Republicans whining why Reagan didn't win Nobel Peace Prize - there are valid reasons why he didn't.

Over and over again, the news channels are reporting that Republicans are whining that the Nobel Prize was given to Obama, Gore and Carter, but never awarded to Ronald Reagan for his role in the end of the Cold War in the 1980s. Instead, the Nobel Prize was given to then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Look – here’s the deal with Reagan: although he had some part with the end of the Cold War, he was NOT the defacto person who effected the end of the Cold War – Gorbachev was. Until Gorbachev became premier in 1985 the USA was losing the nuclear arms race against the USSR. Gorbachev was the one who implemented glasnost ("openness"), perestroika ("restructuring"), demokratizatsiya ("democratization"), and uskoreniye ("acceleration" of economic development), and made changes in the USSR that brought the end to the Cold War– not Reagan.

I was in West Germany in December 1989 and watched on TV when the Brandenburg Gate was opened to allow East Germans access to West Germany, officially symbolizing a break in the Iron Curtain, and I can NOT recall seeing Reagan anywhere in the crowd. Nor was Reagan there marching in the Solidarity protest marches in Poland – which many credit as the beginning of the change behind the Iron Curtain. Incidentally, Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Other reasons why Reagan did NOT get the Nobel Prize could be due to his role in the bombing of Libya, and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Also, at the start of his presidency Reagan actually implemented polices that intensified and escalated the Cold War, with his threat of the ‘Star Wars’ program, and his budgetary focus on a military agenda and less on domestic and international social programs. You can NOT award a peace prize to someone who first promoted ending a war by hinting that ‘mine gun is bigger than yours’ with regards to his defense policies. This led to a lot of doomsday scenarios floated around in the early 1980s hinting that we were at the brink of nuclear holocaust; remember the movie ‘The Day After’?

My personal opinion of Ronald Reagan has changed in recent years. (Although a lot of that shift is really based on revelations that he is credited with the start of our current conservative political climate, and is the idol god worshiped by today’s Christian right wingers…but I digress.) Growing up outside the U.S. in the 1980s I thought he was a charismatic leader, but also noted the change in American culture that began to focus more on individual monetary achievements and, to coin that infamous phrase from the iconic movie ‘Wall Street’, the concept that “greed is good”. His drastic deregulation of the financial system has been blamed as the key factor for the current economic woes, and his tax-cuts for the wealthy introduced the term ‘trickle-down’ economics to the current public lexicon.

However, I will credit Ronald Reagan as someone who had major significant influence on culture and world policies in the 1980s and beyond.

Whether you think he was a good or bad president my consensus remains: he was indeed, a memorable president.