No, by outspending them militarily, encouraging Solidarity in Poland, and forcing Gobarchev to realise the inevitable.

Encouraging Solidarity in Poland was the right call, but it's not likely that different leaders would have opposed it.

"Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence."

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagr...

I hardly think you can expect an unbiassed opinion from Gorbachev.

I expect Gorbachev to be wildly biased, which is why I don't attach much credence to his statements.

It is funny that all the Experts (TM) have been talking for years how the USSR was an unbeatable giant with colossal strength that can not be defeated and Americans need to seek friendship with them and learn to live alongside them and learn to respect the choice of people in all the communist countries. In fact, the Democrats went the further along this road, actually requesting help from Andropov to fight Reagan (yes, that happened, look it up). Until Reagan came and... the mighty USSR is no more. The Eastern Europe is free. Then The Experts shrugged and proclaimed that it collapsed by itself, through forces of nature that any learned man would easily predict and that they can easily explain, and nothing Reagan did has anything to do with it. Of course.