Reagan v. Evil Empire
On March 8, 1983, President Ronald Reagan spoke
before an evangelical conference where he called out the Soviet Union as “the
focus of evil in the modern world.” This became known as his evil empire
speech. Although he was roundly criticized for his choice of words, Reagan was
dead right. University of Texas professor and former national security aide to
George W. Bush, William Imboden rightly focuses on the ideological content of
Reagan’s foreign policy which became known as the Reagan Doctrine in his deeply
researched history.
Although known as a super-hawk during his
career, Reagan’s goal was to seek peace through a negotiated surrender of the
Soviet Union. In this task he succeeded and along the way he liberated Eastern
Europe and started the process of reducing the huge stocks of nuclear weapon
controlled by the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Reagan’s policy was that of peace through strength.
He orchestrated a huge arms build-up and started the Strategic Defense Initiative
(Star Wars) which scared the living daylights out of the Soviet Union.
Listening more to Andrew Marshall Office of Net Assessment in the bowels of the
Pentagon than the CIA, he understood that the Soviet economy was far weaker
than previously thought. (Shulmaven:
My Amazon Review of Andrew Krepinevich's and Barry Watts' "The Last
Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense
Strategy") Simply
put, the Soviets couldn’t keep up.
Inboden covers the shaky start of the
administration where both his national security advisor and Secretary of State
were fired. While looking to meet with the Soviets, three of their leaders died
on him, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. But once Gorbachev came into power
the way was open for both of them to achieve Reagan’s longstanding goal of reducing
nuclear weapons. Reagan was aided by having A-players in his administration.
These would include William Clark, George Schultz, James Baker, Jeanne
Kirkpatrick, Paul Nitze, Colin Powell, and George H.W. Bush. It is sad that
today A-players in today’s Washington, D.C. are few and far between.
Reagan really did care about human rights. He
consistently supported the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate. He
worked hard to end the dictatorships in Chile, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Korea.
He learned the lesson from Iran and Nicaragua, that right wing dictatorships despite
being allied to the U.S., were brittle. Hence, he supported the transition to
democracy among many of our allies.
Throughout his administration Reagan had the
support of Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and especially of Yasuhiro Nakasone
of Japan. He viewed Japan as our most strategic ally. He also received advice
from Richard Nixon, mostly good, some bad; and Russia expert Suzanne Massie who
came up with the “trust but verify” policy.
Inboden does not sugar coat the Iran/Contra
scandal that nearly brought down his administration. How these presumably smart
people got sucked into doing an arms for hostages deal with Iran and then using
some of the proceeds to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras. You couldn’t
make up the comedy of errors involved in this fiasco.
Inboden’s history of Reagan’s foreign policy
sheds new light on this one of our most consequential presidents. It is well
worth the read.
