But in this case Perry is less correct than Paul. Reagan’s foreign policy looked nothing like George W. Bush’s; the only other time Reagan committed ground troops in eight years was in Grenada. But his foreign policy was not piecemeal. Reagan’s theory was that the demise of the Soviet Union would result in dominoes falling for freedom and indeed they did across much of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the Baltics. He also gave the Soviets frequent global tongue lashings, putting them in the dock in the court of world opinion, especially after the murderous shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Reagan understood warfare took many forms.

There is no way to quantify how much more dangerous the old Soviet Union was to the United States than Iraq is today, but it was substantial. Iraq never had thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at America, as the USSR did for over 40 years. Meanwhile, the Soviets used subterfuge and sabotage to undermine America from within, ranging from the cretinous (creating propaganda firms to spread disinformation about Reagan in the 1970s and using prostitutes to compromise young Marines) to the dangerous and destabilizing (funding Castro and putting nuclear missiles in Cuba, backing Ho Chi Minh) in their half-century-long war against the United States…

Invading armies are more often seen as just that — invaders, not liberators — and Reagan devised a third way, supporting indigenous, anti-Soviet, pro-freedom forces in Nicaragua, Poland, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and other nations. He won the hearts and minds of millions behind the Iron Curtain because he respected their opinions as to how to throw off the shackles of Soviet communism. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration gave them moral support, arms, and other materiel, but let them fight their own fights, knowing the benefits of the pride of authorship.