The Strategic Triad: The United States, Russia and China, by Gilbert Achcar. New Left Review I/228, March-April 1998
The official end of the Cold War, marked by the growing incapacity and then the collapse of the Soviet Union, inevitably meant a reduction of US military expenditure. This had long been regarded as essential from a strictly economic point of view: the extraordinary prodigality of the Reagan years, with a military budget that at its peak in 1985—after adjustment for inflation—beat all post-1945 records, including those during the Korean and Vietnam wars, had been a major contributing factor to an enormous budget deficit, inflating an astronomical and ever-increasing public debt. [1]