Ronald Reagan Archives - Not Even Past

Roundtable Review of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink

From the editors:

William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most recent book, entitled The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, presents a definitive account of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy achievements.

Book cover for The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink

To mark The Peacemaker‘s publication, Not Even Past invited historians Joseph A. Ledford and Ashlyn Hand to review its contents. Ledford and Hand are rising stars in the world of historical scholarship. Their reviews deftly describe Inboden’s key insights, showing how Reagan strove to bring peace and order to the deeply unsettled world of the 1980s. Few presidents have grappled with greater international uncertainty. But as Inboden’s book demonstrates, Reagan was able to build a lasting legacy through his skillful navigation of the late Cold War’s uncharted waters.

Banner image for The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink

Speaking to a private scholarly gathering at the Library of Congress in 1986, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remarked that, “When you meet the President, you ask yourself, ‘How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be Governor, much less President?’” Still, Kissinger confessed of President Ronald Reagan: “He has a kind of instinct that I cannot explain.” In The Peacemaker, William Inboden not only provides clarity on Reagan’s instinct, but also furnishes the preeminent account of his statecraft, from the origins of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign to his December 4th, 1992, address to the Oxford Union, replete with insightful anecdotes and perceptive analysis.

A cavalcade of declassification over the past decade has helped Inboden offer greater insight into Reagan’s policymaking. To explain Reagan’s statecraft, Inboden identifies in Reagan’s foreign policy seven themes that derive from both the archives and his worldview: allies and partners; history; force and diplomacy; religious faith and religious freedom; tragedy; battle of ideas; and expansion of liberty. These seven themes reflect a hawkish but nuclear abolitionist Reagan deeply engaged in crafting and executing his foreign policy—a president determined to harness American power and allied support to challenge the Soviet Union and secure peace. The dynamic nature of liberal democracy and market capitalism, Reagan fervently believed, advantaged the United States and sustained his diplomatic and military campaign against the Soviets. Reagan sought not only diplomacy underpinned by a mighty American military buildup but also the spread of political and religious freedoms to uplift the oppressed and undermine authoritarians.

President Ronald Reagan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 1981. — *President Ronald Reagan swaps pleasantries with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the White House in June 1981. Source: National Archives.*

Inboden’s seven themes weave through an engrossing narrative, which also serves an important methodological purpose. Foreign policy decisions are neither made in an isolated context nor arrived at with absolute certainty. Drawing on his policymaking experience and historical craft, Inboden successfully captures in narrative form the precariousness of policymaking as the Reagan administration lived it. In doing so, Inboden eloquently reconstructs the messy reality of the international affairs in which Reagan dealt.

At once judicious and bold, The Peacemaker presents three interrelated arguments about Reagan’s bid to master 1980s geopolitics. First, alongside Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Reagan had the most significant modern presidency. In January 1981, Reagan confronted the Soviet Union at the zenith of its military power during the Cold War—a fearsome Soviet Union that had invaded Afghanistan, aided revolution across the globe, and tightened its grip behind the Iron Curtain. An onslaught of other geopolitical threats faced the president, too. In Africa, apartheid persisted, and the last vestiges of colonialism precipitated civil war. Latin America was awash in blood from the Cold War’s destructive forces. The Iranian Revolution destabilized the Middle East, and the rise of terrorism confounded policymakers. These grave issues posed vexing challenges, in addition to the problems besetting Western Europe and Asia. Inside America, Reagan grappled with a crisis of confidence and institutions, a consequence of 1970s domestic tumult and economic downturn.

As Inboden shows, however, the Reagan Revolution cast the foundations of a new world order out of the deadly frost of the Cold War. By January 1989, the United States appeared rejuvenated economically, politically, and militarily. A wave of democracy flowed from Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador to South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The “evil empire” slouched toward the ash heap of history. Reagan achieved arms reduction with the Soviet Union and, in turn, lessened the chances of nuclear annihilation. “The Iron Curtin and Berlin Wall may have appeared to the naked eye to still be standing,” Inboden observes, “but the forces that would bring them down were already boring away within” (476). The Cold War ended in short order. With the added benefit of structural forces moving to its advantage, the United States reached unipolarity under the leadership of Reagan’s successor and vice president, George H. W. Bush.

“Tear Down This Wall!”: Reagan delivers his famous Berlin Wall speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate on June 12th, 1987.

Second, and stemming from the first argument, Reagan’s grand strategy for waging the Cold War brought the Soviet Union to a “negotiated surrender,” one in which Reagan pursued diplomacy to curb hostilities and reduce the nuclear threat while marshalling all the resources of the United States to extirpate Soviet communism from the earth. Paul Nitze’s walk in the Geneva woods initiated a sprint toward arms reductions, culminating in Reagan signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. During this arms race to zero, as Inboden details, Reagan embarked on the Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile defense system that scientist Edward Teller encouraged, and a cross-section of experts ridiculed, but the Soviets feared. Reagan upgraded the US armed forces, building unrivaled weaponry using new technologies. He unified the Western alliance against the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact satellites, and other Soviet-supported authoritarians. And, crucially, he brought the Reagan Doctrine to bear on Soviet advancement in the Global South while inspiring dissidents under the yoke of communism with stirring rhetoric and covert assistance.

Third, and responsible for the second argument, Reagan effected a Cold War grand strategy through economic restoration, defense modernization, political and religious liberty promotion, nuclear weapons abolition, anti-communist insurgency financing, and the obsolescence of mutually assured destruction, a set of actions codified by National Security Decision Directives 12, 13, 32, 54, 71, 75, 166, 238, and 302. Here, Inboden daringly—and ultimately persuasively—argues that these prongs of Reagan’s strategy combined to stress the Soviet system and create the conditions that influenced the ascendence of Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformer who embraced Reagan’s diplomatic overtures to mitigate the deleterious effects of American power.

Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, October 1986. — *Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev pose for a photograph during their Reykjavik summit in October 1986. Source: National Archives.*

From this vantage, Reagan’s record may seem unblemished. Yet, despite rendering an overall positive judgement, Inboden does not pull punches on Reagan’s mistakes. In the Global South, Reagan’s policies could be counterproductive and tragic. In Lebanon, for instance, Inboden sharply criticizes Reagan’s handling of the Marine barracks bombing, particularly the president’s decision to not retaliate. “His failure to do so,” Inboden judges, “damaged American credibility, hurt relations with an important ally [France], and invited further terrorist attacks” (256). In Nicaragua, Reagan’s harbor mining operation proved a self-inflicted political disaster. “The mines,” Inboden contends, “did far more damage to America’s global reputation than to the Sandinista economy” (286). So, too, did Reagan’s support for disreputable anticommunist leaders and insurgents compromise his administration’s moral standing.

Inside the White House, meanwhile, Reagan often expressed indifference to perennial squabbling among staff and avoided personal confrontations. His inattention to the minutiae of being president manifested infamously in the Iran-Contra affair, a harebrained scheme involving arms-for-hostages deals with Iran and the diversion of the profits to the Contras in violation of the Boland amendments. Reagan arguably made his greatest blunder with Iran-Contra. As Inboden puts it: Iran-Contra “violated several of his own strategic principles, such as: Negotiate from strength. Keep faith with allies. Incentivize adversaries to engage in good behavior; do not reward bad behavior. Build public support for policies rather than keeping them secret. Even ‘trust but verify’” (423).

By contrasting Iran-Contra with the Geneva Summit, however, Inboden encapsulates the enigmatic Reagan in a single passage. During Iran-Contra, Inboden notes, Reagan exhibited his legendary stubbornness, disregarded sage advice from trusted cabinet members, and deluded himself into thinking that arms for hostages was not his cardinal objective. The scandal could have been easily avoided if Reagan had not followed his worst instincts. At Geneva, conversely, Reagan confidently pursued his creative strategy for ending the Cold War across ten sessions with Gorbachev, laying the groundwork for the conflict’s resolution. He formed a true relationship with Gorbachev while pressuring him on arms reductions and human rights. Reagan was in his element. His courage and convictions both impressed and distressed the Soviet leader.

*Reagan greets Gorbachev at the first session of the Geneva summit in November 1985. Source: National Archives.*

Although Reagan could not quote Thomas Schelling’s chapter and verse, he abhorred nuclear weapons, committed to a singular vision of world order, and possessed an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of policy matters. In a revealing anecdote, Inboden recounts Reagan’s visit to the North American Air Defense Command in 1979, during which General James Hill informed him that America did not maintain a defense against nuclear weapons, only the facility to counterattack. Reagan concluded that relying on mutually assured destruction was no way to live. This grim realization reinforced Reagan’s belief in nuclear abolition and his resolve to peacefully end the Cold War. As Inboden lucidly demonstrates, Reagan articulated the genesis of his plan in the 1970s, established the means during his first term, and delivered on the ends in his second term.

Inboden’s vivid portrayal of Reagan refutes the reversal thesis that he somehow transformed during his second term. The Cold War changed, not Reagan. The 40th president called for the zero option in 1981 and made good on his promise in 1987 by seeking “peace through strength.” (65) Only one version of Reagan served as president, and he comes alive in The Peacemaker.

Joseph A. Ledford is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Banner for Winning the Battle of Ideas by Ashlyn Hand

In The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, & the World on the Brink, William Inboden offers the first comprehensive analysis of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. It is a brilliantly written narrative of complicated characters and strategic vision during the final decade of the Cold War. The Cold War was not a foregone conclusion, and Inboden’s book evokes the peril and urgency of the time. The sobering reality of a potential hot war—one with the capability of obliterating humankind–sits in the narrative like a member of Reagan’s inner circle and demands intellectual empathy from the reader.

Inboden argues that Reagan understood the Cold War fundamentally as a battle of ideas made more complex because of great power competition. This contrasted with the more common understanding of the Cold War as a classic great power competition with an ideological element. This difference in framing meant that Reagan saw Soviet communism as an enemy to be defeated rather than party to a conflict to be managed or contained.

Reagan announcing his administration's Strategic Defense Initiative, March 1983 — *Reagan announcing his administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative–nicknamed “Star Wars”–in March 1983. Source: Wikimedia Commons.*

But how to defeat communism without launching World War III? Inboden describes Reagan’s goal as “negotiated surrender,” in which Reagan applied sufficient pressure and exploited Soviet vulnerabilities to puncture the Soviet system while extending a hand in diplomatic outreach. Inboden recognizes that these goals were, at times, in contradiction. Still, he maintains that Reagan himself “held tenaciously to both” (4).

One central theme in The Peacemaker is Reagan’s commitment to religious freedom and the expansion of liberty. Vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, Reagan pushed for the protection of Jewish refuseniks and persecuted religious believers like the Siberian Seven, a group of Pentecostals who sought refuge in the American Embassy in Moscow in 1978. But as Inboden addresses, Reagan’s Cold War lens could prevent him from acknowledging the brutality of regimes in places like El Salvador and Argentina (106).

A statue symbolizing religious freedom situated in the exterior plaza of the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, D. C. The statue forms part of the Oscar Straus Memorial Fountain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Inboden also highlights the role of historical memory in shaping foreign policy decision-making. Whether it be Bill Casey’s likening Soviet communism to Nazism or the ever-present fear of another Vietnam, the centrality of history is a recurring theme.

The book unfolds chronologically, giving the reader a taste of the sheer volume of strategic challenges facing the Oval Office–a reality Secretary of State George Shultz called the “simultaneity of events” (7). The number of issues vying for presidential attention at any one moment is overwhelming, a situation sometimes made more stressful by the eclectic cast of characters in Reagan’s cabinet. Relying on newly released documents and meticulous archival research, Inboden captures the idiosyncrasies, missteps, and glories of the Reagan team.

In the end, the Cold War outlasted Reagan’s time in office. Still, Inboden maintains, “Reagan had transformed the art of the possible. Things inconceivable in 1980 became reality by 1989” (475). The Peacemaker is key reading material to better understand foreign policy challenges of the Cold War and the strategic vision of the 40th president.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS, by David France (2016)

By John Carranza

In the 1980s, the United States experienced a new disease that seemed to target young, gay men living in New York City and San Francisco. From the beginning, those doctors and scientists willing to treat members of the gay community remained perplexed as to why these men, their ages ranging from their early twenties to their thirties, were falling ill with rare diseases that would not ordinarily affect someone their age. The earliest name given to this new epidemic was gay related immune deficiency (GRID) before it took the name acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which was caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The push for scientific advancement and treatment was not readily available to these young men, and many government officials at the state and national levels refused to acknowledge the epidemic that soon spread across the United States and affected groups other than gay men.

David France’s How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS is a complementary work of history to the 2012 documentary of the same name that documented the early years of the AIDS epidemic to the successful discovery a decade later of combination drug therapies that brought people with AIDS from the brink of death back to life. The main actors in France’s sweeping narrative are a group of men and women who formed the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT-UP, devoted to demanding action from the government and pharmaceutical companies for treatment. Their initiatives were influential in saving thousands of lives by the early 1990s.

ACT-UP buttons from the 1980s (via Wikimedia Commons).

ACT-UP began as an informal group of gay men who were dying of opportunistic infections related to the compromised immune systems associated with AIDS. However, as time went on, the epidemic took more lives and the government remained silent, so they took it upon themselves to learn about their illnesses in order to demand government intervention and the development of medical treatments. In this way, many of them became citizen-scientists. They compiled the scientific data made available to them by competing scientists and used it to educate one another and the government officials that they lobbied. They pushed for medications that would treat their opportunistic infections, as well as the virus that causes AIDS once it was discovered. They were also first in realizing the safe sex might lessen the chances a person had for catching this new and mysterious disease.

635944716875263811-1398634550_fighting-for-our-lives

AIDS activists in the 1980s (Curve Magazine via the Odyssey Online).

France recounts the activism necessary to win visibility not just for gays, but also for other populations who became affected, such as intravenous drug users and women. ACT-UP’s activism undertook public demonstrations as a means of demanding more scientific research, access to drugs, and lower prices for those drugs once they were identified as possible treatments. In its earliest years of activism, the group modeled itself on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s by practicing nonviolent civil disobedience and going into traditionally conservative parts of the United States to educate people. ACT-UP petitioned members of Congress for AIDS funding for research, fought with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow lifesaving drugs onto the market faster, set up needle exchanges for intravenous drug users, and protested on Wall Street. The early stages of ACT-UP’s activism included using the infamous symbol of the pink triangle with SILENCE = DEATH written beneath it, which was made into bumper stickers and posters that could be plastered all over the city, as well as hats and T-shirts. One of the enduring symbols of their activism is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was created in San Francisco to remember the lives lost in the epidemic. It made its first appearance on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1987 when it included more than 1,900 panels.

The AIDS Quilt on the National Mall in 2011 (via Wikimedia Commons).

David France’s book is a great achievement in that he details the events and lives of the people who lived through the AIDS epidemic over the course of approximately thirteen years. France achieves this not simply as a researcher with an eye for historical detail, but also as a person who lived through those events as a journalist. His ability to document the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s resulted in the ability to keenly observe developments while still keeping a certain level of objectivity. France uses extensive archival research, including the papers of the most visible activists and he draws on his own experience. Where possible, France conducted oral interviews with members of ACT-UP who are still alive today. France captures the emotion and frustration of the members of ACT-UP who pushed for access to life saving drugs while negotiating alliances and feuds among members of the group and the scientific community. How to Survive a Plague is essential reading, not only for members of the LGBTQ community, but for everyone who may have been too young or not have been alive during the 1980s and early 1990s when the fight for visibility and medication was still happening. How to Survive a Plague is an excellent example for understanding how activism works, how advocacy for those marginal members of society can be effective, and to show government and public health officials how not to handle a plague.

You may also like:

Joseph Parrott reviews The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson (2006).
Chris Babits explores the Dallas Gay Historic Archives.
Blake Scott reviews AIDS & Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame by Paul Farmer (1992).

The Enemy Within: Cold War History in FX’s The Americans

By Clay Katsky

Those who watch the television show The Americans share a secret with its protagonists: they are not a quintessential American couple living in the suburbs of D.C.; they are, in fact, spies for the Soviet Union. Set against the backdrop of a resurgent Cold War in the early 1980s, this serialized spy thriller and period drama follows the fictional lives of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who were born in Russia and trained as KGB officers to be “sleeper” agents in America. Activated when Reagan throws détente out the window, no one suspects that they have two deeply separated lives, one as travel agents who live in Northern Virginia with two young children, and a second filled with spy missions where they don disguises to seduce and assassinate targets and gather intelligence by blackmailing officials and recruiting assets. The dichotomy of their lives is by day marked by their genuine devotion to their children and to each other, and by night by the violent and frequently murderous clandestine missions directed by their Russian handlers. These Americans are not what they seem to be.

web_img_gallery_detail_series_dsktp_theamericans_s3_06

Kerri Russell and Matthew Rhys star in The Americans (via FX).

Ultimately, it is Reagan’s hardline against the U.S.S.R. that gives the show context. The first season begins as Reagan assumes the presidency and the third ends with the Jennings family watching his “evil empire” speech together. During the most recent fourth season, a family viewing of the TV movie The Day After, which is about nuclear Armageddon, adds another dimension to a subplot involving powerful bioweapons. The writers of The Americans do a good job of using 1980s popular culture and history to add contextual drama to the show, but sometimes ignore chronological specifics and the technical aspects of espionage tradecraft for the sake of storytelling. Regardless, the late Cold War works well as a general guide for the narrative arc of the series; the escalating tension between superpowers is directly responsible for the increasing drama in the lives of its main characters.

president_reagan_speaking_in_minneapolis_1982

President Reagan in 1982 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Perversely, The Americans sometimes makes you root for the enemy within. Fueled by terrific performances from Russell and Rhys, the Jennings can come off as sympathetic, and patriotic in their own way. Reminiscent of James Gandolfini in The Sopranos, these are bad people with redeeming qualities. She is an ideologically driven cold-blooded killer who is loyal to her family, while he is more sensitive and compelled by emotion, yet also capable of extreme violence. Both struggle with the conflict between their mission as spies and their duty as parents, which is a major plot device of the show. The tension of the first season is driven by their fear that the FBI will catch them. Right away evading capture is set up as synonymous with protecting their family. The second season expands on the theme of protecting their family from their world – after two other sleeper agents and their young children are murdered the Jennings fear they are next. The danger in the third season comes from within the family, with their daughter suspecting her parents are way more than just travel agents. And in the fourth season an assignment to steal bioweapons puts the whole world in jeopardy, pitting their loyalty to their country against their instinct to protect their children. Making the show about more than just spying and the Cold War, there are strong subplots involving the family’s next door neighbor, the FBI agent who works in the counter-intelligence division, and their daughter’s increasing devotion to Christianity, which comes to a head when she over shares with her pastor. The drama is about the characters, how they develop and how they react to one another in the context of the world around them.

fema_-_2720_-_photograph_by_fema_news_photo

The images of nuclear destruction in The Day After (1983) were troubling to many American families (via Wikimedia Commons).

In The Americans, history is used as the setting. The show underscores Reagan’s determination to defeat the forces of Communism using clips from his speeches – as Soviet agents, the Jennings find the rhetoric palpable. And at their house, the news always plays in the background at night, helping to give a timeline of events while also highlighting the television culture of the time – pop culture events like David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear are drawn on to both diffuse the tension and offer social nostalgia. But the headlines are also used to drive the drama. When Reagan gets shot, the Jennings go on high alert because they are not sure if their government was involved; and when Yuri Andropov, their former leader at the KGB, takes power in 1982, they know their lives are about to get busier. The writers incorporate the shift towards renewed hostilities that occurred during the late Cold War in order to give the viewer the sense that the Jennings mission is important. The rivalry between the superpowers could have spun out of control very quickly and at any moment, and the “the Americans” are caught in the middle of it.

The show begins as Reagan kicks the Cold War into high gear in 1981 and it will end with the collapse of the Communist superpower – having been renewed for a final two seasons, the story will be told to its conclusion. The Soviet fear of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan’s anti-ballistic missile “Star Wars” project, is a centerpiece of the first few episodes. In reality, 1981 is too early for the Russians (or even Reagan) to be thinking seriously about SDI, but it works as an easy set up. At that time, however, it was mostly Reagan’s rhetoric that threatened to turn the Cold War hot. Nicaragua comes to the fore in the second season, again a little early in terms of chronology, but it works well because the Jennings’ sympathy for the Sandinista movement helps humanize them. Oliver North is credited as a technical advisor on an episode where the Jennings infiltrate a Contra training base. Empathy for the Jennings continues to build as they assist the anti-apartheid movement during the third season, while meanwhile the seeds of mistrust in their government are sown with the opening of the war in Afghanistan. In the fourth season, as their government pushes them to recruit their own daughter, the Soviet mismanagement of that war feeds their growing disillusionment and dovetails with a risky mission to acquire an apocalyptic bioweapon. While this past season was it’s least historically based, it was also its best because it dealt with larger, more existential issues.

A Soviet Spetsnaz (special operations) group prepares for a mission in Afghanistan, 1988 (via Wikimedia Commons)

The technical focus of the show is on tradecraft, not history. The thrills come from watching the spies operate; and from making dead drops and cultivating assets to planting listening devices and evading surveillance, the Jennings are very busy. But the show’s most exciting aspect is also its least plausible. It is hard to believe that such well-placed agents would be used as workhorses for the KGB. Especially in the first two seasons, the Jennings juggle multiple assignments at the same time and go on a wide variety of missions – simultaneously they are assassins, saboteurs, master manipulators, and experts in surveillance, counterespionage, and combat. As valuable as they would have been to their government, the Jennings are asked to take too many risks and expose themselves too often. But even in its most exaggerated aspects, The Americans feels realistic due to the expert performances from Russell and Rhys, who are so believable in their roles as skilled spies and as doting parents that one cannot help but trust in their inhuman ability to be an expert in anything they need to be.

Two Soviet era subminiature cams. The one to the left is a Kiev-30 (1974-1983), the other one is a Kiev Vega 2 (1961-1964).

Two miniature Soviet spy cameras form the late Cold War (via Wikimedia Commons).

Overall, The Americans is a highly engaging and richly thought out show set in the waning years of the Cold War. It is very exciting to watch two highly trained KGB operatives as they navigate the complexity of staying ideologically loyal to their cause while raising an American family and living a lie. People who remember the 1980s firsthand will enjoy the references and set pieces, and anyone who likes spy thrillers will be instantly hooked on the slow boiling but constant action and drama. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming fifth season incorporates the Able Archer war scare, when the Soviets mistook NATO war games for the start of real life a nuclear engagement. Will it be the Jennings who witness an increase in late night pizza deliveries to the Pentagon and report back to Moscow that nuclear war is imminent? They seem too savvy to drop the ball like that. But what will happen in the end? Will they survive or be caught by the FBI, or will they get called back to Russia to be punished for some failure or perceived disloyalty?

Read more by Clay Katsky on Not Even Past:
Kissinger’s Shadow, By Greg Grandin (2005)

Reagan on War: A Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980-1984, by Gail E. S. Yoshitani (2012)

by Simon Miles

Few presidents have left as complicated and politically charged a legacy as Ronald Reagan. Hailed as a pioneer of conservatism by some and reviled as an enemy of the middle class and a supporter of dictators by others, Reagan’s legacy has largely been shaped by debate between partisan pundits. Gradually, however, a limited body of more moderate of “Reagan revisionism” has begun to emerge. Historians and political scientists, writing with the benefit of temporal distance from events and increased access to sources have begun to produce more nuanced accounts of the Reagan administration – especially in the realm of foreign policy – that acknowledge the administration’s shortcomings and its successes.

Gail Yoshitani’s Reagan on War is one such book. Yoshitani, a professor of history at the US Military Academy at West Point, offers an in-depth look at the Reagan administration’s development of a strategic doctrine for the use of force based on extensive archival research. She demonstrates how a doctrine for the use of force emerged, but also how the Reagan administration, and the president in particular, chose to either adhere to or eschew these doctrines depending on Reagan’s goals Throughout Reagan on War, Yoshitani asks two important questions. First, what role did Reagan personally play in shaping his administration’s foreign policy? Second, to what extent did Reagan’s advisors, neoconservative and otherwise, influence the administration’s foreign policy?

Yoshitani’s account of US foreign policy during the early 1980s places Reagan at the center of events. As president, Yoshitani argues, Reagan set the course for US Cold War strategy. His perception of American resources as infinite and his determination to rebuild not only US military and economic strength, but also the country’s morale, guided policy during the 1980s. Reagan firmly believed that the solution to America’s “Vietnam syndrome” was strong presidential leadership (which he felt had been particularly lacking during the preceding Carter administration) and “peace through strength.” Yoshitani is clear, however, that Reagan’s advisors were responsible for developing policies to achieve these goals.

President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan view the caskets of the 17 US victims of the 1983 attack against the US Embassy in Beirut (The Reagan Library)

The key question faced by the Reagan administration in Yoshitani’s analysis was not only how to deal with the Soviet Union, but also when the United States should use military force overseas in the aftermath of Vietnam. Reagan’s advisors had differing policy prescriptions for this dilemma and Yoshitani examines the various doctrines proposed by Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, the Pentagon (in particular Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey), Secretary of State George Shultz, and finally Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Casey’s approach to the use of force centered on proxy forces, usually the militaries of right-wing governments in Latin America, to repel communism. Proxy forces would bear the brunt of combat and create a permissive context for any future American military involvement, if desired, by cultivating a local perceived ally that the United States could support. Vessey and his Pentagon colleagues favored direct and decisive US engagement with limited, realistic goals, such as the removal of Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters from Lebanon. Shultz saw the military as a tool to be deployed in support of diplomacy. Deploying troops was a clear sign of resolve, he argued, but should be done sparingly to ensure that the Soviet Union would not feel compelled to become involved to counterbalance American involvement around the world. Weinberger, synthesizing these approaches, outlined six litmus tests for US policy-makers to govern the use of force: necessity to US or allied national interest; wholehearted commitment; defined political and military objectives; correlation between objectives and forces committed; public support; and the absence of a non-military alternative. Though Reagan did not always adhere to the Weinberger Doctrine, Yoshitani argues, it formed the heuristic framework in which the administration considered the use of force.

President Ronald Reagan at his desk in the Oval Office (Library of Congress)

Yoshitani makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of Reagan’s foreign policy by exploring Reagan as an individual, his advisors, and their approach to policy-making and the Cold War. The 1980s are already fertile ground for historians, with ample material accessible at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, and in smaller repositories such as the Hoover Institution Archives. This valuable and insightful book will be of considerable interest to students of the Cold War.

More on the presidency of Ronald Reagan:

Joseph Parrott’s review of The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War

Dolph Briscoe’s review of The Age of Reagan: A History

Jonathan Hunt looks back on the 1986 Reykjavík Summit between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann (2010)

by Joseph Parrott

Ronald Reagan’s presidential policies have irrevocably shaped the political debate over the last two decades. He effectively reversed the momentum of the New Deal expansion of the federal government while leading the largest growth in peacetime military spending in national history, making him a polarizing figure for commentators and historians alike. Contrasting visions of Reagan have been especially stark in the realm of foreign affairs. Advocates often argue that he launched a new arms race that undermined the Soviet Union. Critics remember a detached leader presiding over the shameful Iran-Contra scandal. Both depictions are problematic, as they accentuate different aspects of a complex, often inscrutable man. Therefore, James Mann’s examination of the president’s personal diplomacy with the Soviet Union is especially welcome. The journalist has written critically of conservative foreign policies in the past, but he finds much to admire in Reagan. No, the president did not single-handedly end the Cold War, nor was he the primary factor influencing its peaceful resolution. According to Mann, he was, however, optimistic and adaptable, relying on a set of Cold War values that emphasized the human character that existed under the communist system he so vehemently despised. These values ran counter to entrenched ideologies on both right and left, but they allowed him to see the promise of working with honestly reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev.

Mann finds the key to Reagan’s rebellion in his particular moralistic perspective on the Cold War conflict. The president believed that the United States was a country of right, where democracy and capitalism best served the needs of the people. In contrast, Reagan viewed communism as a devious ideology imposed on an unwilling nation by disingenuous leaders. This Manichean approach to the political systems often made him aggressive and overbearing, inspiring his rhetoric of the “evil empire” and his unbending attachment to the “Star Wars” missile defense system. However, Mann argues that this separation of the people from the system also allowed for a certain flexibility. Reagan saw a real possibility for systemic reform if only a Soviet leader would abandon dictatorial control of the people. Mann contrasts this ideological worldview with the seemingly more moderate one held by the realist architects of détente, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The duo embraced a rigid model of geopolitical competition where the existence of two superpowers with contrasting ideologies made some conflict inevitable. Power relationships, and not specific leaders, fueled the feud. Managing the conflict through persistent pressure offered the only solution. Due to his faith in a laudable human side to the Soviet state, Reagan broke with his own party’s thinking. He embraced Gorbachev when he came to trust the man, moderating his suspicion of the Soviet actions in a way critics like Nixon could not understand.

This interpersonal relationship is Reagan’s lasting contribution to decreasing tensions. Mann makes this argument by examining a series of key moments in Reagan’s presidency. When Gorbachev first came to power, Reagan remained hawkish and distrustful of the new leader. The arch-Cold Warrior eventually warmed to the Soviet premier thanks partly to the intervention of popular author and Russophile Suzanne Massie and to the face-to-face meetings at Reykjavik and Geneva. Certainly, Reagan never fully abandoned his confrontational tone, perhaps best exemplified in his direct challenge to Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Still, Mann considers even this a positive quality, as Reagan continued to push Gorbachev to make good on his opening of the Russian political system and the liberalization of its foreign policy.

President Reagan meeting with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev for the first time during the Geneva Summit in Switzerland, 1985 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

There is room for debate in some of these conclusions, but Mann shows clearly the key role of Reagan in keeping dialogue going after the initial summit meetings. Nixon, Kissinger, and even advisers like Frank Carlucci rightly believed that Soviet reforms were meant primarily to strengthen the country, yet in their support for more confrontational policies they missed the real potential of cooperation. The president was almost alone in his belief in the sincerity of Gorbachev’s calls for reduced tensions and the decisive role collaboration could play in positively shaping global politics. The president could not have predicted the rapid dissolution of the communist bloc or the Soviet Union, but he “grasped the possibility that the Cold War could end” and he sold this hope to a wary country over the objections of his own political party.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan greeting Moscow citizens during the Moscow Summit (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Mann’s eminently readable book demythologizes Reagan, but it also celebrates his lasting if perhaps unpredictable contribution to ending the world’s most dangerous international conflict. Mann agrees with recent authors like historian Melvyn Leffler that Gorbachev’s actions lead to the peaceful resolution of the Cold War, though the Soviet premier does not take center stage. Reagan’s role was as the willing dance partner. Reagan was a hawk, but he was far less hidebound in his beliefs than many of his contemporaries. The president pursued the opportunity to reduce tensions when it presented itself. In a time when politicians from across the political spectrum are retreating into bunkers of partisanship, Mann is right to celebrate Ronald Reagan’s decision to ignore the party line.

The Age of Reagan: A History, by Sean Wilentz (2008)

by Dolph Briscoe IV

Historians often define political periods in the United States according to the dominant president of the era. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., most famously wrote of an Age of Jackson, and other scholars have proposed Ages of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sean Wilentz adds another chapter to this genre, labeling the last quarter of the twentieth century after Ronald Reagan, with his book The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. From the 1974 Watergate scandal until 2008 when Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, the U.S. witnessed the triumph of political conservatism. Ronald Reagan harnessed conservative angst to win the White House, pursued conservative polices as president both domestically and internationally, and left a legacy his conservative political successors attempted to continue, with mixed results.

The Age of Reagan provides a valuable overview of recent U.S. political history. During the 1970s both major political parties experienced internal divisions. Conservative Republicans criticized Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Henry Kissinger’s pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union as dangerously weak foreign policy. Liberal Democrats railed against Jimmy Carter’s ineffective leadership in solving the nation’s economic and social problems. Americans turned away from moderates in both parties and looked to conservatism when they elected Ronald Reagan president in 1980. Reagan succeeded in entrenching conservatism within the federal government, particularly with his judicial appointees and expansion of presidential power.

Yet the author correctly debunks much of the mythology surrounding Reagan, noting that his administration often pursued pragmatic policies, unable or unwilling to roll back much of the liberal reform of past years, and also encountered many setbacks, most notably with the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Age of Reagan goes on to describe the triumphs and travails of Reagan’s presidential successors. George H. W. Bush, less conservative than his predecessor, encountered difficulties in appealing to both the moderate and right-wing factions of his party. Bill Clinton, a self-described New Democrat, governed as a centrist following Republican capture of Congress in the 1994 elections, recognizing this as a requirement in a conservative age. Wilentz concludes with a brief overview of George W. Bush’s tumultuous presidency. During these years conservatism may already have been running on borrowed time, butevents of the Bush years, such as the controversial election of 2000, the disastrous Iraq War, the miserable response to Hurricane Katrina, and the dramatic collapse of the economy ultimately sounded the death knell for the Age of Reagan, as Americans rejected conservatism in favor of Barack Obama’s call for political change. Sean Wilentz’s The Age of Reagan is a fascinating narrative of recent U.S. history, and will prove engaging reading, especially in the aftermath of the 2010 elections.

Time will tell if the Age of Reagan truly is over. The emergence of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party and the continued popularity of demagogic figures like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck suggest that the conservative movement will not exit quietly into the night. The current president and his supporters would have to convince Americans of the superiority of their policies, no small task. Their success or failure will determine whether the United States has entered a new period, perhaps an Age of Obama, or returns to the Age of Reagan.

Recent Posts