Richard Perle recounts the pressure on Reagan at Reykjavik to cave in to Gorbachev's offer of a treaty to abandon placement of Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at Europe in exchange for killing SDI, and gives the motive for the "No".
What made Reagan different from his predecessors was his contrarian optimism about Communist tyranny. To the consternation of conventionally-wise foreign ministries around the world, Reagan saw and proclaimed that the "evil empire" was headed for the "ash heap of history". It was not principally the European missile deployment that alarmed Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernyko and eventually Gorbachev. Nor was it the rebuilding of American forces nor even the SDI--although the Soviets, actively working on their own version of SDI, feared that US missile defences might neutralise Moscow's nuclear missile force. Indeed it was those offensive Soviet missiles, a daunting technological accomplishment, that blinded much of the world to the Soviet Union's economic and social failure.Rather, what caused the Kremlin dictators to dread an actor turned politician was Reagan's determination to put a lighted match to what he saw was the desiccated ideology of the Soviet Union's "scientific socialism". In foreign ministries around the world, in academic and other "politically correct" elite circles in London, Paris and Bonn, the American president had launched a destabilising philosophical war against the vast Soviet Empire. Even now, the irony that so non-intellectual a man should choose to engage the Soviet Union on the battlefield of ideas has eluded most commentators and historians.
Reagan's was not the rhetoric of detente. His policy did not call for co-operative programmes in science, agriculture, space and energy. He took pains not to reassure but to discredit the Kremlin leaders. They ruled brutally. They ruled without consent. They built a military machine at the expense of the material wellbeing of ordinary citizens. Their economy produced only weapons, while their ideology produced cynicism at home and instability abroad. If pushed, they would fall.
So there he was in that small house in Iceland, half-way through his presidency, trying to decide how far to go to get Mr Gorbachev's signature on the arms control treaty of the century. He wanted the Soviets to reduce their nuclear forces. He wanted them to abandon plans to deploy missiles in Europe. He wanted to return to Washington in triumph.But he wanted something even more important. He wanted the Soviet leaders to know that they could no longer hide the failure of their totalitarian state behind a frightening display of planes, ships and missiles. They could no longer gain ill-deserved legitimacy at summit meetings with democratically-chosen U.S. presidents.
Ronald Reagan embodied American optimism. His leadership, confident and cheerful, was instrumental in the demoralisation of the Soviet leadership that produced a Western victory without war and ended half a century of conflict between East and West.
I did not realize how similar the War College's recommendation of attacking the moral basis of liberal pronouncements has so much in common with Reagan's strategy to counter the Soviet Leadership by attacking their moral foundation.
However, while writing this, I came to a sudden realization of what President Reagan was counting on. To appreciate it, you have to consider what Reagan would have to bet on if he had said "Yes".
Essentially, by saying "Yes", Reagan would be betting on the honesty and integrity of Gorbachev and future soviet leaders to honor the treaty. Implicit would be the suggestion that, to ensure future adherence to the treaty, Reagan would have to help prop up the current soviet system to ensure that the signatory didn't disappear on him. However, the price was Gorbachev's demand that Reagan BET AGAINST THE SDI.
The choice facing Reagan was either to gamble on the soviets, or to gamble on American engineers. On people like Gorbachev and the Soviet Politburo, or on people like ME and my co-workers in the American defense industry.
Reagan said "NO". He turned to the Engineers, to ME and my co-workers, and said, "I sooner trust you than THEM. Go, build the shield to protect the Shining City on the Hill, and win this one for the Gipper."
Hattip Superhose via rantburg.
Posted by ptah at June 8, 2004 02:45 PM