In perceiving the Soviet Union as permanent, orderly,
and legitimate, [Henry] Kissinger shared a
failure of analysis with the rest of the foreign-policy
elite--notably excepting the scholar and former
head of the State Department's policy-planning staff
George Kennan, the Harvard historian Richard
Pipes, the British scholar and journalist Bernard
Levin, and the Eureka College graduate Ronald
Reagan.
-Robert D. Kaplan,
Kissinger,
Metternich, and Realism (Atlantic Monthly, June 1999)
February 6, 1999 was Ronald Reagan's 88th birthday and given his illness, it may well be his last. With his authorized biography due out any day--Dutch : A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris (see Orrin's review)--it seems likely that this year will see an extensive re-examination of the Gipper's role in History. There is no better place to begin that process than with Jay Winik's terrific book.
Winik begins his tale with the disastrous attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. This event, combined with the rise of the mullahs in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, marked the nadir of US foreign policy during the Cold War. America seemed ineffectual and inconsistent and the Soviet Union seemed to be on the verge of winning the Cold War. Meanwhile, the US foreign policy establishment, embodied by men like Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Warren Christopher, etc. continued to insist on the value of detente and arms negotiations with the Soviets.
Against this tide, a small band of Scoop Jackson disciples began the
fight to arrest America's dangerous slide into oblivion. These neo-conservatives-Richard
Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Elliott Abrams, etc.--grew increasingly alienated
from a Democratic Party which was rapidly abandoning resistance to Soviet
hegemony and supporting groups like the Nuclear Freeze Movement and the
Sandinistas. As these disaffected Democrats looked around for a viable
presidential candidate in
1980, they gradually recognized that Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was
the candidate who was closest to them ideologically. They gradually began
to speak out in his favor and when he won, future National Security Advisor
Richard Allen found jobs in the administration for many of them.
Over the next several years, this intrepid band, lead now by Ronald
Reagan, Caspar Weinberger and George Schultz, would fight to rebuild the
American military, install Intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe,
develop SDI (the Strategic Defense Initiative), supply the Contras, restore
America's preeminent position at the UN and negotiate a sweeping arms reduction
treaty with the
Soviet Union. In Winik's virtually novelistic approach to his material,
these are our heroes & the fights they face. Arrayed against them are
the Soviets, Congressional Democrats, the Press, Government bureaucracies
and two bureaucrats in particular--Richard Burt and James Baker.
This structure, with heroes and villains and set piece battles, makes the book lively and exciting. But Winik's great contribution is his demonstration of how the Cold War was won and that it was, in fact, won. Several important points emerge in his tale:
Ronald Reagan--personal-style:
The most important point that Winik makes about Reagan
concerns his faith in his own instincts.
Reagan almost always lead from in front. His insistence
on military build-up, missile deployment,
SDI development, Contra aid, etc., all ran against
establishment opinion. He faced virulent attacks,
but remained steadfast & eventually dragged
public opinion to his side. In one of the many great
anecdotes that populate the book, Lyn Nofziger recounts
rushing to warn Reagan that the John
Birch Society had just endorsed his first run for
Governor & to urge him to renounce the
endorsement, but Reagan calmly explained that if
they were endorsing him it meant they accepted
his views not that he accepted their views. This
inner certainty, about the rightness of his political &
moral vision, served Reagan well.
Winik also demonstrates that while Reagan did not mire himself in the details of governance, it was he who made the decisions. Time and again it is Reagan who has the final say, from protecting SDI to keeping unpopular aides. This enabled him to keep Weinberger and Schultz on the same team, despite their frequent differences; he simply listened to both sides & then he decided the administration's direction.
Ronald Reagan's policies:
It's hard to imagine that anyone who reads the book
could ever again argue that the Soviet Union
simply collapsed on it's own. The decisions to challenge
the Soviet's wherever possible: the UN,
Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc. and to develop an SDI
system that the Soviet's couldn't possibly
match, seem, pretty inarguably, to have put such
pressure on the Russians that they ultimately
couldn't sustain the "evil empire".
Ronald Reagan's governing style:
We are accustomed by now to the media image of Reagan
as a doddering fool who let his
administration go on around him without taking much
interest in what it was actually doing. What
emerges in Winik's account is a much more balanced
portrait. He does not claim that Reagan
immersed himself in details or even sought to influence
the initial stages of debate; instead he
allowed a high degree of tension between competing
camps, but when decision time came, he
stepped in personally & made the final decision.
This is especially evident in his Iceland Summit
with Gorbachev, when he refused to abandon Star
Wars, a moment which in retrospect seems to be
the precise moment when we won the Cold War.
Bureaucracy:
As much as 1984 (see Orrin's
review), Brave New World (see Orrin's
review), or One Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest (see Orrin's
review), this is a cautionary tale about bureaucracy & bureaucrats.
The lasting lesson that is imparted is that a bureaucracy
can not be lead from without. No President
can bend a bureaucracy to his will. Bureaucrats
run the bureaucracy for it's own sake--the mission is
to preserve & protect the bureaucracy, not to
serve a President, or constituents, or a vision.
Bureaucrats:
Two men emerge as evil masters of the bureaucratic
game--Jim Baker & Richard Burt. Between
them they manage to use the machinery of the bureaucracy
to thwart the Cold Warriors again and
again. Jim Baker would, of course, go on to destroy
the Bush presidency.
Democrats:
I just happened to be reading this during the Senate
impeachment trial of President Clinton. Two of
the talking heads who popped up frequently were
Chris Dodd and Tom Harkin, sharing their moral
vision with us. Well, as Winik recounts, these two
Senators conducted their own pro-Sandinista
foreign policy during the '80's, often on Nicaraguan
soil.
Meanwhile, leaders like Tip O'Neill & Jim Wright
worked overtime to torpedo administration
policy in Central America, leading to the vile Constitution-offending
Bolland Amendment &
precipitating the Iran-Contra scandal.
Even those Democrats who knew in their hearts that
Reagan was right--Dave McCurdy, Steve
Solarz, Bill Bradley, Les Aspin--were forced time
and again by internal party politics to retreat
from positions of principle. In the end, we're left
wondering what had become of the party of
Truman and Scoop Jackson.
The Cabinet:
One can't help comparing the Reagan Cabinet to the
Clinton Cabinet. As you read about them, you
can imagine Schultz or Weinberger or Kirkpatrick
taking over the Presidency & you feel that the
Nation would be in good hands. Can anyone imagine
any Clinton Cabinet member becoming
President?--certainly not without trepidation.
The Cold War as War:
The most significant weapon that has been wielded
against Ronald Reagan and his administration
has been the chronic budget deficit and the National
debt that accrued on his watch. This debt is
always portrayed as unnecessary and irresponsible.
On the Brink demonstrates that the US was
at war with the Soviet Union during these years, as it
had been since 1945. In this context, the debt seems
like a reasonable price to have paid to win the
Cold War.
Did We Win the Cold War?:
One of the remaining myths of the Left is that the
Soviet Union simply imploded or else Gorbachev
blew it up & Reagan just happened to be President
at the time. No person of conscience could hold
to that opinion after reading this book. It becomes
clear in Winik's account that Ronald Reagan's
conscious decision to turn up the torque on the
Soviet Union--verbally, in the Evil Empire style
speeches; militarily, by deploying the IMF missile
& supporting the Afghan Mujahadeen; &
financially, by developing Star Wars--created such
pressure on the Soviet system that it could not
maintain itself. Gorbachev's obsession with stopping
Star Wars makes it clear that the upper
echelons of Soviet leadership knew that they could
not compete in this high-tech weapons race.
Ronald Reagan's decision to abandon d*tente and
pursue a policy of confrontation must be given the
lion's share of credit for the demise of the Soviet
Union.
This is just a great book and should be required reading for anyone
who cares about recent American history.
(Reviewed:01-Oct-97)
Grade: (A+)
