-con dream playing out? Russia and China benefit from having the U.S. bogged down in perpetual war against an invisible "enemy" many thousands of miles away. But "Radical Islam" just happens to be their enemy, not ours. It is a disruptive social movement on or inside their borders, not ours, but here we are fighting their war for them. Meanwhile China winds up with the manufacturing that used to be done here and holding the paper for massive U.S. debt. We spend our budget on military while their money is freed up for massive infrastructure investment. Iran winds up with Iraq as a client state.

And we're supposed to be the world's preeminent power in a post Cold War era?

If we won, just what, exactly, did we win? And when did we lose it again?