Probably, after two or three years, he didn't, since almost nobody else did, and he had access to the best advice. On the other hand, to the Soviets he surely looked convinced. So our Strategic Defense Initiative was a challenge to which they had to respond. The American eagle on our Great Seal used to face the lightning bolts in one claw, and then was swivelled around to face the olive branch in the other one. Now it had turned back toward the lightning bolts.
Every government always contains a peace party and a war party.
The Soviets were no exception. But in the course of negotiating arms control agreements, the Soviet marshals had come to realize that everything they had worked and sacrificed for would go up in the mushroom clouds of World War III, and that the first-strike capability they had spent immense sums on was unattainable, thanks to the invulnerability of our Trident SSBNs. Now, with Star Wars, they faced ruin, whether or not Reagan really believed in it, and indeed whether or not they really believed in Marxism. In the old West, you had table stakes poker, where you could not be asked to bet more than the chips you were showing, and also unlimited poker, where you had 24 hours to raise the funds to meet your opponent's bet. If you were confident enough, you mortgaged your farm.