Book Excerpt:
Ronald Reagan: The Miracle of a Fraction of an Inch
When Ronald Reagan assumed office, many people, both in and out of the United States, were shocked that a man who was “nothing but an actor” could be elected president. Over the next eight years, this “actor” proved to possess the vision, leadership skills, and courage not only to reverse the ailing American
economy but, more important, to become the catalyst that altered the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, bringing the Soviet Union to its knees and ending communism as a threat to the free world.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was undoubtedly one of those men described by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations. . . .It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for the task.”
Ronald Reagan campaigned for the presidency on a broad platform for economic recovery: Reduce income taxes, decrease government spending, and remove unnecessary government regulation. Immediately after his election, he and his advisers began to put a specific economic recovery plan together.
Though it was a long and difficult battle, eventually Reagan got most of what he asked for from the Congress. The effect was not immediate, but one year after the first phase of his tax cuts had been implemented, an economic recovery began. By the time he left office in 1989, eighteen million new jobs had been created. Taxes had been cut significantly. The unemployment rate had been reduced to one-half of what it was at the height of the recession. Interest rates had been cut in half. Inflation had been cut to 4 percent. The number of pages in the publication containing federal regulation had been reduced by half. The United States was to enjoy one of the longest eras of economic expansion in our nation’s history.
“Morning Again in America,” the theme of Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, had become not just a political slogan but a statement of fact.
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While the remarkable resurrection of the American economy was an admirable achievement, it pales in comparison to the way that Ronald Reagan went on to change the world.
When he took office, Reagan possessed an attitude that was different from that of any of his predecessors as well as the current ruling class and media elite. He had no intention of “containing” communism or engaging it in “détente.” Quite the opposite, he believed that freedom and democracy would prevail, that
communism could be defeated throughout the world. In his mind, communism was doomed as a system of governance.
In June 1982, addressing the British Parliament, he talked of Poland’s courage, “by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.” He noted that “regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.” He then threw down a challenge to the free peoples of the earth:
What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the
freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. . . .
I have often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. . . .
Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best—a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation.
. . . Let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.
In 1983, he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” But perhaps the most famous of Reagan’s verbal assaults on the Soviet Union occurred in June 1987, when he spoke in front of the Berlin Wall and challenged General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” Then, looking at the graffiti-scribbled cement barrier that had been erected between East and West, he prophesied, “This wall will fall.”
It cannot be overstated how different this attitude was from the prevailing opinion of the political, academic, and media elites of the time. Most of them mocked Reagan while accusing him of being a warmonger. Many expressed their outrage. Some characterized his ideas as “delusional.” The predominant media were willing to ignore the fact that it was the Soviet Union that had invaded Afghanistan and engaged in a staggeringly aggressive military buildup all through the 1970s, instead blaming Ronald Reagan for a renewal of the Cold War.
And they were not alone. With only a few exceptions (including Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain), other leaders of the world were skeptical about the ideas expressed by Ronald Reagan. Even some within his own party believed that he was abandoning conservative principles by negotiating with the “evil empire.”
His belief was certainly at odds with the prevailing liberal philosophy of the time, which assumed that we were all moving inexorably toward socialism and beyond.
A Long and Dangerous Ambition
The path Reagan walked to achieve his dreams of a safer and freer world was littered with obstacles, uncertainty, and great danger. A hostile media and an unfriendly Congress; vacillating allies who, with the exception of Margaret Thatcher, refused to support him; hard-liners within his own administration; a possible Soviet invasion of Poland; the downing of a Korean airliner followed by the shooting of an American army officer in East Berlin; the realization that the USSR had been cheating on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and the discovery of hundreds of listening devices planted in the walls of the new U.S. embassy in Moscow—all of these events made his journey much more difficult. But far and away the greatest obstacle Reagan had to overcome was a hostile Kremlin leadership who believed the United States was the aggressor.
Making serious negotiations even more complicated, the Soviet leaders were convinced that the U.S. was weak, one of them stating: “We will always be able to turn out more missiles than you. The reason is that our people are willing to sacrifice for these things, and yours are not. Our people don’t require a dozen colors of toilet paper in six different scents to be happy. Americans do now; for that reason you will never be able to sustain public support for military expenditures.”
Through all of these challenges, Ronald Reagan pushed on.
A Cold Wind Turns Warm
There is great dispute about how the Cold War ended. Much of that dispute has been generated by Ronald Reagan’s political opponents, who never believed him to be anything but a dunce, a figurehead president. Increasingly, however, the following scenario is being recognized as what actually transpired.
Reagan’s rhetorical onslaught, incessant through the first years of his presidency, had a dramatic impact in America, around the world, and in the Soviet Union. His assertion that communism was a failed system, economically and morally, focused the American public in a way that had been lost during the years of détente. Citizens of the world began to see that America was willing to stand for something, that communist revolution and domination were not inevitable, that there really was an option for our future. As a result, communism began to lose its appeal as an ideology, particularly to Third World nations.
Reagan’s success in lifting America from the economic doldrums permitted a major reinvestment in the military. This not only permitted him to negotiate with the Kremlin from a position of strength but also raised the possibility that the U.S. could bankrupt the Soviet Union by forcing it into an unwinnable arms race.
It soon became clear that Reagan’s strategy to bankrupt the Soviet economy included a second element: Work to cut off trade and technology to the Soviet Union in order to limit cash flow to their treasury.
In May 1988, Ronald Reagan visited Moscow and wowed the Russian people.
His address to the students at Moscow University was met with a thunderous standing ovation. Other rousing public appearances and speeches followed. At one event, when asked if the Soviet Union was still the “evil empire,” Reagan quickly answered, “No. That was another time, another era.”14 Asked who was to be given credit for the changes in the Soviet Union, Reagan replied that Mr. Gorbachev was, much to the delight of his host.
This visit by the American president laid the foundation for a growing sense of trust and friendship between the two countries. In fact, Reagan was so loved by the Russian people that the American ambassador to Russia estimated that when he left office in 1989, Reagan’s popularity in the Soviet Union was greater than in any nation on earth, the United States included.
America, as reflected in its president, was a friend, not an enemy. With no foreign enemy to fear, there was no reason for the Soviet Union to resist fundamental change in its political system.
On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev signed a decree ending the Soviet Union. On the same day, he bid his countrymen farewell. In this final address to his nation he stated: “An end has been put to the ‘Cold War,’ the arms race, and the insane militarization of our country, which crippled our economy, distorted our thinking and undermined our morals. The threat of a world war is no more.”
What If ?
What if John Hinckley’s bullet had traveled one inch more? What if Ronald Reagan had died in March 1981?
Would George H.W. Bush have tried to carry out the Reagan economic recovery program? Perhaps.
Would it have passed the Democratic House of Representatives? Probably not.
Without Reagan’s communication skills and extraordinary ability to generate public support, it’s far more likely that the economic reforms would have been crushed by Democrat opposition. A watered-down version might have passed, but weakened measures wouldn’t have reignited the U.S. economy.
Without the economic recovery, we wouldn’t have had the ability to reinvest in our military. Without this reinvestment, there wouldn’t have been the military superiority that frightened the Kremlin. No SDI. No actions taken to bankrupt the failing Soviet economy.
Bush was a product of the traditional Cold War mentality. Without much doubt, he would have pursued the policy of détente, stability, and equilibrium. Relationships would have continued as they had since the end of World War II.
There might have been additional SALT Treaties—negotiated limits on the increases in nuclear warheads, perhaps—but a vision of a world without nuclear weapons was never part of George H.W. Bush’s world view.
And a sincere belief that the West could actually win the Cold War couldn’t have been further from his mind.
Evidence of this fact is found when, upon his own election to the presidency in 1989, Bush called for a pause in negotiations with the Russians to give his national security team time to do a “reassessment.” This took several months. By the time he had “assessed the situation,” the Cold War was over and the former Soviet Union was well on its way to oblivion.
Even if President Bush had adopted Reagan’s view of the world, would he have been able to successfully carry out the crusade that Reagan initiated? It is unlikely.
Bush came from the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He was not a conservative, and it is important to remember that the conservatives had taken control of the Republican Party in 1980. Yet the negotiations Reagan undertook generated intense criticism from the right wing of the GOP. He was able to withstand this criticism only because he was recognized as a conservative himself. Bush would have had no such cover and would most probably have been crushed, politically.
Finally, Bush did not have the personal charm of Reagan. Gorbachev made no secret of the fact that, in their initial meetings, he was not impressed by Bush. He came to view the Bush administration as being of ancient vintage, even reporting to the Politburo: “These people were brought up in the years of the Cold War and still do not have any foreign policy alternative. . . . Big breakthroughs can hardly be expected.”
The relationship that played such an important role in allowing the Reagan-Gorbachev team to proceed based upon trust was unlikely to have developed with George Bush.
Without Ronald Reagan at the lead, the great drama known as the end of the Cold War, and the removal of the Soviet Union as a mortal threat to the United States and freedom and liberty worldwide, would not likely have taken place the way it did.
