[QUOTE= … I realize that Reagan and many other politicians, in and out of Germany, had speeches calling for the wall to come down every year on its anniversary. It’s just a historical fluke that those vaunted History Books only mention the one where Gorby is named, since they were annual events before and after that…[/QUOTE]
I have no doubt somebody called for the Wall to come down from time to time, but I would be willing to bet no US President did. Certainly none did it at the Wall itself. No British Prime Minister, no head of the UN. Calling for the demolition of the Wall was not a wide-spread important annual event.
We’ve had this debate a dozen times on this board. Each time I trot out a host of facts, quotes, links to actual security directives showing what the Reagan administration did, and the next time the debate starts the same people come into the new one and make the same old arguments. It gets tedious.
For the record: Reagan had a large impact on the breakup of the Soviet Union. No, he wasn’t ‘responsible’. The responsibility lies with Reagan, Thatcher, Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul I, and Gorbachev, along with a lot of other people. However, until the Reagan/Thatcher era, the official policy towards the Soviet Union from the west was one of detente’, or coexistance. NO ONE predicted the fall of the Soviet Union back then, other than a few right-wing types like Reagan. In fact, many on the left were proclaiming the superiority of the Soviet system, and how it was more superior to capitalism because centralized planning was more efficient than dog-eat-dog competition.
Anyway, the Reagan administration did far more than just issue rhetoric. You can go look up the national security directives from that time which changed official U.S. policy from detente to regime change. This is how the Soviet Union was hit:
On its borders, through fomenting insurrection and rebellion in client states. Reagan not only supported Walesa and Solidarity, but funding was increased to the Voice of America, propaganda efforts were stepped up, and in general the U.S. worked to make life difficult for the Soviet Union in its client states. Reagan’s “tear down this wall” and “Evil Empire” speeches were part of this attack, as were the Pope’s support for Solidarity and Thatcher’s support and opposition to the Soviet Union.
Militarily, by building up new arms in Europe, by providing heavier funding and Stinger missiles to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, by halting Soviet economic and military expansion through the invasion of Grenada (which, while small, sent a powerful message that new Soviet client states would not be tolerated).
Militarily, through SDI. There is no question but that the Soviets were terrified of it. There is plenty of contemporaneous documentation of that fact. Gorbachev volunteered to give up much in Rejkavik in exchange for the U.S. scrapping SDI. SDI pushed the arms race into a domain that the Soviets had neither the resources or technological ability to match. The Soviets didn’t know how advanced the American system might be, and couldn’t tell how much was bluff and how much was real. To them, it was a trump card.
Economically, through sabotage. The Soviets were stealing technology from the west, and the CIA booby-trapped some pipeline hardware and control software that the Soviets stole, so that when they installed it on their pipeline it caused a pressure rupture and a massive explosion (the largest explosion ever seen from space, in fact) which cost the Soviet Union an enormous amount. But just as importantly, it halted their program to steal technology from the west, forcing them to fall behind even further technologically.
Economically, through an oil war. That Saudi price cut Brainglutton mentioned? That was a Reagan administration program. The Reagan Administration had cultivated strong ties with the Soviets, primarily through George Bush I who had connections to the Saudis, and convinced them to increase production and push down the price of oil as part of the economic war against the Soviets.
The Soviet Union was a creaky system for decades. But it wasn’t collapsing. Reagan came along, and together with Thatcher, Walesa, the Pope, and others, gave it a hard push. It wasn’t just a random event, or the inevitable conclusion of a regime about to collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the end result of years of concerted effort designed to cause just that.
Not only does Reagan deserve a lot of credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, he also deserves some credit for the relatively soft landing thereafter. As soon as change began, Reagan changed policy almost immediately and began supporting Gorbachev and acting like a friend instead of an adversary. He provided all sorts of aid and support to help ease the transition. Thatcher did the same thing. In fact, Gorbachev became good friends with both of them. Reagan and Thatcher both recognized that Gorbachev was someone they could work with, and they proceeded to do so.
I’ve cited all this numerous times. If you want cites, search for the old threads.
Sam, no one questions that Reagan ratcheted up the pressure on the Soviet Union. But none of the things you cited were mortal blows, and they didn’t represent a radical departure from American foreign policy of the pre-Reagan era. If the Politburo had chosen someone other than Gorbachev, the Cold War would likely have continued apace, and Reagan would have gotten no credit whatever for the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, in my view, should get upwards of 90% of the credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, rather than the 20% you seem to be granting him.
Yes, they did. They represented a 180 degree turn in U.S. policy. Go read National Security Decision Directive 75. As I said above, before Reagan the official U.S. policy was one of detente’. There was no effort to pressure the Soviets or to try to collapse the system. At most, there was ‘containment’, in which the U.S. attempted to stop Soviet expansionism. But there was no policy of regime change. Until Reagan.
But Gorbachev was picked in part because of Reagan, Walesa, et al. The Soviets decided to go with a ‘gentler face’ because of problems in the client states and the ratcheting up of rhetoric against the regime. They thought Gorbachev would carry out the same old policies, but with a more human face. In fact, this just sped things up. Reagan put the heat on Gorbachev, pushed him towards reforms (which Gorbachev himself was amenable to), and when Gorbachev started taking steps in that direction, Reagan gave him some carrots and helped solidify his position.
Gorbachev deserves a lot of credit, no doubt. But Gorbachev was still a communist, and it’s not clear at all what would have happened had Reagan not forced his hand.
But Sam, how was Reagan’s anti-Soviet campaign different than Truman’s or Eisenhower’s or Kennedy’s or Johnson’s or Nixon’s or Ford’s or Carter’s? Every post-war President put pressure on the Soviet Union. The detente policy you’re claiming was some long-term policy lasted for only about a decade out of this forty-five year period. If the Soviet Union had collapsed at any point after 1945, it would have been easy for American politicians to point to recent actions that they could claim had been the cause.
I was there back in the eighties. The dominant theme I remember from Reagan’s foreign policy was that the United States was locked into a long-term struggle with the Soviet Union that we should expect to last for our lifetime and make appropriate preparations for (a belief which I shared). It’s easy now to predict the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse but I don’t recall anyone doing it back in 1985.
I don’t think Reagan believed things would end so quickly - he was planning for the long term. However, the military buildup and the abandonment of detente were huge departures from the Nixon thru Carter phase of the Cold War, and ought to be recognized for what it was.
In the 1970s, between Ford and Carter, far greater emphasis was placed on human rights as an American foreign policy concern. Reagan took this shift in thinking and applied it directly to the worst human rights violators on the planet - namely, the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and the nastier of its client states. (In doing so he went easier on other human rights violators, figuring, as Jeanne Kirkpatrick did, that an authoritarian that allowed few freedoms was better than a totalitarian that allowed none. That thinking led to some bad decisions and lingering doubts about his motives - these will be endlessly and properly debated.)
I don’t think Reagan was a perfect president - while I am a fan, I don’t idolize him like others do. I’m aware of his many faults. Still, history cannot allow him to be minimized like so many in this thread want to do. He was an incredibly consequential president, the one who has had the most impact since Johnson and Eisenhower, and in most ways the country is better off for his service.
Wait which side of the debate are you on? That supports what I was saying earlier that there was no common belief that the Soviets were on the edge of collapse.
Again, this is an exaggeration. Look what Brzezinski has to say here. Asked if he regretted trying to bait the Soviets into invading Afghanistan through covert aid to the mujahideen, he says, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance, ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’ Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”
If you want to credit Reagan with something, credit him with continuing Carter’s policy there. But don’t credit him with originating it.
I just wanted to drop in a quick book recommendation for anyone interested in Reagan and SDI: Way Out There in the Blue by Frances FitzGerald. Very detailed and well-sourced look at this time period.
This is all patent nonsense. First of all, the official policy of open containment stopped with Johnson. Nixon was an avowed anti-Communist, and under his and Ford’s administration the United States was actively involved in repelling Communism or anything that looked like it in Latin and South America and Africa, as well as supporting any tin-pot despot in Southeast Asia who claimed to be against Communism. The situation in Europe had stagnated, to be true, in large measure because of the strategic parity, and with the expense of the conflict in Viet Nam there wasn’t money to fund the kind of strategic arms race that had been the hallmark of the 'Sixties. Nonetheless, the Soviets continued to advance the science of rocket engineering and fielded several new and powerful ICBM and SCBM systems, as well as intermediate range “tactical” nuclear and chemical delivery systems. The whole “Nixon goes to China” business was entirely about splitting the perceived Sino-Soviet Communist alliance, although it was not well appreciated at the time that any real alliance between the two nations was symbolic at best, and the nations were as culturally incompatible as Felix and Oscar. In short, while Nixon and Ford weren’t as flashy and bombastic about fighting Soviet Communism, they were heavily invested in it.
The Carter Administration, too, had the policy of goading the Soviet Union into error, while striving to reduce the threat of nuclear confrontation. Despite the assertion that it was initiated by the CIA giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen insurgents, in fact it was the policy of Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to induce the Soviets to “giv[e] to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.” Weapons (mostly small arms, mines, and FIM-43 ‘Redeye’ SAMs were given to Afghan tribes, while CIA advisors distributed propaganda and advised rebels how to agitate the Daoud and Taraki governments. Much of the motivation came from ethnic suppression of the Pashtun people. It’s true that the Reagan Administration continued the policy of funding and supplying the Mujahideen, including some factions that later became part of the Taliban, but it did not initiate this policy.
In regard to the ascension of Gorbachev and his policies, the old party hardliners, and the somewhat more moderate apparatchiki who fronted for them were literally dying off; indeed, Brezhnev’s last couple of years, as well as the entire tenure of Andropov and Chernenko were marked by terminal illness. This was intentional, as the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union wanted to prevent cults of personality like Stalin and dynamic, iconoclastic leaders like Khrushchev. Gorbachev was expected to be just another, albeit younger, Party hack, and had been advanced through the ranks through the mentorship of Andropov and Suslov. His reforms were not unique; during the later Brezhnev era, as economic stagnation become problematic (those long lines for bread and soup) the Soviets attempted reform, but the grip of ideologues was still strong and Brezhnev was too much of a rubber stamp, which is why he was selected to succeed Khrushchev. By 1985, when Gorbachev came to power, Suslov and other ideologues were either dead or dying. Gorbachev had travelled widely outside of the Soviet sphere and had been exposed to both economic capitalism and Eurosocialism, and saw the value of reforms in both. Almost immediately after he came to power he started instituting both economic and social reforms intent upon raising the standard of living and quashing crime and substance abuse that had risen in the 'Seventies. Margaret Thatcher may have famously recognized him as “a man we can do business with,” but Gorbachev had been a strong favorite for succession long ago by the dominate moderate elements of the Central Committee, who were nonetheless surprised at the speed and feavor of Gorbachev’s reforms. Certainly, rallying international support behind Gorbachev helped him, and Reagan and Thatcher deserve credit for that, but I daresay that any leader of a Western nation would have done the same, and it was a reactive, rather than proactive stanced to liberalism of Soviet ideology.
As for Reagan, history has well documented his bombast, and his characteristic cluelessness of the impact of off-hand statements he would make. To the Soviets (and much of the rest of the world) he didn’t come off as a strong leader; he came off as a goading, chest-beating buffoon who threatened to march the band right over the cliff and take the entire world with it rather than back down from the Soviets. He seemed to think he was staring in a Dirty Harry film rather than playing Russian roulette with an opponent that owned a massive nuclear stockpile and little incentive not to use it if the barbarians were at the gate. He may have been compassionate and sympathetic in private, and his tears after watching “The Day After” may have been genuine rather than a publicist’s fiction, but he scared the bejezzus out of a lot of people, including some of those already at death’s door who had their thumb on the button. (Thatcher was hardly better, her claim of “A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us,” is obtuse, even within the context in which it was stated.) And it was in no way the strategy of the Reagan Administration to bring about sudden and total collapse of the Soviet Union, which was as much a surprise to Western observers as to the Soviets themselves; Reagan was digging in for the long haul; he enunciated well and made good theater, but his policy was just another phase of the same type of containment combined with funding insurgency that had been esssentially the same plan from Nixon onward. It’s true that the military got more toys (though in raw numbers Kennedy was an even better Father Christmas to the Department of Defense) but this was of marginal interest to the Soviets who already had superior numbers in both conventional and strategic weapons.
SDI was a red herring, something to argue about rather than talk directly about ideological differences. Technologically and strategically it was nonsense. It was never going to be an all-protective shield, and by Reagan’s era a disarming first strike was virtually impossible, so to speak of it as something the Soviets “feared” is absurd. Even if deployed it would have little effect on deterrence and counterstrike capability, if for no other reason than SLBMs with suppressed trajectories would have skirted in and released RVs before any boost or mid-course interceptor would be able to respond. Defense against terminal phase RVs is essentially limited by geometry and time to point defense of installations; there would have been no means to protect the unguarded population and industrial infrastructure from attack, regardless of Reagan’s babbling on about “protective needles of light” zapping incoming RVs from the sky.
And yet, he supported some of the worst human rights violators on the planet-as long as they were on the right. But that’s okay, as long as they were anti-communism, of course. :rolleyes:
:dubious:
As for a more simplistic answer, how can just one person be completely responsible for the fall of a regime such as the USSR, and the Berlin Wall?
I said these policies ran into problems at times. But let’s not pretend Reagan was some kind of innovator here - realpolitick has caused us to cut some strange deals throughout our history.
Afraid I can’t answer that, since I never claimed that Reagan was solely responsible for this. Read my posts above.
This, of course, is simple fiction. The attitude of Gorbachev at the Iceland summit has already been cited, and SDI played a major role in forcing the USSR to believe that they could not win an arms race, and that their huge edge in nuclear arms and its role in preventing a Western response to any conventional attacks by the enormous Soviet forces was at risk.
Maybe you didn’t believe it, but they did. The rest of your post is mere denial, and not worth bothering with.
No, SDI was a massive bluff with the only payoff being nowhere near what Reagan claimed. But some of us believe the bluff worked and most of you in the thread don’t.
Jim (It is rare I am on the same side of a debate as **Shodan ** & Mr. Moto. )
Russians got math, too, you know. Rumor has it they can play chess, as well.
Gorbachev needed a concession, so he didn’t look like he went to Iceland just to suck Reagan’s dick. They asked for an empty concession, a meaningless gesture. They might just as well have asked Reagan to forgo Divine Intervention, which is, and remains, equally plausible.
The hard-liners who pulled St. Ronnies strings wouldn’t have any, they didn’t want peace with the Soviets, they wanted to grind the Soviet Union into the mud, and dance on their grave. So Ronnie didn’t give an inch, humiliated Gorby, and we got Yeltsin, and then Putin. And the Russians got plutocracy and then Stalinism Lite.
What the hell was wrong with Yeltsin? How is Putin, Reagan’s fault, seems like it was Clinton & mainly Bush the current that screwed up Russian relations.
There is no reason and no evidence to believe that the Soviet hierarchy believed that Star Wars could be made to work. Nearly every account of Russian bureaucrats expressing fear of Star Wars comes from dissenters with one or two ex-KGB types who are pushing books to Western publishers. It would be rather like citing Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark to identify what the U.S. government “really” intended in any situation (outside Clark’s brief tenure as AG).
And what did the countries of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states get?
The breakup of the Soviet Union was the single greatest political change in the 20th century. Ronald Reagan was the individual most responsible for that event.