At Least Some Progress.

Finally, a moderate conceptual progress on part of some people in the Atlantic Council, known for such "bright" geopolitical thinkers as Mr. Blank, but at least Barbara Slavin of this very same Council, decided to moderate Reagan the Holy gospel and in her, otherwise not too bad of a piece, concluded:

In their pursuit of a policy of maximum pressure on Iran, America’s neoconservatives have pushed a nostalgic narrative: the Trump administration can bring down Iran’s theocracy the way that the Reagan administration helped defeat and dissolve the Soviet Union. This comparison has been advanced by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which promotes draconian sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Its arguments figured prominently in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent speech at the Reagan library in which he asserted that Iran is still a revolutionary regime “committed to spreading the revolution to other countries, by force if necessary.”

Here is a progress, highlighted in yellow. Sure as hell, the United States "helped" to bring Soviet Union down—this fact is undeniable but "helping" something doesn't mean defeating something—a meme as popular in the US as the US "defeating" Nazi Germany. Soviet collapse has been predetermined by a combination of economic, cultural and other factors which were simply beyond the control of Reagan the Mighty. In other words, USSR initially was predisposed to collapse with or without American help and, paradoxically, it was in the fact of historic Russia being hell-bent on civilizing her Imperial subjects which played a crucial role in growing and educating ethnic elites in places much of which were rather wild prior to Russia getting in there.

Recall Engels with his "for all its Slavic dirt and baseness Russia still provides civilizational influence on her Asian subjects" (this is from the top of my head but I guarantee 100% meaning). Then, one may refer to Hector Chevigny's wonderful work Russian America, which gives a good grasp on what Russians actually did in Alaska, such as building hospitals, schools and libraries, while there were still none in lower future 49. Of course, it was not all rosy and benevolent but facts are facts. Same in Middle Asia already during Tsarist times and, exponentially increasing during Soviet ones, building of universities, modern industry and, as an example, giving women equal rights in Middle Asia became a huge civilizational project. With this project came local "elites"—some of them became true elites, others, using newly afforded social lifts merely pursued their careers still keeping their ethnicity and tradition. The result was expected—once Moscow "relaxed" its influence over those fringes, due to Gorbachev's incompetence and cowardice, ethnic and religious tensions, kept in check by Soviet power, erupted. The rest is history and the main lesson of this history is very simple—multicultural entities do not survive, unless they offer a serious civilizational project and have a center which is firm and invokes admiration and gravitational pull (for whatever power, political or financial reasons). Such center, or pivot, if one wishes, can only be mono-ethnic and mono-cultural—without such a condition no coalescence of other ethnicities and cultures into a single civilizational project is possible. 

No white European America—no America at all. No Russians—there will be no Russia, there is no Germany without Germans and so on. Seems simple but in practice? Once one looks at how European American history, for all its rights and wrongs, is being simply destroyed today, one can see easily how cracks in the society occur. The main slogan of many of those Russian fringes at that time in 1980s was simple—Chemodan, Vokzal, Rossia (Luggage, Railroad Station, Russia). Russians largely obliged or were ethnically cleansed during Soviet Collapse. We also know the story of a "success" of those former Soviet Republics once Russians left. But all that is becoming beyond the point here since the United States never "defeated" Soviet Union but, for some reason, due to academic and intellectual corruption of globalist in general, and neocon elites in particular, decided that they did. Despite warnings from people of the scale of George F. Kennan that thinking like this was a complete baloney and, in fact, dangerous.

Nobody -- no country, no party, no person -- "won" the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party. It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries, leaving both, by the end of the 1980's, confronted with heavy financial, social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.

Move fast forward 20+ years—we all see sad results around us. Arrogance, ignorance and, sometimes, downright stupidity of American political and intellectual class which fed on baneful myth of "victory" in the Cold War (last time I checked this war never stopped, in fact it progresses towards the hot one, so it is too premature to announce the victors and losers) brought the world on the brink of global war. Under such circumstances even such a puny progress in attempts, however feeble, to put American power and influence in proper balance context seems almost revolutionary in some sense. Especially coming from such organization as Atlantic Council. As per Iran? Who knows, unlike the USSR which faced combined West and East, Iran has a decent ally in a form of Russia and, potentially, China and it is entirely up to Iran how she will (may) utilize power such as Russia in order to survive assault from US neocon war-mongers.