Reagan's Drollery
Jeffrey Lewis complains about Ronald Reagan's joke about outlawing the Soviet Union. But he fails to allude to an important distinction between Reagan and George W. Bush. Note that Reagan said he had "signed legislation" that put an end to the USSR. Bush, by contrast, would claim he didn't need Congress' permission. At least give the Gipper some credit for adhering to the Constitution!
More seriously, I wonder about Peter's doubts concerning Reagan's role in helping to bury the Soviet Union. It's true that conservatives (and neoconservatives) bridled at his outreach to the Kremlin (credit goes to Nancy Reagan and George Shultz for helping push him in that direction). But liberals, including Strobe Talbott, complained, at the outset of Reagan's term, that his policies were bound to create catastrophe. But they didn't. Instead, Reagan's arms buildup surely helped put paid to any lingering Soviet illusions that Moscow could keep up with the U.S. Gorbachev's own advisor Alexander Yakolev said as much after the end of the cold war. John Patrick Diggins gives Reagan a lot of credit as well in his recent biography. Yes, the triumphalism that emerged after the cold war, in which the U.S. was supposedly invincible was off-base. But I continue to think that Reagan deserves some credit for: 1) being genuinely horrified at the prospect of a nuclear war; and 2) reaching out to Mikhail Gorbachev to wind down not only the arms-race, but also the cold war. Such flexibility and caution have been sorely lacking in the current administration. So contra to Peter, I think there is a chasm between Reagan and Bush.
I'm a lot less willing to give props to the Gipper. The contention that Reagan's arms buildup won the cold war is what gave aid and comfort to the NeoCons' later contention that America could "democratize" the world as sole superpower backed up by awesome technical military prowess.
In other words, it legitimized the disingenuous analysis, reliance on military power and use of threat and invasion, that has brought us to where we are with Iraq, and where we will be with Iran if the NeoCons get their way. "Hey, it worked for the Gipper!"
I'm sure Reagan was a nice guy in many ways, but I have a hard time with the idea that his activities were more than a little responsible for the crumbling of the SU. IMHO, the SU failed because it was poorly conceived and badly run, and it seems to me that by giving too much credit to Reagan, we give too much credit to the idea that military pressure can create democracies where none existed before. It certainly hasn't worked for the Bush administration.
May 1, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
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December 21, 2010 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Soviet Union collapsed because it couldn't meet the expectations which it had inculcated in the generation who came of age after the death of Stalin.
That generation recognized that Brezhnev's state was a moribund dinosaur, a corrupt, inefficient, and incompetent caretaker which was bogged down in Afghanistan and falling more and more behind the West because its closed structure and top-down management style made it incapable of participating in the information revolution driven by microcomputers and LANs.
Unlike Brezhnev's generation, Gorbachev's had no responsibility for the condition of their country and therefore, no compunctions in opening it to criticism (glasnost). If it hadn't been him it would have been someone else.
The Soviet Union collapsed not because of anything Reagan or the West did but because once the liberalizing managerial changes were introduced (perestroika) the leaders were unable to halt the society's natural inclination to take those changes to their conclusion.
Note: It wasn't until June 1987 that the anti-central planning Law on State Enterprise which allowed state factories to set their own output levels based on consumer demand was enacted.
May 1, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any leader of the Republicans and Democrats in the eighties could have talked to Gorbachev. It really did not take that much political courage because even Thather said that Gorbachev was a man that the West can deal with. But if a hardliner like the later defense minister Ustinov somehow survived until 1985 and took over the Soviet Union than the Cold War would perhaps turned into a hot war. Besides this debate about ending the Cold War, what historians should really focus upon is that Reagan's terrible domestic policy. His fiscal policy turned the United States into a debtor nation and the lack investment in education made the American children fall behind the rest of their counterparts in the industrial world. Not to mention Reagan's anti-government rhetoric made Americans think about themselves and not about the greater good.
May 1, 2008 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tells you how far MY baseline got adjusted in the last seven years.
Though it occurs to me that I heard Tony Lake lay out an argument to that effect in the late 90's at a small academic speaking appearance. That may have had something to do with my present opinion.
May 1, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
That "catastrophe" did not occur is faint praise. If said event means nuclear war, that is surely because of people in the defense establishment that actually knew what they were doing. Those with Reagan include the crazies, like Richard Perle, who succeeded in sabotaging Reykyavik.
Reagan certainly deserves credit for the catastrophe of undoing many liberal institutions like the Fairness Doctrine, for trashing unions, and for inspiring selfish conservatives to continue dismantling effective government. Since we went from dominant manufacturer and creditor to dominant consumer and debtor after Reagan, he deserves only derision, I'd say, for ending the American Empire even as he thought he was establishing it.
May 2, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
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May 4, 2011 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink