HISTORY AND CULTURE: By Dinesh D'Souza Remembering the man who, in Margaret Thatcher's words, "won the Cold War ... without firing a shot." By Dinesh D'Souza.
As early as 1981, when almost everyone considered the
Soviet empire a permanent fixture of the international landscape, Reagan
spoke at the University of Notre Dame,
predicting that “the West won’t contain communism; it will transcend
communism.” The next year, he told the British Parliament that freedom and democracy would “leave
Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.” The wise men in the
media and academia scoffed. Today these same pundits maintain that the
Soviet Union collapsed because of economic failure or that Mikhail
Gorbachev was responsible.
This analysis makes no sense. Sure, the Soviet Union
had economic problems, but it had been ailing for most of the century.
Never has a great empire imploded because of
poor economic performance alone. Like many empires suffering from domestic
strains, the Soviets during the 1970s compensated by pursuing an aggressive
foreign policy. Between 1974 and 1980, 10 countries
fell into the Soviet orbit: South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Yemen, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, and
Afghanistan. The Soviet nuclear arsenal surpassed that of the United
States, and the Soviets targeted a new generation of missiles at Western
Europe. The Soviet Union in 1980 seemed to be in the vanguard of history.
It is no less problematic to attribute the Soviet
collapse to Gorbachev. He was undoubtedly a
reformer, but the communist bosses did not put
him in power in 1985 to lead the party,
and the regime, over the precipice.
Neither did Gorbachev see this as his role. He
insisted throughout the second half of the
1980s that he sought to invigorate the economy in order to strengthen the
military. The Politburo supported his reforms because he promised
“regained confidence in the party.” No one was more surprised
than Gorbachev when the Soviet regime disintegrated.
The only man who foresaw the Soviet collapse and
implemented policies to bring it about was
Reagan. During his first term Reagan pursued tough policies aimed at
curtailing the Soviet nuclear threat and stopping Soviet advances around
the world. Calling the Soviets an “evil empire,” Reagan
initiated a massive defense buildup. He deployed Pershing and cruise
missiles in Europe. He sent weapons and other assistance to anti-communist
guerrillas in Soviet satellites such as Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.
He announced a new program of missile defenses that would eventually “make nuclear weapons obsolete.”
These measures were fiercely resisted by liberal
Democrats, who decried Reagan’s policies as confrontational and
likely to make nuclear war more likely. But Reagan’s military
buildup and his missile defense program threatened the Soviets with an arms
race they could ill afford. His doctrine of aid to anti-communist
guerrillas halted Soviet advances in the Third World:
Between 1980 and 1985, not an inch of real estate fell into Moscow’s hands.
It was Reagan who was responsible for thwarting Soviet
gains and spurring a loss of nerve that contributed to the elevation of
Gorbachev to power. Gorbachev’s policies were responses to
circumstances created not by him but by Reagan. Ilya Zaslavsky, who served
in the Congress of People’s Deputies, said later that the true
originator of glasnost and perestroika was not Gorbachev but Reagan.
Reagan immediately recognized Gorbachev as a new breed
of Soviet leader. He supported Gorbachev’s reforms and arms control
initiatives, and this time it was the conservatives who criticized him as
being naive and credulous. William F. Buckley Jr. warned that
Reagan’s new stance was “on the
order of changing our entire position toward Adolf Hitler.” The
criticism missed the larger current of
events that Reagan alone appeared to have understood. In attempting to
reform communism, Gorbachev was destroying the system. Reagan encouraged
him every step of the way.
Today we face new challenges, such as Islamic
radicalism and fundamentalism, which require a different type of leadership
and strategy of combat. Even so, 15 years after the wall came down, we
should pause to reflect on the prescient leadership of the man who, in
Margaret Thatcher’s words, “won the Cold War . . . without
firing a shot.”
This essay appeared in theLos Angeles Times on November 7, 2004. Available from the Hoover Press are Revolution: The Reagan Legacy, by Martin Anderson, and The Collapse of Communism, edited by Lee Edwards. To order, call 800.935.2882 or visit www.hooverpress.org. Dinesh D'Souza is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
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