Ronald Reagan vs. the Evil Empire revisited
Posted 37 weeks 2 days ago byAmericans forget just how tense the Cold War was. In triumph, there is often complacency, as if the outcome was foreordained. But two decades ago, conventional wisdom was anything but triumphalist. Too many elite opinion makers and policy wonks said the United States could never hope to defeat the Soviet Union; the best we could do was keep the Russians contained and maybe cut a deal. Well, 25 years ago this month, Ronald Reagan said nuts to that.
Reagan made plain to America and the world on March 8, 1983, exactly how he regarded the Soviet Union. "I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority," Reagan told a Florida audience. "So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
It wasn't the first time Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as "evil" -- in fact, he used the term before the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982. But his address to the National Association of Evangelicals -- the Religious Right! -- resonated. And Reagan's words followed very closely on some vital policy deeds.
Paul Kengor, author of a great book on Reagan called The Crusader and a political scientist at Grove City College, writes today about Reagan's March 1983 address and its legacy. Kengor explains how the Evil Empire Speech changed not just the way people thought but the way the United States confronted the Soviet Union. Two months before the speech, Reagan signed NSDD-75, which shifted U.S. policy from containment to rollback. And two weeks after the speech, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative -- "Star Wars" to its detractors -- which ultimately brought the Soviets to their knees.
At the time, liberals reacted to Reagan's rhetoric with horror. The Soviets were outraged, as they were wont to be. But so-called moderates -- including moderates very close to the president -- were alarmed as well. Kengor describes a scene with Reagan, wife Nancy, and some of the Reagans' Republican friends:
Nancy Reagan and her close friend Mike Deaver were certain that if Ronnie would simply stop making these Neanderthal comments, the Nobel Committee would come to the door with the Peace Prize for the conservative president. About a week after the speech, Nancy invited to dinner another of her moderate friends, Stu Spencer. The two of them pressed the president, expressing reservations over his abrasive speech. Reagan waved them off: "It is an Evil Empire," he instructed them. "It's time to close it down."
The rest, as they say, is history. But making history is awfully messy, as Reagan showed and Kengor retells wonderfully. Read the article and, by all means, listen to Reagan's speech. America could surely use his brand of moral clarity in confronting new threats this century.
Thoughts
Ben is hardly delusional
Submitted on March 5th, 2008 by Jim LakelyIt is firmly established that the Soviets were obsessively worried about SDI. As this pro-Gorbachev author notes, SDI was the impetus for serious talks, and Soviet concessions, on nuclear disarmarment:
Reagan's dedication to developing SDI put the Soviets into a position of weakness. It is revisionist history, indeed, to pretend otherwise. (As it is to say that developing the technology would bankrupt the U.S. That simply doesn't pass the laugh test. Besides, if the Soviets knew that developing SDI would "bankrupt" the United States, why didn't they encourage us to go down the path of our downfall?)
As for Reagan being the first president to "cut and run" from Islamic terrorists? Well, perhaps your on to something there. But did a mass of U.S. troops really belong in Lebanon anyway? Was it really a strategic imperative? I think not.
And I think Jimmy Carter was much weaker in the face of Islamic extremism. He did nothing of use while Iran invaded our embassy and kept Americans hostage for 444 days -- a humiliating international embarassment that did more to embolden anti-American Islamists than our withdrawal from Lebanon.
SDI and the fall of the Soviet Union
Submitted on March 5th, 2008 by BenAmong other delusional revisionist historians who consider SDI's vital part in ending the Cold War are Strobe Talbott, Lou Cannon, Edmund Morris, John Lewis Gaddis, Raymond Garthoff, Derek Leebaert and Paul Kengor, mentioned above.
But you don't have to take their word or mine for SDI's role in putting the Soviets out of business (and, if I wasn't clear in the original post, I'm not saying SDI alone led to the fall of the Soviet Union). However, you might consider what Soviet apparatchiks have said. Here are a couple:
By the way, I don't disagree with you that Reagan failed to adequately address Islamic terrorism, and that the precipitous withdrawal from Beirut in 1983 sent a horrible message to our jihadist enemies. But you need to give credit where it's due.
Ben is somewhat delusional
Submitted on March 5th, 2008 by AnonymousBen is somewhat delusional and certainly a student of revisionist history. I would agree that Reagan talked tough about the Soviets, but SDI??? It couldn't have scared them, for to put it into place would have completely bankrupted the US, and the Soviets knew it. The Soviet Union collapsed because it couldn't produce goods and services on the world market, not Ronald Reagan. And by the by, Mr. Reagan was the first American president to cut and run from Islamic terrorists, and his Mideast policies have directly and significantly brought us to the place we are today. So let's just acknowledge that he was okay is some ways, and a disaster in others. But let's, if nothing else, quit naming things after him. It's childish.