ronald reagan cold war essay

“Tear Down This Wall”: Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War

Written by: bill of rights institute, by the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the causes and effects of the end of the Cold War and its legacy

Suggested Sequencing:

Use this decision point after students have read the introductory essay to introduce foreign policy milestones during Reagan’s presidency. This decision point can be used with  The Iran-Contra Affair  Narrative; the  Ronald Reagan, “Tear Down this Wall” Speech, June 12, 1987  Primary Source; and the  Cold War DBQ (1947–1989)  Lesson.

In the wake of World War II, a Cold War erupted between the world’s two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. During the postwar era, the contest between their respective capitalist and communist systems manifested itself in a nuclear arms race, a space race, and several proxy wars. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the United States fought the Vietnam War and struggled internally with its aftermath and a faltering economy, the Russians seemed ascendant. Increasing oil prices globally led to a revenue windfall for oil-rich Russia, which paid for a massive arms buildup and supported communist insurrections that Russia backed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Eventually, the policy of détente decreased tensions between the two countries and led to their signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972. SALT I, the first of two SALT agreements, limited the number of nuclear missiles either country could possess and banned the building of antiballistic missile (ABM) systems used to defend against nuclear strikes. The use of ABMs would have upset the stalemate represented by the possibility of mutual assured destruction (MAD)—the obliteration of both parties in a nuclear war—because it would allow one side to strike first and then defend itself against retaliation.

The December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to prop up a puppet communist regime led President Jimmy Carter to seek increased military budgets and to withdraw from Senate consideration the recently signed SALT II treaty, which would have reduced both countries’ nuclear missiles, bombers, and other delivery vehicles. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he rejected détente and instituted a tough stance with Soviets designed to reverse their advances, topple communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and win the Cold War. His administration supported freedom in Eastern Europe and the Polish resistance movement known as Solidarity; armed fighters resisting communism around the world, including the  mujahideen  in Afghanistan; and increased military spending to support peace through strength and to bankrupt the Soviet economy if it tried to match the increases. Reagan also launched an ideological crusade against the Soviet regime for violating inalienable rights and liberties.

For decades before coming into office, Reagan had criticized the spread of Soviet communism and the danger it posed. He compared communism to Nazism and totalitarianism, characterized by a powerful state that limited individual freedoms. In a 1964 televised speech, Reagan told the American people he believed there could be no accommodation with the Soviets.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters.”

Shortly before he became president, Reagan told an aide: “My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and they lose.”

Reagan also specifically targeted the Berlin Wall, erected by communist East Germany in 1961 to separate East and West Berlin. In a 1967 televised town hall debate with Robert Kennedy, Reagan argued, “I think it would be very admirable if the Berlin Wall should . . . disappear.” He continued, “We just think that a wall that is put up to confine people, and keep them within their own country . . . has to be somehow wrong.” In 1978, he visited the wall and was disgusted to learn the story of Peter Fechter, one of the first among hundreds who were gunned down by East German police while trying to escape to freedom.

Americans knew Ronald Reagan was an uncompromising Cold War warrior when they elected him president in 1980. Over the heads of many in the State Department and the National Security Council, he instituted controversial policies that reversed détente because he thought it had strengthened and emboldened the Soviets during the 1970s. He joked that détente was “what a farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving Day.”

Reagan also pressed an unrelenting ideological attack on communism in stark moral terms that pitted it against a free society. In 1981, he asserted at the University of Notre Dame that “The West won’t contain communism, it will transcend communism . . . it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.” In a 1982 speech to the British Parliament, he said communism ran “against the tides of history by denying human freedom and human dignity” and predicted that the Soviet regime would end up “on the ash heap of history.” The Berlin Wall was “the signature of the regime that built it.” During that trip, Reagan visited the wall and said, “It’s as ugly as the idea behind it.” In a 1983 speech that made the supporters of a softer line toward the Soviets cringe, he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

In June 1987, Reagan was in West Berlin to speak during a ceremony commemorating the 750th anniversary of the city and faced an important choice. The Berlin Wall was one of the most important symbols of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and a symbol of communist oppression. He could confront the Soviets about the injustice of the wall, or he could deliver bland remarks that would satisfy the members of the American foreign policy establishment who wanted to avoid conflict. He decided to deliver a provocative speech demanding an end to the oppression of the wall and of communism.

Many officials in Reagan’s administration and in the allied West German government were strongly opposed to his delivering any provocative words or actions during the speech. The West Germans did not want the speech to be given anywhere near the wall and sought to avoid what might be perceived as an aggressive signal. The German Foreign Ministry appealed to the White House, but to no avail. Some members of the administration were even more concerned. At the time, the United States was in the midst of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) negotiations with the U.S.S.R., and officials did not want to jeopardize the progress they had made by undermining the Soviet leader so close to home. As a result, Secretary of State George Shultz, Chief of Staff Howard Baker, and the U.S. Embassy in Bonn (the West German capital) read the drafts of Reagan’s speech and repeatedly implored the president and his speechwriters to tone down the language. Deputy National Security Advisor Colin Powell and other members of the National Security Council were particularly adamant and offered several revisions of the speech. Reagan listened to all the objections and unalterably decided, “I think we’ll leave it in.” He would not be deterred from challenging the Soviets and communism.

The stark moral difference between the systems on either side of the Berlin Wall was evident on June 12. Reagan and his team arrived in West Berlin and encountered some protesters who freely voiced their dissent at his appearance. He also spoke to reporters and nervous German officials who feared the fallout over an antagonistic speech. As he told them, “This is the only wall that has ever been built to keep people in, not keep people out.” In East Berlin, in contrast, the German secret police and Russian KGB agents cordoned off an area a thousand yards wide on the other side of the wall from where Reagan was to speak. They wanted to ensure that no one could hear his message of freedom.

Reagan stepped up to the podium to speak, with the Brandenburg Gate and the imposing wall in the background. He told the audience, “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.” In the middle of the speech, Reagan directly challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to reform communism in an attempt to save it. He delivered the line that had caused so much consternation among American and German officials: “If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Reagan finished the speech by predicting the wall would not endure. “This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” Reagan took responsibility for causing a diplomatic furor because he believed in universal ideals of freedom and self-government. And he understood the power of using a dramatic moment to promote American ideals.

A year later, Reagan addressed the students at Moscow State University. “The key is freedom,” he told them. It was an ideal that had been at the core of his political philosophy and public statements for 50 years, since the dawn of the Cold War. In a statement that reflected his own sense of responsibility for defeating communism and defending freedom, he told them: “It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream—to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.”

In applying military, economic, moral, and ideological pressure against the system to facilitate its collapse, Reagan was joined by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, and others who fought for democracy and freedom. No one imagined the Berlin Wall would fall only two years later on November 9, 1989, as communism collapsed across Eastern Europe, or that the Soviet Union would formerly dissolve by the end of 1991.

Review Questions

1. The Cold War manifested itself through all the following except

• a nuclear arms race
• the space race
• direct military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union

2. The massive Soviet arms buildup during the 1960s and 1970s was financed by

• increased oil prices globally
• mineral wealth gained from Afghanistan
• increased Soviet industrial productivity
• surplus tariffs from the trade war with the United States

3. Tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. increased in the 1970s with the

• signing of the SALT Treaty in 1972
• banning of the antiballistic missile system
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
• policy of détente

4. The president most often credited with advocating policies leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union was

• Richard Nixon
• Jimmy Carter
• Ronald Reagan
• George H. W. Bush

5. The Reagan administration challenged Soviet influence by

• supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland
• refusing to get involved in the Afghanistan conflict
• embracing unilateral nuclear disarmament
• continuing the policy of détente

6. For President Ronald Reagan, the “evil empire” confronting the world was

• Afghanistan
• Communist China
• the Soviet Union

7. Events marking the end of the Cold War included all the following except

• Eastern European uprisings against communism
• the tearing down of the Berlin War
• the disintegration of the U.S.S.R.
• the end of communist rule in China

Free Response Questions

• Explain how détente led to a lessening of nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
• Compare President Reagan’s attitudes and policies toward the Soviet Union with those of his predecessors.

AP Practice Questions

“But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind —too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. And now—now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. . . . There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev—Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, June 12, 1987

Refer to the excerpt provided.

1. The sentiments expressed in the excerpt contributed to which of the following?

• An end to the war on terrorism
• Conflicts in the Middle East
• The fall of the Soviet Union
• The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001

2. The Soviet conditions referred to in this excerpt most directly resulted from

• the end of World War II
• collective security agreements
• the creation of the United Nations

3. This excerpt was written in response to

• Cold War competition extending into Latin America
• postwar decolonization
• efforts to seek allies among nonaligned nations
• political changes and economic problems in Eastern Europe

Primary Sources

Reagan, Ronald. “Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.” June 12, 1987.  https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-at-brandenburg-gate/

Reagan, Ronald. “Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.” June 12, 1987. Reagan Foundation Video.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM

Suggested Resources

Brands, H. W.  Reagan: The Life . New York: Doubleday, 2015.

Busch, Andrew E.  Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Gaddis, John Lewis.  The Cold War: A New History . New York: Penguin, 2005.

Hayward, Steven F.  The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980–1989 . New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009.

Lettow, Paul.  Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons . New York: Random House, 2005.

Ratnesar, Romesh.  Tear Down This Wall: A City, A President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum website.  https://www.reaganfoundation.org/library-museum/

Schweizer, Peter.  Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism . New York: Doubleday, 2002.

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How Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Speech Marked a Cold War Turning Point

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: June 11, 2024 | Original: May 1, 2018

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood just 100 yards away from the concrete barrier dividing East and West Berlin and uttered some of the most unforgettable words of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

By the time Reagan traveled to Berlin, Germany, to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding, the Berlin Wall had divided the city in half for nearly 26 years. Built, and officially closed on August 12, 1961, to prevent disaffected East Germans from fleeing the relative deprivations of life in their country for greater freedom and opportunity in the West, the wall was more than just a physical barrier. It also stood as a vivid symbol of the battle between communism and democracy that divided Berlin, Germany and the entire European continent during the Cold War .

Why Was the Berlin Wall Built?

The wall’s origins traced back to the years after World War II , when the Soviet Union and its Western allies carved Germany into two zones of influence that would become two separate countries, respectively: the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Located deep within Soviet-controlled East Germany, the capital city of Berlin was also split in two. 

Over the next decade or so, some 2.5 million East Germans—including many skilled workers, intellectuals and professionals—used the capital as the primary route to flee the country, especially after the border between East and West Germany was officially sealed in 1952.

Seeking to stop this mass exodus, the East German government closed off passage between the two Berlins during the night of August 12, 1961. What began as a barbed wire fence, policed by armed guards, was soon fortified with concrete and guard towers, completely encircling West Berlin and separating Berliners on both sides from their families, jobs and the lives they had known before. Over the next 28 years, thousands of people would risk their lives to escape East Germany over the Berlin Wall, and some 140 were killed in the attempt .

Reagan’s 'Tear Down this Wall' Speech Initially Met Criticism

Despite its later fame, Reagan’s speech initially received relatively little media coverage, and few accolades, at the time. Western pundits viewed it as misguided idealism on Reagan’s part, while the Soviet news agency Tass called it “openly provocative” and “war-mongering.” And Gorbachev himself told an American audience years later : “[W]e really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.” (Gorbachev added that Reagan had been “courageously cooperative,” and a great partner and president.)

According to the former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, who drafted the speech, even Reagan’s advisers in the State Department and National Security Council strongly objected, claiming that such a direct challenge would damage the relationship with the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The two nations had been moving closer to peace and even disarmament, especially after a productive summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik in October 1986.

Despite this, the Berlin Wall—that heavily fortified symbol of Cold War divisions—seemed as solid as ever.

On June 12, 1987, standing on the West German side of the Berlin Wall, with the iconic Brandenburg Gate at his back, Reagan declared: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.” Reagan then waited for the applause to die down before continuing. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Reagan’s tactics were a departure from his three immediate predecessors, Presidents Richard Nixon , Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter , who all focused on a policy of détente with the Soviet Union, playing down Cold War tensions and trying to foster a peaceful coexistence between the two nations. Reagan dismissed détente as a “one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims.”

When Did the Berlin Wall Fall?

On November 9, 1989, the Cold War officially began to thaw when Egon Krenz, the head of East Germany’s Communist Party , announce d that citizens could now cross into West Germany freely. That night, thousands of East and West Germans headed to the Berlin Wall to celebrate, many armed with hammers, chisels and other tools. Over the next few weeks, the wall would be nearly completely dismantled. After talks over the next year, East and West Germany officially reunited on October 3, 1990.

This was a result of many changes over the course of two years. Gorbachev’s reforms within the Soviet Union gave Eastern Bloc nations more freedom to determine their own government and access to the West. Protests within East Germany gained strength, and after Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened their borders, East Germans began defecting en masse.

The Lasting Legacy of Reagan’s Speech

The “Tear Down This Wall” speech didn’t mark the end of Reagan’s attempts to work with Gorbachev on improving relations between the two rival nations: He would join the Soviet leader in a series of summit meetings through the end of his presidency in early 1989, even signing a major arms control agreement, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

In the aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s fall, many began to reevaluate Reagan’s earlier speech, viewing it as a harbinger of the changes that were then taking place in Eastern Europe. In the United States, Reagan’s challenge to Gorbachev has been celebrated as a triumphant moment in his foreign policy, and as Time magazine later put it , “the four most famous words of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.”

In the end, Gorbachev’s reforms, and the resulting protest movements put pressure on the East German government to open barriers to the West.  Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his work in ending the Cold War, including the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While Gorbachev's role in thawing the Cold War was clear, Reagan's words became memorable. As Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, told CBS News in 2012, Reagan’s speech is “seen as a turning point in the Cold War” because it “bolstered the morale of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany.” Yet the greatest impact of the speech may have been the role it played in the creation of Reagan’s enduring legacy as president, and in solidifying his legendary status among his supporters as the “great communicator.”

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Ronald Reagan and the Cold War: What Mattered Most

Melvyn P. Leffler PDF Download -->

Scholars, like contemporary observers, continue to argue heatedly over the quality of President Ronald Reagan’s strategy, diplomacy, and leadership. This paper focuses on a fascinating paradox of his presidency: By seeking to talk to Soviet leaders and end the Cold War, Reagan helped to win it. In that process, his emotional intelligence was more important than his military buildup; his political credibility at home was more important than his ideological offensive abroad; and his empathy, affability, and learning were more important than his suspicions. Ultimately, by striving to end the nuclear arms race and avoid Armageddon, he contributed to the dynamics that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These ironies, rather than detracting from Reagan’s significance, should instead put it in proper perspective. He was Gorbachev’s minor, yet indispensable partner, setting the framework for the dramatic changes that neither man anticipated happening anytime soon.

Scholars love debating the role of Ronald Reagan in the Cold War. Some say he aimed to win the Cold War. Others claim he wanted to end the Cold War. Some say he wanted to abolish nuclear weapons and yearned for a more peaceful world; others say he built up American capabilities, prepared to wage nuclear war, and sought to destroy communism and the evil empire that embodied it. Noting these contradictions and Reagan’s competing impulses, some writers even claim that he wanted to do all of these things. 1

Figuring out what Ronald Reagan wanted to do, or, more precisely, what things he wanted most to do, may be an impossible task. When reading memoirs about Reagan and interviews with his advisers, what impresses and surprises the most is that the “great communicator” was regarded as “impenetrable” by many of those who adored him, who worked for him, and who labored to impress his legacy on the American psyche.

Nonetheless, the growing documentary record, along with memoirs and oral histories, allows for a more careful assessment of Reagan’s personal impact on the endgame of the Cold War. His role was important, albeit not as important as Mikhail Gorbachev’s. But his significance stemmed less from the arms buildup and ideological offensive that he launched at the onset of his presidency in 1981 than from his desires to abolish nuclear weapons, tamp down the strategic arms race, and avoid Armageddon. These priorities inspired Reagan to make overtures to Soviet leaders; gain a better understanding of their fears; and, eventually, to engage Gorbachev with conviction, empathy, and geniality. After 1985, many of Reagan’s national security advisers, intelligence analysts, and political allies disdained the president’s nuclear abolitionism, distrusted Gorbachev, and exaggerated the strength and durability of the Soviet regime. Reagan, however, strove to consummate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, push forward on strategic arms reductions, and solidify his relationship with a pliable Soviet leader who was trying to reshape his own country. Reagan’s sincerity, goodwill, strong desire for negotiations, and shared commitment to nuclear abolition (however abstract) reassured Gorbachev, helping to sustain a trajectory whose end results the Soviet leader did not foresee or contemplate. Paradoxically, then, Reagan nurtured the dynamics that won the Cold War by focusing on ways to end it.

Ronald Reagan was convivial, upbeat, courteous, respectful, self-confident, and humble. But he was also opaque, remote, distant, and inscrutable. Ronnie was a “loner,” Nancy Reagan wrote in her memoir. “There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.” 2 His advisers agreed. Charles Wick, his longtime friend and head of the U.S. Information Agency, acknowledged that “no matter how close anybody was to him . . . there still is a very slight wall that you don’t get past.” 3 “No one was close to Reagan,” Ken Adelman told an interviewer. “He laughed, he was a wonderful warm human being, but there was something impenetrable about him. Really, he wouldn’t share — some views were out there, but otherwise he just went to a different drummer — a strange person.” 4

Of course, Reagan had a set of strong convictions that he preached for most of his long career as a spokesman for General Electric, as governor of California, as an aspirant for the highest office in the land, and as president. “He wasn’t a complicated person,” Nancy explained. “He was a private man, but he was not a complicated one.” 5 Everyone thought they knew what Reagan believed: He loved freedom and hated communism. He revered free enterprise and abhorred big government. He wanted to cut taxes and catalyze private entrepreneurship. He adored the city on the hill and detested the evil empire. 6

But things got complicated for his advisers when they learned that he also yearned for peace, detested nuclear weapons, thought mutually assured destruction (MAD) was itself mad, feared that nuclear war would lead to Armageddon, and embraced compromise. When trade-offs were necessary, when priorities needed to be agreed upon, when complicated options needed to be resolved, Reagan was opaque. He “gave no orders, no commands; asked for no information; expressed no urgency,” said David Stockman, his first budget director. Although Stockman became a harsh critic, Reagan’s admirers did not disagree. Martin Anderson, among his most important economic advisers and a longtime friend, wrote: “He made no demands, and gave almost no instructions.” Frank Carlucci, who served on the National Security Council staff in the early years and returned as national security adviser and secretary of defense in the later years of Reagan’s second term, noted that the president often seemed in a “daze”; well, not exactly a “daze,” Carlucci said, but very “preoccupied,” especially during the Iran-Contra controversy. According to Richard Pipes, the renowned Soviet expert, Reagan sometimes seemed “really lost, out of his depth, uncomfortable,” at National Security Council meetings. William Webster, who headed the CIA at the end of Reagan’s presidency, one day approached Colin Powell, then the national security adviser, and confided, “I’m pretty good at reading people, but I like to get a report card. I can’t tell whether I’m really helping him or not because he listens and I don’t get a sense that he disagrees with me or agrees with me or what.” Powell replied, “Listen, I’m with him a dozen times a day and I’m in the same boat. So don’t feel badly about that.” 7

A Strategy to Win or to End the Cold War?

Nevertheless, a trend has emerged that praises Reagan’s strategy for winning the Cold War. According to its proponents, there is abundant evidence to support this argument, specifically National Security Decision Directives (NSDD) 32 and 75. Those directives, formulated in 1982 and early 1983, outline a strategy: build strength, constrain and contract Soviet expansion, nurture change within the Soviet empire (to the extent possible), and negotiate. 8 The sophisticated analysts who rely on these directives and who regard Reagan as a grand strategist acknowledge the disarray in the administration; the feuding between the State Department, the Defense Department, and the national security staff; and the bickering inside the White House among James Baker, Michael Deaver, Ed Meese, and (to some extent) Nancy Reagan. Yet they claim — with a good deal of evidence — that when Judge William Clark, Reagan’s close friend, took the role of national security adviser in 1982, he sorted all this out, imposed discipline, and orchestrated a polished and refined strategy that triumphed over the evil empire. 9 Clark himself, in a lengthy interview at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center in 2003, took pride in forcing the Soviets to reshape their behavior through economic warfare, ideological competition, and military power. 10

These interpretations by sophisticated scholars such as Hal Brands, William Inboden, and John Gaddis appear, at first glance, persuasive. 11 But when the evidence is examined closely, there is room for skepticism. In November 1983, after Pipes had left the National Security Council staff, Alexander Haig had left the State Department, and Clark had left the White House, Jack Matlock, Pipes’ successor, began organizing Saturday-morning breakfasts for senior officials to clarify the administration’s policy. George Shultz, the new secretary of state, attended, as did Bud McFarlane, the national security adviser, as well as Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Vice President George H. W. Bush. There were sharp differences of opinion, Matlock subsequently wrote,

but nobody [at the breakfast] argued that the United States should try to bring the Soviet Union down. All recognized that the Soviet leaders faced mounting problems, but understood that U.S. attempts to exploit them would strengthen Soviet resistance to change rather than diminish it. President Reagan was in favor of bringing pressure to bear on the Soviet Union, but his objective was to induce the Soviet leaders to negotiate reasonable agreements, not to break up the country. 12

These senior officials outlined the key goals: reduce the use and threat of force in international disputes, lower armaments, establish minimal levels of trust with the hope of verifying past agreements, and effectuating progress on human rights, confidence-building measures, and bilateral ties. 13

The policymakers agreed that they should not challenge the legitimacy of the Soviet system, seek military superiority, or force the collapse of the Soviet system, which, according to Matlock, was to be considered “distinct from exerting pressure on Soviets to live up to agreements and abide by civilized standards of behavior.” 14

They also agreed that they should pursue a policy of realism, strength, and negotiation. Realism meant “that our competition with the Soviet Union is basic and there is no quick fix.” Strength was necessary to deal with the Kremlin effectively, while negotiations aimed to reduce tensions, not to conceal differences. 15

[Reagan's] significance stemmed less from the arms buildup and ideological offensive that he launched at the onset of his presidency in 1981 than from his desires to abolish nuclear weapons, tamp down the strategic arms race, and avoid Armageddon.

So, what should one conclude? There are Clark and NSDD 75 on the one hand, and Matlock and the Nov. 19 Saturday-morning breakfast memo on the other. Shultz had presented his own memorandum to the president on Soviet-U.S. relations after he replaced Haig as secretary of state, and that memorandum resembled the Saturday breakfast memo. 16 One approach has been interpreted to connote a desire to achieve overwhelming military strength, cripple the Soviet economy, undermine the Soviet empire, and destroy the communist way of life. 17  The other suggested a desire to achieve military parity, negotiate arms reductions, modulate competition in the Third World, avoid Armageddon, and achieve, in the words of Shultz, “a lasting and significant improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations.” 18 So what, then, to make of this? Was there a strategy to win the Cold War? Or was there a strategy to end the Cold War?

While pondering these questions, one should consider two of the most famous quotes and stories about Reagan and the Cold War. In 1977, in a private conversation with Richard Allen, the man who would become his first national security adviser, Reagan explained that his approach to the Cold War was simple: “We win, they lose.” Allen was stunned by the simplicity and brilliance of this formulation. Others have cited it as the most cogent framework for illuminating the evolution of Reagan’s strategy. 19

Thomas Reed, a special assistant to Reagan for national security and a former secretary of the Air Force, narrates the other story. Reed reports that Stuart Spencer, Reagan’s political consultant, accompanied the candidate in July 1980 on a flight from Los Angeles to the Republican nominating convention in Detroit. Spencer asked, “Why are you doing this, Ron?” With no hesitation, Reagan answered, “To end the Cold War.” I am not sure how, Reagan went on to say, “but there has to be a way.” Reagan focused on the weakness of the Soviet system, his fear of nuclear war, and his frustration with détente. Reed then adds, “Reagan was not a hawk. He did not want to ‘beat’ the Soviets. He simply felt that it would be in the best interests of both countries, or at least of their general citizenry, ‘to end this thing.’” 20

Reed goes on to emphasize that Reagan believed that the way to end the Cold War was by winning it. 21 But if Reagan’s words to Spencer are parsed more carefully, it becomes clear that Reagan was not talking about “beating” the Soviets but, rather, seeking to end the Cold War.

It is easy to conflate “winning the Cold War” and “ending the Cold War.” Yet, when thinking about the strategy and aims of the Reagan administration, consider: What do the two terms mean? Was there, in fact, a strategy to win the Cold War, as many triumphalists claim, or was there instead a strategy to end the Cold War? What would it have taken to win the Cold War rather than end it? Would each involve different approaches, goals, and tactics, or would they overlap? What assumptions would shape the pursuit of one or the other?

In a series of interviews conducted by the Miller Center, leading officials in the Reagan administration were asked whether Reagan had a strategy. Clark said yes. Richard Allen implied that such a strategy existed. Frank Carlucci was not at all certain what Reagan had in mind, but he enormously admired the president’s intuition. Things worked out. Indeed, the results were breathtaking. 22 But just because things worked out doesn’t mean there was a strategy. In fact, George Shultz said that Reagan did not have a strategy to spend the Soviets into the ground. Shultz reiterated the points that he and Matlock had outlined in 1983: realism, strength, negotiation. Weinberger maintained that Reagan’s strategy was simple: negotiate from strength. James Baker pretty much agreed with Weinberger, stressing that the president was a pragmatic compromiser. Reagan’s aim, said Baker, was “peace through strength,” not the breakup of the Soviet empire, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, or the destruction of communism. 23

Ken Adelman’s interview is one of the most interesting. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, acknowledged that he personally had never believed that the Cold War would end. Nor did he think that the United States could bankrupt the Kremlin. Reagan’s mastery of nuclear issues was nonexistent, according to Adelman. “He had no knowledge, no feel, and no interest in whether it was missiles, warheads, SEPs [Selective Employment Plan], throw-weights, none of that,” Adelman emphasized. When the president and Mikhail Gorbachev broached an agreement on nuclear abolition in Reykjavik in 1986, Adelman thought that “they were in fairyland.” And when Reagan kept insisting on sharing Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) technology with Soviet leaders, Adelman thought it was “crazy.” Yet the results were spectacular. Adelman’s interview ended with a rapturous homage to Reagan: “I’m so startled by the changes he made, and how that changed our world.” The president was “impenetrable.” One could never grasp “his inner core,” Adelman said. But, Adelman concluded, it is what Reagan accomplished that counts. Everyone can see what he “really, really did,” and that is what matters. 24

Assessing What Mattered

So, what did Reagan actually do, and what precisely mattered? Adelman, Wick, Baker, Weinberger, and Allen, like so many others, assign huge importance to SDI. A few years ago, Paul Wolfowitz contributed an essay to a volume on post-Cold War strategy that began with an anecdote about a young Russian who visited Dick Cheney in 1992, when he was secretary of defense. The man explained how Reagan had won the Cold War, saying that the Russians thought they were invincible until Reagan plowed ahead with the stealth bomber (B-2) and with SDI. At that point, according to the young man, the Russians knew they could not compete unless they changed. 25 Supposedly, SDI won the Cold War. Critics of this viewpoint, and I am one of them, need to be honest: Many similar quotations from Soviet officials and military people attest to this perspective. 26

But again, let’s nurture some skepticism: Just as this essay casts doubt on Reagan’s strategic genius, it also casts doubt on the decisive role that SDI — and, indirectly, the U.S. military buildup — played in bringing about the end of the Cold War. “We were not afraid of SDI,” Gorbachev reflected in 1999, “first of all, because our experts were convinced that this project was unrealizable, and, secondly, we would know how to neutralize it.” In 1985, when he assumed power, Gorbachev believed that Reagan’s military buildup was not likely to be sustained. Gorbachev’s closest aide, Anatoly Chernyaev, scorned the argument that Gorbachev was acting as a result of external pressure:

I do not believe that the anti-Communist, anti-Soviet rhetoric and the increase in the armaments and military power of the United States played a serious role in our decision-making . . . I think perhaps they played no role whatsoever.

Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States who returned to the Kremlin in 1986 to lead the international department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, agreed totally with Chernyaev. “The Soviet response to Star Wars,” he writes, “caused only an acceptable small rise in defense spending.” The Soviets’ fundamental problems, according to Dobrynin, stemmed from autarchy, low investment, and lack of innovation. Alexander Bessmertnykh, the deputy foreign minister, said that “very soon we realized that” SDI “was impractical . . . [It] was a fantasy.” The chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff later confided: “I was in contact with our senior military officers and the political leadership. They didn’t care about SDI. Everything was driven by departmental and careerist concerns.” 27

Was there, in fact, a strategy to win the Cold War, as many triumphalists claim, or was there instead a strategy to end the Cold War?

Many of the most renowned historians of Soviet leaders and Kremlin decision-making similarly disagree that SDI and the U.S. military buildup were critical factors; these include Mark Kramer, Vlad Zubok, and Archie Brown. 28 In his book on the end of the Cold War, Robert Service presents a nuanced discussion of SDI. While not discounting its salience, Service stresses that Gorbachev eventually decided to ignore the Strategic Defense Initiative. In his recently published, masterful biography of Gorbachev, William Taubman largely concurs with Service’s assessment. In his good book on the arms race, The Dead Hand , David Hoffman concludes: “Gorbachev’s great contribution was in deciding what not to do. He would not build a Soviet Star Wars. He averted another massive weapons competition.” In short, SDI was a secondary factor impelling Gorbachev to take the course that he did. 29

What then did Reagan do that made a real difference? Let’s first acknowledge some critical facts. Many of the events that defined the end of the Cold War — the eradication of the Berlin Wall, free elections in Poland and Hungary, unification of Germany inside NATO, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union — all came after Reagan left office. They were the result of socioeconomic and political crosscurrents in Eastern Europe; structural problems beleaguering the Soviet economy; nationality conflicts inside the Soviet Union; Gorbachev’s policies and predilections; Kremlin internal politics; and diplomatic interactions between Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush, Helmut Kohl, and François Mitterand, among others. 30 Ronald Reagan had little to do with these matters. 31

So, back to the question: What were Reagan’s key contributions? Shultz says it was the combination of strength, realism, and negotiation. 32 But wouldn’t Dean Acheson, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski — to name just a few — have said much the same about their own approaches: that they combined the pursuit of strength, realism, and negotiation? Adelman says it was the unique combination of seeking arms cuts, building strength, championing SDI, and delegitimizing the Soviet Union. 33 Yet building arms and extolling SDI, as already noted, did not decisively shape Soviet policies. Although U.S. covert actions and ideological offensives put Gorbachev on the defensive, the Soviet leader’s relative stature in the world was growing, not declining. Recall that the U.S. arms buildup, the deployment of Pershing IIs and cruise missiles, the genocidal actions of America’s authoritarian associates in Central America and South America, and Reagan’s reluctance to distance himself from the apartheid regime in South Africa garnered widespread approbation and damaged the image of the United States. Although the new literature persuasively shows that Reagan and his advisers deserve credit for their shift to democracy promotion and support for human rights, one should not forget that when Reagan left office, it was Gorbachev who drew wildly enthusiastic crowds wherever he went abroad — not Reagan, who was tarnished from the Iran-Contra affair. 34

The Soviet system lost its legitimacy not because of the U.S. ideological offensive but because of its performance. Even before Gorbachev took office his comrades grasped that their system was faltering and required a radical overhaul. Gorbachev infused conviction, energy, and chaos into efforts to remake and revive socialism. He knew the system was stagnating. Indeed, this was evident around the world, as China embarked on a new trajectory and as country after country moved away from command systems and statist controls. 35

Reagan deserves credit for understanding these trends and extolling them. Moreover, his advisers merit credit for exploiting these trends in the international economy to America’s advantage. In his recent book, Hal Brands brilliantly assesses the ability of Reagan administration officials to capitalize on globalization, technological change, the communications transformation, and the electronics revolution. 36 These initiatives reconfigured America’s position in the international arena as the Cold War drew to a close, but they did not cause the end of the Cold War. In a recent scholarly account of Gorbachev’s economic policies, Chris Miller claims that Gorbachev and his advisers were far more influenced by what was going on economically in Japan and in China than what was happening in the United States. 37

Reagan’s Contribution: Building Trust

So, back again to the basic query: What were Reagan’s unique contributions? Adelman stresses Reagan’s desire for real cuts in armaments. Shultz emphasizes negotiation. Baker underscores Reagan’s negotiating skills and dwells on his pragmatism.

But these laudatory comments understate Reagan’s unique gifts and his contributions to the end of the Cold War. To say that Reagan wanted to negotiate is far too facile. He fiercely wanted to talk to Soviet leaders from his first days in office. 38 When Vice President Bush attended Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral in March 1985, he brought a set of talking points for his first meeting with Gorbachev. He was scripted to say:

I bring with me a message of peace. We know this is a time of difficulty; we would like it to be a time of opportunity. . . . We know that some of the things we do and say sound threatening and hostile to you. The same is true for us.

The two governments needed to transcend that distrust. “We are ready to embark on that path with you. It is the path of negotiation.” 39

To say that Reagan wanted to negotiate trivializes his approach. After Bush conversed with Gorbachev at Chernenko’s funeral, Secretary of State Shultz turned to the new Soviet leader and said,

President Reagan told me to look you squarely in the eyes and tell you: ‘Ronald Reagan believes that this is a very special moment in the history of mankind. You are starting your term as general secretary. Ronald Reagan is starting his second term as president. . . . President Reagan is ready to work with you.’ 40

That determination and anticipation infused Reagan’s first meeting with Gorbachev in Geneva in October 1985. Reading the opening pages of his autobiography, one can sense the president’s excitement: Having looked forward to this encounter with a Soviet leader for more than five years, his “juices” were flowing. “Lord,” he wrote in his diary, “I hope I’m ready.” 41

He was ready. He felt that his policies had built up America’s military might and strengthened his negotiating position. He thought the Soviet Union was an economic basket case. 42 But neither U.S. military strength nor Soviet economic weakness explain what ensued. They are part of the puzzle, important parts. Yet they were present at other times during the Cold War, and it had neither ended nor been won.

To say that Reagan wanted to negotiate is far too facile. He fiercely wanted to talk to Soviet leaders from his first days in office.

What was different now? It was not simply Reagan’s desire to negotiate. It was his sensibility, empathy, conviction, skill, charm, and self-confidence. Informed of the intricacies of the Single Integrated Operational Plan and the mechanics of decision-making in times of nuclear crisis, Reagan was appalled by the thought that he would have only six minutes to determine whether “to unleash Armageddon!” “How could anyone apply reason” in those circumstances, he mused. 43 Perhaps that realization, along with the tutoring he was receiving about Soviet history and culture, explain his growing empathy for the adversary. 44 “Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians,” he wrote in his diary. “Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.” 45 He talked to foreign ambassadors about Soviet perceptions and recorded their views in his diary. Learning that the Soviets were insecure and genuinely frightened, he tried to insert this understanding in his handwritten letters to Chernenko before the Soviet leader died. 46 Reagan told his national security advisers, “We need talks which can eliminate suspicions. I’m willing to admit that the USSR is suspicious of us.” 47

This empathy subsequently infused his meetings with Gorbachev. Although Reagan wanted armaments to cast shadows and bolster his negotiating posture, he also grasped Soviet perceptions of SDI. “We do not want a first-strike capability,” he told his advisers, “but the Soviets probably will not believe us.” Intuiting that after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl Gorbachev faced growing internal challenges, Reagan prodded his subordinates to reach an agreement that did not “make him [Gorbachev] look like he gave up everything.” 48 Gorbachev, he stressed, mustn’t be forced “to eat crow”; he must not be embarrassed. “Let there be no talk of winners and losers,” Reagan said. The aim was to establish a process, a series of meetings, “to avoid war in settling our differences in the future.” 49

The deliberations of the National Security Council after 1985 do not reveal officials designing a strategy to win the Cold War, break up the Soviet Union, or eradicate communism. Instead, they reveal officials who were struggling to shape a negotiating strategy that would effectuate arms reductions. They reveal a president pushing hard for real arms cuts. They reveal a president who feared nuclear war, believed in SDI, and wanted to share it. They reveal a president who desired to abolish nuclear weapons. 50 Reagan’s advisers felt that he was living in fantasyland, as Adelman said in his Miller Center interview. 51 Occasionally, they politely interrupted: “Mr. President,” they would say, “there is a great risk in exchanging technical data.” Or, “Mr. President, that would be the most massive technical transfer the Western world has ever known.” But Reagan was not dissuaded: “There has to be an answer to all these questions because some day people are going to ask why we didn’t do something new about getting rid of nuclear weapons. You know,” he went on, “I’ve been reading my Bible and the description of Armageddon talks about destruction, I believe, of many cities and we need absolutely to avoid that. We have to do something now.” 52

Reagan was not very good at getting his advisers to do things they bickered over or did not want to do. But Reagan was good, indeed superb, at dealing with people. He could set you “utterly at ease,” wrote his critic, David Stockman. Devoid of facts and short on knowledge, said Richard Pipes, Reagan nonetheless “had irresistible charm.” “Easy to like,” said Shultz; Reagan “was a master of friendly diplomacy.” 53

He worked hard at it, prepared for his talks, grasped the rhythm of negotiations, and understood the value of stubborn patience. 54 Gorbachev sometimes sneered at him during Politburo meetings for his simplistic, narrow-minded, and repetitious talking points. But in their new book, Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton show how deeply affected Gorbachev was by Reagan’s conviction to abolish nuclear weapons at Reykjavik. At the emotional end of their last conversation, Reagan pleaded with Gorbachev to allow SDI testing: “Do it as a favor to me so that we can go to the people as peacemakers.” Gorbachev said no, but was deeply affected. “I believe it was then, at that very moment,” wrote Chernyaev, that Gorbachev “became convinced that it would ‘work out’ between him and Reagan.” 55

Reagan engaged Gorbachev in a way no American leader had previously engaged a Soviet leader in the history of the Cold War. Of course, he was dealing with a special, new type of Soviet leader. But it was to Reagan’s credit that he realized this. It took intuition and courage. Other than Shultz, hardly any of his advisers felt this way — not Weinberger, Clark, Casey, Carlucci, Baker, Bush, Gates, or outside critics such as Kissinger. Nor is it clear that his Democratic foes would have seized the opportunity as he did. Even had they tried, it is not likely that they could have orchestrated the same type of political support for engagement with the Soviet leader. Reagan’s reputation for ideological purity and toughness — even after the Iran-Contra scandal — afforded him flexibility that other U.S. politicians did not have. And his Soviet interlocutors knew it. Reagan had the trust of the American people, Gorbachev believed. If the president struck a deal, it would stick. 56

Reagan provided the incentive for Gorbachev to forge ahead. Gorbachev needed a partner to tamp down the arms race and end the Cold War so that he could revive socialism inside the Soviet Union. Gorbachev wanted to cut military expenditures, accelerate the economy, and improve Soviet living conditions. 57 Propelled by his ideals and by his recognition of material realities, he gradually made all the key concessions. 58 Reagan’s stubborn patience incentivized Gorbachev to sign the zero-zero Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and to withdraw from Afghanistan. Reagan’s sincerity, affability, and goodwill encouraged Gorbachev to believe that the Soviet Union was not endangered by foreign adversaries but by superior economies. 59 Reagan embodied a capitalist system that Gorbachev disdained but also democratic and humane values with which he did not disagree. By reconfiguring Soviet foreign policy, championing conventional as well as strategic reductions in arms, and retrenching from regional conflicts, Gorbachev hoped to find the time and space to integrate the Soviet Union into a new world order and a common European home that would comport with Soviet economic needs and security imperatives.

Gorbachev sensed that Reagan was seeking not to win the Cold War but to end it. He recognized that Reagan wanted arms cuts, believed in nuclear abolition, and sincerely championed human rights and religious freedom. He also understood that Reagan and his advisers wanted to exploit Soviet vulnerabilities and weaknesses to enhance America’s posture in international affairs. But Gorbachev did not think that these matters endangered Soviet power and security. He also believed that the president’s predilections coincided with his own. Gorbachev, said Chernyaev, felt “that Reagan was someone who was concerned about very human things, about the human needs of his people. He felt that Reagan behaved as a very moral person.” 60

Gorbachev sensed that Reagan was seeking not to win the Cold War but to end it.

Gorbachev was right. Reagan’s rhetoric, actions, and behavior during his last years in office reveal what he most wanted to do: establish a process to negotiate arms cuts, reduce tensions, champion human rights, and promote stability and peace. He and his advisers were not discussing ways to win the Cold War or to break up the Soviet Union. At meetings, they occasionally expressed confidence that they had the Soviets on the run, but far more often they remonstrated about the constraints Congress imposed on defense spending and acknowledged that Soviet economic problems, as bad as they were, were not likely to cause a Soviet collapse or even a rebalancing of military power. Their discussions implied an understanding that, at best, they might reduce tensions; mitigate chances of nuclear conflict; manipulate the Soviets into restructuring their forces; and prompt a contraction of Soviet meddling in Central America, southern Africa, and parts of Asia. Nonetheless, Reagan not only encouraged his advisers to integrate strategic defense and the elimination of ballistic missiles into their overall planning, he also hectored them to move forward to prepare a strategic arms-reduction treaty that he could sign. He still distrusted the Soviets and wanted to negotiate from strength. And he still prodded Gorbachev to advance human rights and religious freedom. But during his last years in office Reagan and his closest advisers rarely discussed victory in the Cold War. 61 Postulating a continuing Cold War, intelligence analysts estimated that Gorbachev wanted “to use economic reconstruction at home as a basis to project Soviet power and influence throughout the world.” 62 Nobody in the U.S. government in January 1989, wrote Robert Gates, then deputy director of the CIA, was predicting free elections in Eastern Europe, or the unification of Germany inside NATO, or the dissolution of the Soviet Union. 63

Conclusion: Winning the Cold War by Ending It

Although these conditions that have come to define victory in the Cold War were not expected when he left office, Reagan nonetheless took tremendous pride in what he had accomplished. He sought peace through strength and strove to avoid a nuclear confrontation. He aspired to abolish nuclear weapons and tried to check Soviet expansion while engaging Soviet leaders. He showed empathy, displayed goodwill, and appreciated the changes Gorbachev was making. He hoped to tamp down the Cold War rather than win it. By doing all these things, Reagan reassured Gorbachev that Soviet security would not be endangered as Gorbachev struggled to reshape Soviet political, economic, and social institutions. 64

In 2001, long after he left power, Gorbachev attended a seminar in London where academics blithely condemned Reagan as a lightweight. The professors had it all wrong, Gorbachev interjected. Reagan was a “man of real insight, sound political judgment, and courage.” Three years later, in June 2004, he attended Reagan’s funeral and showed up at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where Reagan’s coffin was draped in an American flag. Slowly, he approached the casket, extended his right hand, and gently rubbed it back and forth over the Stars and Stripes. “I gave him a pat,” Gorbachev later commented, a gesture that well symbolized the “personal chemistry” they had forged. 65

After 1989, when Gorbachev’s initiatives produced havoc within the Soviet Union and led to the disintegration of the Soviet empire, Reagan heralded America’s victory in the Cold War. 66 But his own contribution was more modest and paradoxical. By seeking to engage the Kremlin and end the Cold War, he helped to win it. Negotiation was more important than intimidation. Reagan’s emotional intelligence was more important than his military buildup; his political credibility at home more important than his ideological offensive abroad; his empathy, affability, and learning more important than his suspicions. By striving to end the nuclear arms race and avoid Armageddon, he inadvertently set in motion the dynamics that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These ironies should not detract from Reagan’s significance but should put it in proper perspective. He was Gorbachev’s minor, yet indispensable partner, setting the framework for the dramatic changes that neither man anticipated happening anytime soon.

Scholars will debate the end of the Cold War for generations to come. But it would be a mistake to get lost in debates about the primacy of the individual, the national, or the international. There was an interplay of personal agency, domestic economic imperatives, ideological impulses, and evolving geopolitical configurations of power. Gorbachev assumed the reins of power in the Soviet Union, recognizing the economic and technological backwardness of his country, aware of the Soviet Union’s weakening position in the global competition for power, and cognizant of its declining ideological appeal. Seeking to rectify these conditions and believing in communism with a human face, he attempted to revive, reform, and remake socialism at home. To do so, he knew he needed to tamp down the arms race and modulate Cold War rivalries. He succeeded — yet blundered into bankrupting his nation’s economy, disrupting its unity, and contracting its power. His failures at home invite withering criticism, yet his courageous decisions to negotiate arms reductions, withdraw from Afghanistan, resist intervention in Eastern Europe, and accept the reunification of Germany inside NATO make him the principal human agent in a very complicated Cold War endgame. 67

In this story, it is often difficult to assess accurately the role that Ronald Reagan played. Whereas many observers are inclined to see his ideological zealotry and military buildup as the catalysts for Gorbachev’s decisions, 68 I argue here that those factors were far less consequential than Reagan’s nuclear abolitionism, emotional intelligence, political stature, and negotiating skills. The new evidence and emerging scholarship regarding Reagan’s second term and the summitry between 1985 and 1988 suggest that Reagan’s engagement, learning, empathy, and geniality — coupled with Gorbachev’s growing travails at home — reaped results that neither Reagan nor Gorbachev anticipated. But those results — the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union — can be grasped only in the context of a much larger matrix of evolving conditions within each country, within the globalizing world economy, and within a dynamic international arena.

Melvyn P. Leffler is Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at The University of Virginia and Compton Visiting Professor at UVA’s Miller Center. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on U.S. relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War . Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, Leffler is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (Harvard University Press, 2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Nationalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, 2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia. He is now writing about the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration.

ISSN (Print): 2576-1021 ISSN(Online): 2576-1153

Image: White House Photographic Office

1 John Prados, How the Cold War Ended: Debating and Doing History (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2011); Artemy Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, “Explanations for the End of the Cold War,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War , ed. Artemy Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle (London: Routledge, 2014). For Reagan’s competing impulses, see James G. Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Jacob Weisberg, Ronald Reagan (New York: Times Books, 2016); for inconsistencies, ambiguities, and change, see Tyler Esno, “Reagan’s Economic War on the Soviet Union,” Diplomatic History 42, no. 2 (April 2018): 281–304, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhx061 .

2 Nancy Reagan, with William Novak, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (New York: Random House, 1989), 106; also see Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 172–95; Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 61.

3 Charles Z. Wick, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Apr. 24–25, 2003, 42, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/charles-z-wick-oral-history-director-united-states .

4 Kenneth Adelman, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Sept. 30, 2003, 45, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/kenneth-adelman-oral-history-director-arms-control-and .

5 Nancy Reagan, My Turn , 104.

6 A wonderful compendium of Reagan’s beliefs and views can be found in Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds., Reagan in His Own Hand (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).

7 David A. Stockman, The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 76; Martin Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990), 289–90; Richard Pipes, Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 166; Frank Carlucci, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Aug. 28, 2001, 28–30, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/frank-carlucci-oral-history-assistant-president-national ; William H. Webster, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Aug. 21, 2002, 26–27, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/william-h-webster-oral-history-fbi-director-director .

8 National Security Decision Directive 32, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” May 20, 1982, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-32.pdf ; National Security Decision Directive 75, “U.S. Relations with the USSR,” Jan. 17, 1983, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-75.pdf .

9 Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 102–19; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War , rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 342–79; William Inboden, “Grand Strategy and Petty Squabbles: The Paradox of the Reagan National Security Council,” in The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft , ed. Hal Brands and Jeremi Suri (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2016), 151–80.

10 William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Aug. 17, 2003, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/william-p-clark-oral-history-assistant-president .

11 Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? ; Gaddis, Strategies of Containment ; Inboden, “Grand Strategy and Petty Squabbles.”

12 Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004), 75–77.

13 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev .

14 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev .

15 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev , 76.

16 “Next Steps in US-Soviet Relations,” Memorandum from George P. Shultz to President Reagan, Mar. 16, 1983, http://thereaganfiles.com/19830316-shultz.pdf ; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner, 1993), 269–71.

17 Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New York: Anchor Books, 2002); Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (New York: Regan Books, 2006); Francis H. Marlo, Planning Reagan’s War: Conservative Strategists and America’s Cold War Victory (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012).

18   Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph , 266.

19 Richard Allen, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, May 28, 2002, 26–27, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/richard-allen-oral-history-assistant-president-national ; Hal Brands, “The Vision Thing,” in Peril: Facing National Security Challenges , Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, 2017, http://firstyear2017.org/essay/the-vision-thing .

20 Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 234–35.

21 Reed, At the Abyss , 236ff.

22 Clark, Miller Center interview, 14-16, 34; Allen, Miller Center interview, 26, 74-75; Carlucci, Miller Center interview, 28–34, 40–42, 47–48.

23 George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Dec. 18, 2002, 13, 18–19, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/george-p-shultz-oral-history-secretary-state ; Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Nov. 19, 2002, 10–11, 28–31, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/caspar-weinberger-oral-history-secretary-defense ; James A. Baker III, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project interview, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, June 15–16, 2004, 13, 44, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/james-baker-iii-oral-history-white-house-chief-staff .

24 Adelman, Miller Center interview, 60, 57, 58, 39 64–66; also see Ken Adelman, Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War (New York: Broadside Books, 2014), 64–66.

25 Paul Wolfowitz, “Shaping the Future: Planning at the Pentagon, 1989-1993,” in In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy After the Berlin Wall and 9/11 , ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 44.

26 See, for example, Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 89–90; Schweizer, Reagan’s War; Kengor, The Crusader , 300–302.

27 For Gorbachev, see Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 84; also see Memorandum from A. Yakovlev to Gorbachev, March 12, 1985, in Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton, The Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Bush — Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2016), 26–27; for Chernyaev’s comment, see Beth Fischer, “Reagan and the Soviets: Winning the Cold War?” in The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 126; Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (Random House, 1995), 610–11; for Bessmertnykh, see William C. Wohlforth, ed., Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 14; quotation by V. V. Shlykov in Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich, eds., The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System: An Insider's History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 57.

28 Private email correspondence, December 2016.

29 Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985 – 1991 (New York: Public Affairs, 2015), 192-95, 274-78, 296; William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 263, 295–96; David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 206–225, 243–44, 266; James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Viking, 2009), 345; Luigi Lazzari, “The Strategic Defense Initiative and the End of the Cold War” (master’s thesis, Naval Post-Graduate School, 2008), http://hdl.handle.net/10945/4210 .

30 For brief discussions of many of these matters, see the essays in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Volume 3 — Endings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

31 Of course, Reagan was instrumental in shaping the INF Treaty and in urging Gorbachev to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

32 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph , 500, 1136.

33 Adelman, Reagan at Reykjavik , 64–66.

34 For new findings on Reagan and democracy promotion and human rights, see, for example, Sarah B.  Snyder, “Principles Overwhelming Tanks: Human Rights and the End of the Cold War,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History , ed. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 265–83; Robert Pee, Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy Under the Reagan Administration (London: Routledge, 2015); Evan McCormick, “Breaking with Statism? U.S. Democracy Promotion in Latin America, 1984–1988,” Diplomatic History  (Aug. 30, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhx064 ; also see Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, Reagan and Pinochet: The Struggle Over U.S. Policy Toward Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Joe Renouard, Human Rights in American Foreign Policy: From the 1960s to the Soviet Collapse (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 167–271.

35 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas,” International Security 25, no. 3 (Winter 2000/01): 5–53, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228800560516 ; Service, End of the Cold War ; Chris Miller, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 265–335; Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London: Bodley Head, 2009); Chen Jian, “China and the Cold War After Mao,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Endings , 181–200, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521837217.010 .

36 Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment .

37 Miller, Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy .

38 Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 347–65.

39 Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind , 364–65.

40 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph , 531–32.

41 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Pocket Books, 1990), 11–14, 634ff.

42 Douglas Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 368.

43 Reagan, An American Life , 257.

44 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev , 132–34; Robert C. McFarlane and Zophia Smardz, Special Trust (New York: Cadell and Davies, 1994), 308–309; Mann, Rebellion of Ronald Reagan , 82–110.

45 Brinkley, Reagan Diaries , 198–99, 247; Reagan, An American Life , 588, 589, 595.

46 Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind , 357–61.

47 “Discussion of Geneva Format and SDI,” Dec. 10, 1984, in Jason Saltoun-Ebin, The Reagan Files: Inside the National Security Council , 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Seabec Books, 2014), 344.

48 “U.S.-Soviet Relations,” June 6, 1986, in Saltoun-Ebin, The Reagan Files , 426.

49 “Memorandum Dictated by Reagan: Gorbachev,” November 1985, in Savranskaya and Blanton, Superpower Summits , 44.

50 For his fears, see Brinkley, Reagan Diaries , 199; Reed, At the Abyss , 243–45; Beth A. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 102–43; Nate Jones, ed., Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War (New York: New Press, 2016), 45–47; for his nuclear abolitionism, see especially Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005); Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009).

51 Adelman, Miller Center interview, 58.

52 “Review of United States Arms Control Positions,” Sept. 8, 1987, in Saltoun-Ebin, The Reagan Files , 541, 543; Savranskaya and Blanton, Superpower Summits , 454.

53 Stockman, Triumph of Politics , 74; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph , 131; Pipes, Vixi , 167; also Dobrynin, In Confidence , 605-12; Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom , trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Free Press, 1991), 81–90; Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective , trans. Ruth Hein (New York: Random House, 1989), 241–46.

54 For comments on Reagan’s negotiating skill, see, for example, Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph , 145; Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy , 285; Michael K. Deaver, A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 71; Dobrynin, In Confidence , 605–12; Baker, Miller Center interview, 41–42; and for Reagan’s own thoughts on negotiations, see, for example, “U.S. Options for Arms Control at the Moscow Summit,” Feb. 9, 1988, Saltoun-Ebin, The Reagan Files , 574.

55 Savranskaya and Blanton, Superpower Summits , 136–37.

56 Mikhail Gorbachev, “A President Who Listened,” New York Times , June 7, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/opinion/a-president-who-listened.html ; Pavel Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 39–40, 41–42; Barbara Farnham, “Reagan and the Gorbachev Revolution: Perceiving the End of Threat,” Political Science Quarterly , 116 (Fall 2001): 225–52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/798060 .

57 For Gorbachev, see, for example, Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1995); and especially Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar, Conversations with Gorbachev on Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Among the best accounts by scholars, see Taubman, Gorbachev ; Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and, for a much less sympathetic view, see Zubok, Failed Empire .

58 For an excellent dialogue about the role of ideas and material realities, see the exchanges between William Wohlforth and Stephen Brooks on the one hand and Robert English on the other: Brooks and Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War,” 5–53; Robert D. English, “Power, Ideas, and New Evidence on the Cold War’s End: A Reply to Brooks and Wohlforth,” International Security 26, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 70–92, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092102 ; Brooks and Wohlforth, “From Old Thinking to New Thinking in Qualitative Research,” International Security 26, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 93–111, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092103 .

59 See my discussion in Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind , 455-61; also see Chernyaev’s comments in Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton, and Vladislav Zubok, eds., Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 (Central European University Press), 190, 200; Svetlana Savranskaya, “The Logic of 1989: The Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal from Eastern Europe,” 1–47; William D. Jackson, “Soviet Assessments of Ronald Reagan, 1985-1989,” Political Science Quarterly , 113 (Winter, 1988-1989): 617–45.

60 For Chernyaev’s comment, see Wohlforth’s Witnesses to the End of the Cold War , 109; also the comments by Bessmertnykh in Witnesses , 107–8; Gorbachev, Memoirs , 405–6, 408–9, 411; Savranskaya and Blanton, Superpower Summits , 132–37, 373–80; Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 224–27; Beth A. Fischer, “Toeing the Hardline? The Reagan Administration and the Ending of the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly , 112 (Fall 1997): 477–97.

61 The generalizations above are based on my reading of the many National Security Council discussions in 1987 and 1988 in Saltoun-Ebin’s  The Reagan Files , 462–624; on the summitry documents in Savranskaya and Blanton’s Superpower Summits , 254–478; and on National Security Decision Directive 250, “Post-Reykjavik Follow-Up,” Nov. 3, 1986, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-250.pdf .

62 State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “What Does Gorbachev Want?” Aug. 15, 1987, “End of the Cold War Collection,” National Security Archive, George Washington University.

63 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 449; also see his memorandum (submitted to the president) “Gorbachev’s Gameplan: The Long View,” Nov. 24, 1987, “End of the Cold War Collection,” National Security Archive.

64 Some of Reagan’s most sincere convictions, hopes, and aims are expressed in his autobiography, An American Life , 266–68; also memorandum dictated by Reagan: “Gorbachev,” November 1985, in Savranskaya and Blanton, Superpower Summits , 42–44; for the impact on Gorbachev, see Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind , 455–61; Savranskaya, Blanton, and Zubok, Masterpieces of History, 190, 200; and Savranskaya, “The Logic of 1989”: 1–47; Nicholas J. Wheeler, “Investigating diplomatic transformations,” International Affairs 89 (March 2013): 104–34, doi.10.1111/1468-2346.12028 .

65 The two stories are narrated in Adelman, Reagan at Reykjavik , 314, 340; for the “personal chemistry,” see Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble , 227; also see comments by Chernyaev and Shultz in Wohlforth, Witnesses to the End of the Cold War , 109, 16; and Brinkley, Reagan Diaries , 613.

66   See, for example, Reagan’s Address to the Republican National Convention, Aug. 17, 1992, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/ronald-wilson-reagan/speech-of-the-former-president-at-the-1992-republican-convention.php .

67 For contrasting yet illuminating assessments, see especially Taubman, Gorbachev ; Zubok, Failed Empire ; Brown, Gorbachev Factor .

68 See, for example, Schweizer, Reagan’s War .

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Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, strobe talbott strobe talbott distinguished fellow - foreign policy @strobetalbott.

August 1, 2004

Review of Jack F. Matlock Jr.’s book, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.

Ronald Reagan was widely eulogized for having won the cold war, liberated Eastern Europe and pulled the plug on the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Charles Krauthammer and other notables offered variations of The Economist ‘s cover headline: “The Man Who Beat Communism.”

Actually, Jack F. Matlock Jr. writes in Reagan and Gorbachev , it was “not so simple.” He should know. A veteran foreign service officer and respected expert on the Soviet Union, he reached the pinnacle of his career under Reagan, serving first as the White House’s senior coordinator of policy toward the Soviet Union, then as ambassador to Moscow. In both the title of his memoir and the story it tells, he gives co-star billing to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan himself went even farther. Asked at a press conference in Moscow in 1988, his last year in office, about the role he played in the great drama of the late 20th century, he described himself essentially as a supporting actor. “Mr. Gorbachev,” he said, “deserves most of the credit, as the leader of this country.”

This quotation was much cited at the time as an example of Reagan’s graciousness, tact and self-deprecation. But Matlock’s book bears out his former boss’s judgment. The 40th president of the United States emerges here not as a geopolitical visionary who jettisoned the supposedly accommodationist policies of containment and detente, but as an archpragmatist and operational optimist who adjusted his own attitudes and conduct in order to encourage a new kind of Kremlin leader.

During his first term, Reagan denounced the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” The name-calling riled many Soviets (and more than a few Sovietologists) but did little diplomatic harm, since relations between Washington and Moscow were already in a rut. The Kremlin had become a geriatric ward, with Red Square doubling as the world’s largest funeral parlor.

Then, in 1985, soon after Reagan’s second inauguration, the vigorous, 54-year-old Gorbachev ascended to the leadership. He wanted to demilitarize Soviet foreign policy so that he could divert resources to the Augean task of fixing a broken economy. Initially, he expected no help from Reagan, whom he regarded as “not simply a conservative, but a political ‘dinosaur.’”

For his part, Reagan assumed the new general secretary of the Communist Party would be “totally dedicated to traditional Soviet goals.” Nonetheless, he was prepared to test Prime Minister Thatcher’s first impression: ” like Mr. Gorbachev; we can do business together.”

Getting back into the business of diplomacy with the principal adversary of the United States appealed to Reagan, just as it had to six previous occupants of the Oval Office. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had tried to make the most of Nikita S. Khrushchev’s slogan of “peaceful coexistence”; Lyndon B. Johnson jump-started arms control talks with Aleksei N. Kosygin; Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter signed strategic-arms limitation agreements with Leonid I. Brezhnev. But those Soviet leaders were committed, above all, to preserving the status quo. Sooner or later, each caused a setback or a showdown with the United States through some act of barbarity or recklessness: the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979, the destruction of a South Korean airliner that had wandered off course in 1983. Breakthroughs in United States-Soviet relations were inherently subject to breakdowns.

Gorbachev altered that dynamic. He was determined to take the Soviet Union in a radically different direction—away from the Big Lie (through his policy of glasnost), away from a command economy (through perestroika) and away from zero-sum competition with the West.

Reagan came quickly to recognize that Gorbachev’s goals, far from being traditional, were downright revolutionary. He also saw that the transformation Gorbachev had in mind for his country would, if it came about, serve American interests.

As a result, without much fuss and without many of his supporters noticing, Reagan underwent a transformation of his own. The fire-breathing cold warrior set about trying, through intense, sustained personal engagement, to convince Gorbachev that the United States would not make him sorry for the course he had chosen.

Matlock describes in telling detail how Reagan rehearsed for his first meeting with Gorbachev, which took place in Geneva in November 1985. Reagan assigned the role of the Soviet leader to Matlock who, for maximum authenticity, played his part in Russian, mimicking Gorbachev’s confident, loquacious style. Matlock also sent Reagan a series of “spoof memos” that were “interlaced with jokes and anecdotes,” based on an educated guess at what Gorbachev’s own advisers were telling him in preparation for the encounter.

Shortly before setting off for Geneva, Reagan dictated a long memo of his own, laying out his assessment of the man he was about to meet. The Reagan game plan was to look for areas of common interest, be candid about points of contention and support Gorbachev’s reforms while (in Matlock’s paraphrase) “avoiding any demand for ‘regime change.’” He cautioned the members of his administration not to rub Gorbachev’s nose in any concessions he might make. Above all, Reagan wanted to establish a relationship with his Soviet counterpart that would make it easier to manage conflicts lest they escalate to thermonuclear war—an imperative for every American president since Eisenhower.

Matlock puts the best light he can on Reagan’s dream of a Star Wars anti-missile system, but he stops short of perpetuating the claim, now an article of faith among many conservatives, that the prospect of an impregnable shield over the United States and an arms race in space caused the Soviets to throw in the towel. Instead, Matlock focuses on Reagan’s attempt to convince Gorbachev that American defense policy posed no threat to legitimate Soviet interests and should therefore not prevent the two leaders from establishing a high degree of mutual trust.

That word figured in Reagan’s mantra, “trust but verify.” It set Gorbachev’s teeth on edge. However, Reagan intended the motto not just as a caveat about dealing with the Soviets but also as a subtle admonition to his relentlessly hard-line and mistrustful secretary of defense, Caspar W. Weinberger. According to Matlock, Weinberger was “utterly convinced that there was no potential benefit in negotiating anything with the Soviet leaders and that most negotiations were dangerous traps.” The rivalry that Matlock describes between Weinberger and Secretary of State George P. Shultz bears an eerie similarity to what we know of the one between Colin L. Powell and Donald H. Rumsfeld. Shultz grew so exasperated with Weinberger’s militancy and obstructionism that he contemplated resigning. Reagan wrote in his diary, “I can’t let this happen. Actually, George is carrying out my policy.”

That policy, as Matlock summarizes it, “was consistent throughout.” Reagan “wanted to reduce the threat of war, to convince the Soviet leaders that cooperation could serve the Soviet peoples better than confrontation and to encourage openness and democracy in the Soviet Union.”

Presidential attachment to those precepts neither began nor ended with Ronald Reagan. It was Jimmy Carter who first put human rights prominently on the agenda of American-Soviet relations. George H. W. Bush skillfully served as a kind of air traffic controller in 1991, when the increasingly beleaguered Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union in for a relatively soft landing on the ash heap of history—a major contribution to the end of the cold war that Matlock dismisses in a footnote as “cleanup” diplomacy.

While Matlock could have been more charitable to Reagan’s predecessors and to his immediate successor, his account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service as well as a contribution to the historical record. It is simultaneously admiring, authoritative and conscientious. It is also corrective, since it debunks much of the hype and spin with which we were blitzed earlier this summer. The truth is a better tribute to Reagan than the myth.

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Ronald Reagan Set the Tone to Win the Cold War

Former President Ronald Reagan died the day before the 60th anniversary of D-Day. D-Day was in many ways the beginning of the end of the European phase of World War II. President Reagan's term of office saw a somewhat analogous development in the much longer and slower-moving Cold War. He had left office when the Soviet Union was forced out of Eastern Europe and then into disintegration, but it seems fair to say that his was the decisive hand. This is far more obvious in retrospect than it seemed at the time.

Naval readers remember President Reagan for regenerating the U.S. Navy; the capabilities created under his administration proved vital not only during the latter phase of the Cold War, but also during the violent peace that has followed.

When President Reagan entered office, it seemed the Soviet Union was on the march. The United States seemed unable to match Soviet confidence and raw military power. That was partly a matter of perception. Any such ideas vanished as a Soviet victory proved elusive in Afghanistan.

In 1980, few had any idea of the grave problems the Soviets confronted.

Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 based largely on his willingness to reverse the sense of defeat. It was critical that he was not an insider, hence had not subscribed to, or been involved with, many of the accepted understandings of the time. Perhaps as important, he refused to accept the idea that he should maintain warm relations with the Soviet state while that state told its citizens to hate and fear the United States. Moreover, the President absorbed one absolutely crucial fact—the Soviet state was in deep trouble. If the United States applied the right pressure—and it was by no means clear what that pressure wasthe Soviet enemy might well have to give up the Cold War. It was worth spending heavily on a defense buildup if that could win the Cold War and reduce the need for defense, or at least the threat to the United States. Critics imagined that the buildup was permanent. The administration certainly talked as though it was, because it would have no effect on the Soviets if they thought they could simply wait it out.

The President did not personally plan or pursue naval rearmament, any more than he was personally engaged in any other detail of the defense program. However, he set the tone by encouraging a forward policy. That was well understood; the Navy had been arguing for years that limiting its sea control was a self-defeating waste of resources. What changed was that the President selected a secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, who was attuned to just this argument. The fleet is now a lot smaller than it was in the 1980s, but the new ships of the Reagan era, the nuclear carriers, the Aegis cruisers and destroyers, and the new amphibious warfare ships, still dominate it. As an incidental benefit, buying a fleet designed to seize, defend, and exploit sea control by offensive means meant buying the fleet that can project power to fight the terrorist war we now face.

President Reagan was extremely fortunate in his timing. His term coincided with the advent of mass-produced microcomputers. It is now clear that widespread use of computers drastically changed warfare; a force equipped with them, using them for rapid precision strikes, would outclass a more massive, slower-moving conventional force. In the late 1970s, the Chief of the Soviet General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, was writing that it was essential that the Soviets secure this technology; otherwise they would be outclassed. Americans who were used to easy access to the new technology appear not to have realized just how devastating Ogarkov's remarks were. In 1980, the Soviets lacked the necessary computer industry. To meet Ogarkov's demands, they would have to open their economy, which in Soviet terms meant tearing open their society as a whole.

Ogarkov's demand could be staved off as long as it seemed that the West was not applying much pressure. President Reagan's rearmament, which involved the new computerized systems, made Ogarkov's remarks urgent rather than theoretical. Soviet society was highly militarized. Reform of military industry became a requirement, delayed only because of the leadership crisis the Soviets faced in the early 1980s. We now know that Mikhail Gorbachev sold his candidacy to the Politburo by claiming he would solve the military computer production problem-not the larger evident problems of Soviet society.

Because he was aware that he was on the wrong side of a technological revolution, through the late 1980s, Mr. Gorbachev found himself accepting a variety of political defeats at American hands. One irony was that neither President Reagan nor other senior Americans seem to have realized just how strong their position was. Perhaps they simply noticed how weak Mr. Gorbachev clearly felt he was.

Mr. Gorbachev clearly needed a breather in the Cold War while he repaired Soviet industry. Past Presidents had welcomed various forms of detente, during which the Soviet government had made sure its public gained no illusions about the imminent end of the Cold War. To Ronald Reagan, such two-faced behavior was anathema. Why support a repressive Soviet government so that it could strengthen itself to resume its own threatening behavior later? If Mr. Gorbachev wanted detente, that was welcome, as long as detente extended inside the Soviet Union.

One key implication was that Gorbachev could not use the American menace to mobilize Soviet workers. he had to find some other incentive. Eventually he decided that relaxing the power of the Soviet state could encourage creativity and production. To his surprise, those given voice were interested in ending the Soviet system. It was Ronald Reagan's insistence that detente had to be internal as well as external that made it impossible for Gorbachev to stuff this genie back into its bottle. Gorbachev did survive the end of Ronald Reagan's administration, but by early 1989 he was in deep trouble. Some of his colleagues recognized that he was destroying the Soviet system, and apparently they prepared to unseat him. he decided to destroy them, and also the Communist Party structure that seemed to be holding back progress.

It now seems that Gorbachev realized his domestic enemies might take refuge in rigid satellite governments, particularly in East Germany and in Czechoslovakia. Gorbachev had always been connected with the KGB, and he seems to have used his security service to foment an East German coup. Rather than strengthening him, it was the beginning of the end of Soviet power in Europe. When the new regime gained power, its members were shocked to discover that East Germany was effectively bankrupt. Gorbachev had little foreign exchange to provide, so the regime had to turn to West Germany. The West Germans agreed to a loan, conditioned on some liberalization of border policy. The new regime panicked and opened the border, tearing down the Berlin Wall.

Gorbachev apparently did not realize this was the beginning of the end of East Germany. Instead, he seems to have focused on the need to deal with his domestic opponents. Thus, he seems to have ordered a similar coup in Czechoslovakia and possibly also the coup in Romania. In each case, the local population pressed for change, but they would not have done so in the past. Clearly there was some official encouragement.

The pressures that Ronald Reagan imposed on the Soviets were crucial. His support for Afghan guerillas demonstrated the limits of Soviet military power and thus greatly devalued the Soviet military and police forces that maintained Soviet rule both in the Soviet Union and in the East European empire. We now see an unintended consequence of this support in al Qaeda terrorism against us, but surely the threats the terrorists impose are far less horrific than the widely accepted Cold War threat of imminent large-scale nuclear war.

Economic warfare against the Soviets helped make it almost impossible for them to save their position in Eastern Europe simply by spending money, as they had in the past. The East German panic was the most extreme example of this failure. Much of the ongoing Soviet disaster in Poland can be ascribed to economic disaster there. Evident American resolve, and the understanding of just how disastrous Afghanistan was proving, dissuaded several Soviet rulers from trying armed intervention in Poland. Failure in Poland in turn encouraged others in Eastern Europe to imagine that the long Soviet-imposed night might well be ending. It seems unlikely that any of this would have happened had Ronald Reagan not been President.

American rearmament imposed its own pressures, particularly on Mikhail Gorbachev, who understood his new military inferiority. It was not that the United States outspent and thus impoverished the Soviet Union. In terms of numbers of aircraft, tanks, and other arms, as late as 1989 the Soviets were probably outproducing the United States. The trouble was that those numbers were no longer very relevant. What counted was new technology. Even if the numbers still favored the Soviets, quite soon they would not. "Star Wars" added to the pressure because it threatened the area in which the Soviets felt superior, strategic nuclear weapons.

This ending was by no means preordained. Had the U.S. government shown no aggressiveness after 1980, the Soviets would not have found military industrial reform urgent. Without President Reagan's insistence that detente be real, they might have been able to create the new industry in some way reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's forced industrialization. In the 198Os, they still felt confident enough to press ahead in places as widely separated as Nicaragua and Afghanistan. There was no evidence that they were particularly anxious to abandon the Cold War or the hope of ultimate victory in it. Nor is there evidence that they were losing their desire to neutralize and ultimately swallow Western Europe. The United States might well have found itself increasingly isolated and, therefore, with drastically declining morale.

Obviously U.S. strategy could have been executed more effectively, because whatever was done in the 198Os could have benefited from much better knowledge. But the offensive inspired by President Reagan worked. Against much opinion, he persistedand he won. That victory ended an absolutely terrifying threat, which might well have wiped out much of the population of this country. Nothing in the uncertain world we now face is nearly so bad.

Norman Friedman

Dr. Friedman is author of The Fifty-Year War published by the Naval Institute Press in 2000.

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Ronald Reagan: Impact and Legacy

Ronald Wilson Reagan was a transformational President. His leadership and the symbiotic relationship he forged with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during their four summit meetings set the stage for a peaceful resolution of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union disappeared into the mists of history, Reagan's partisans asserted that he had "won" the Cold War. Reagan and Gorbachev more prudently declared that the entire world was a winner. Reagan had reason to believe, however, that the West had emerged victorious in the ideological struggle: as he put it, democracy had prevailed in its long "battle of values" with collectivism. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his staunch ally, wrote that Reagan had "achieved the most difficult of all political tasks: changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible. From the strong fortress of his convictions, he set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat—and he succeeded." This is true as far as it goes—the number of democratic nations as well as the reach of free-market ideology expanded on Reagan's watch. But, as Russia's recent autocratic path suggests, the permanence of these advances remains in doubt.

Scholars offer a variety of explanations for why the Cold War ended as it did and for the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Some historians cite the U.S. military buildup under Reagan and the pressures exerted by his pet program, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Others emphasize the increased restiveness of Eastern European nations, particularly Poland, and Soviet overreach in Afghanistan. Still others point to the implosion of the Soviet economy after 75 years of Communist rule. Although historians have reached no consensus on the weight that should be given to these various factors, it is clear that Reagan and his policies contributed to the outcome.

Reagan's economic legacy is mixed. On the one hand, tax reduction and a tightening of interest rates by the Federal Reserve led to a record period of peacetime economic growth. On the other, this growth was accompanied by record growth in the national debt, the federal budget deficit, and the trade deficit. Defenders of Reagan's economic record point out that a big chunk of the deficit was caused by increased military spending, which declined after the Soviet collapse and created the context for balanced budgets during the Clinton years. Even so, the supply-side tax cuts did not produce the increase in revenues that Reagan had predicted. The economist Robert Samuelson has suggested that Reagan's main achievement in the economic arena was his consistent support of the Federal Reserve, which under Reagan's appointee Alan Greenspan, followed monetary policies that kept inflation low. Reagan also succeeded in a principal goal of reducing the marginal income tax rate, which was 70 percent when he took office and 28 percent when he left.

Reagan also left a monumental political legacy. After he was reelected in a 49-state landslide in 1984, it became clear that Democrats would be unlikely to return to the White House under a traditional liberal banner. This paved the way for Bill Clinton's centrist capture of the Democratic nomination and the presidency in 1992. Reagan had an even greater impact within his own party. He carried Republicans into control of the Senate when he won the presidency in 1980. Although Democrats controlled the House throughout the Reagan presidency, the Republicans won control for the first time in 40 years in 1994 under the banner of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America," a potpourri of leftover Reagan proposals. Even today, with Democrats back in control, there are more avowed Reagan Republicans in Congress than there ever were during Reagan's lifetime. In the 2008 contest for the Republican presidential nomination, virtually all the candidates proclaimed that they would follow in Reagan's footsteps.

It is an open question whether Reagan's accomplishments occurred because of his philosophy or despite it—or both. Reagan was an effective communicator of conservative ideas, but he was also an enormously practical politician who was committed to success. The welfare bill that was the signal achievement of Reagan's second term as governor of California, the reform that salvaged Social Security for a generation during his first term as President, and the tax overhaul of his second presidential term were bipartisan compromises, defying "liberal" or "conservative" labels. In the tradition of American populists, Reagan ran for office as an outsider who was determined to restore traditional values. In fact, he was a master politician who expanded the reach of his party at home and pursued his vision of a nuclear-free world abroad. He casts a long shadow.

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The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War

Review by jeff merrit, m.a..

James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War , New York: Viking Adult, 2009; 416 pages, ISBN 978-0-670-02054-6; hardback, $27.95.

James Mann’s The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan is a refreshingly balanced look at President Reagan’s role in the events leading to the end of the Cold War.  Through interviews, dissection of declassified documents and Reagan’s public papers, Mann skillfully details the public and behind-the-scenes nuances that shaped U.S. Soviet and Eastern European policy in the years leading to Communism’s fall.

Mann has written an outstanding book, and his experience as Washington reporter, columnist and foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times creates a presentation that reads like a newspaper feature piece enjoyed over successive Sunday mornings.  Divided into four sections, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan first portrays a fascinating account of Reagan’s dealings with Richard Nixon.

Nixon, who won significant praise for opening relations with China in the 1970s, argued against changing the U.S. policy of détente, enlisting the help of Henry Kissinger to make public and private suggestions to Reagan that he was wrong to try and work with the Soviets and ultimately Mikhail Gorbachev.

The second part details a special relationship Reagan had with Suzanne Massie, a student of Russian history and culture, but whose credentials placed her far from the foreign policy intellectual establishment.  Massie is credited with helping shape Reagan’s views on the Soviet Union by relaying what life was like for common Russians.

Mann suggests Reagan’s own proclivity for “homespun” stories helped him come to understand the Russians in a personal sense and not merely as subjects in an “evil empire.”  Mann couples this realization with Reagan’s growing fear of all-out nuclear war and suggestions from some in the Pentagon that such a confrontation was “winnable.”

The book’s third section chronicles how in a speech near the Berlin Wall in 1987, Reagan defied practically every advisor by declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The fear in the administration was that by making such a call, Reagan would damage already fragile relations with Gorbachev and empower those within the USSR opposed to glasnost .

Finally, the book examines the series of events during Reagan’s last two years in office, an era where despite growing detachment, Reagan along with Gorbachev continued to push for glasnost, and convinced the world (and critics within Congress) that the Cold War was not permanent.

Jeff Merritt is a 2007 American Marshall Memorial Fellow and a 1992 Fellow of the North Carolina Institute for Political Leadership.  He received a bachelor’s in political science from Appalachian State University in 1989 and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (concentration in Recent American History) from North Carolina State University in 2005.  He is currently Director of Business Development for Clancy & Theys Construction Company in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Period 9: 1980-Present (AP US History)

Period 9: 1980-present.

As the United States transitioned to a new century filled with challenges and possibilities, it experienced renewed ideological and cultural debates, sought to redefine its foreign policy, and adapted to economic globalization and revolutionary changes in science and technology. Topics may include

Reagan and Conservatism

The end of the cold war, shifts in the economy, migration and immigration, challenges of the 21st century.

Image Source: Piece of the Berlin Wall displayed at the Newseum museum, Arlington, Virginia , a photograph taken by Carol M. Highsmith, ca. 2000. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

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• Period 8: 1945–1980
• Period 9: 1980–Present

Key Concepts

9.1 : A newly ascendant conservative movement achieved several political and policy goals during the 1980s and continued to strongly influence public discourse in the following decades.

9.2 : Moving into the 21st century, the nation experienced significant technological, economic, and demographic changes.

9.3 : The end of the Cold War and new challenges to U.S. leadership forced the nation to redefine its foreign policy and role in the world. The end of the Cold War and new challenges to U.S. leadership forced the nation to redefine its foreign policy and role in the world.

Ronald Reagan on economics and political parties

Letter by Ronald Reagan expressing his ideas about economic policy and the nation’s political parties

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The Age of Reagan

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Globalizing Protest in the 1980s

By douglas r. egerton.

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President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address

Examine Ronald Reagan discussion of key issues including rising inflation, unemployment, and the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Iran and the United States in the Cold War

By malcolm byrne.

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Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War

By michael cox.

Read about Ronald Reagan and his impact on the Cold War.

by Thomas Blanton

Watch a discussion of the key turning points in the relationship between the US and the USSR.

Reagan Speech: “Tear down this wall”

Ronald Reagan’s "Tear Down This Wall" speech encouraging Gorbachev to seek peace with the US and freedom for the USSR and Eastern Europe

The United States in China during the Cold War

By warren cohen.

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Economic Policy through the Lens of History

By roger e. a. farmer.

An overview of economic policy from the 1900s to the present.

America at the End of the 20th century

By james t. patterson.

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Immigration since 1965

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In the Name of America’s Future

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American History Timeline: 1980-Present

Image citations.

Listed in order of appearance in the sections above

• Unknown photographer. Ronald Reagan Campaigns for Barry Goldwater in Los Angeles in 1964. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
• Highsmith, Carol M. White House. President Ronald Reagan Walking and Talking with Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. Washington, D.C., July 31, 1986. Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Maher, Steven. Live Aid logo: The Day the Music Changed the World, July 13, 1985. Founded by Midge Ure and Bob Geldof.
• Unknown photographer. Ronald Reagan head and shoulders portrait. 1981. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C..
• Trikosko, Marion S. Iran Hostage Crisis Student Demonstration, Washington, D.C. November 9, 1979. Photograph.  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Trikosko, Marion S. President Ronald Reagan, His Wife, Nancy Reagan, and Others at a Press Conference. s.l., November 14, 1979. Photograph. US News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Unidentified photographer. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington DC. December 8, 1987. Photograph. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
• Unidentified photographer. President Ronald Reagan Making His Berlin Wall Speech at Brandenburg Gate West Berlin. Federal Republic of Germany. June 12, 1987. Photograph. White House Photographic Collection. Reagan White House Photographs, January 20, 1981-January 20, 1989. National Archives.
• Jenkins, Michael R.., photographer. Chinese activist in front of the U.S. Capitol. June 5, 1989. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
• Highsmith, Carol M. Wall Street Bull, New York, New York. Between 1980 and 2006. Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Keating, Maureen. President Bill Clinton Delivering the State of the Union Address with Vice President Al Gore and Minority Whip Newt Gingrich Sitting behind Him. Washington D.C. January 24, 1995. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Okamoto, Yoichi. President Lyndon B. Johnson Speaking from the Podium at the Bill Signing. October 3, 1965. Photograph. LBJ Library.  
• Ford, Ed. Americanized Chinese Gals on Mott St. New York, April 27, 1965. Photograph. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Highsmith, Carol M. Domino Players in a Cuban-American "Little Havana" Neighborhood of Miami, Florida. Between 1980 and 2006. Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Long, Lucy M. Music and Dance Performance, First Korean School, Silver Spring, Maryland. 1982. Photograph. American Folklife Center. Library of Congress.
• Unknown photographer. El Centro Sikh Temple. 1951. Photograph. Personal Records of David Rai. UC Davis Library Archives and Special Collections. 
• Collins, Marjory. Stockton Vicinity, California. Mexican Agricultural Laborer Topping Sugar Beets.
• May 1943. Photograph. Farm Security Adminstration/Office of War Information. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Unknown photographer. Mexican Workers Recruited and Brought to the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Nebraska and Minnesota by the FSA Farm Security Administration, to Harvest and Process Sugar Beets under Contract with the Inter-mountain Agricultural Improvement Association. May 1943. Photograph. Farm Secuirty Adminstration/Office of War Information. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Mississippi Coast after Hurricane Katrina. April 12, 2006. Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Unknown photographer. Fire Fighting in the Aftermath of the September 11th Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center, New York City. September 2001. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Highsmith, Carol M. 2009 Inaugural Parade, January 24th. Barack and Michelle Obama Walk in Front of the New Presidential Inaugural Car, Pennsylvania Avenue at 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. January 20, 2009. Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Copyright deposits for “Here Comes the Judge,” by Alen, Astor, Markham, and Harvey, 1968, and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” by Gil Scott-Heron, 1971. Photograph by Heather Darnell. Library of Congress Music Division.
• Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Invitation to the inauguration of President George W. Bush. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09705.09. Highsmith, Carol M. World Trade Center, New York, New York. Between 1980 and 2001.
• Photograph. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Souza, Pete. Official Portrait of President Barack Obama in Oval Office. December 6, 2012. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

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President Reagan and the Cold War

Picturing the Presidency

President Reagan and the Cold War is a comprehensive collection of original photographs, documents, and archival footage on the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1980s.

The unit is organized around summits, speeches, and other major events in the story of United States Soviet relations.

1. Introduction to Picturing the Presidency

• Table of Contents
• Cold War Cover
• Cold War Card 1: President Reagan and the Cold War
• Download all three files in a . zip archive

2. Evangelical Association Address

• Cold War Card 2: Address to the National Association of Evangelicals
• Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983
• President’s Backup Copy: Address to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983
• Draft of the President’s Address to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983
• Download all four files in a  .zip  archive.

3. Geneva Summit

• old War Card 3: Summit in Geneva, Switzerland
• Memorandum of Conversation, Reagan-Gorbachev Meetings in Geneva Second Plenary Meeting, November 19, 1985
• Memorandum of Conversation, Reagan-Gorbachev Meetings in Geneva Second Private Meeting, November 19, 1985
• Download all three files in a  .zip  archive.

4. Strategic Defense Initiative

• Cold War Card 4: Strategic Defense Initiative
• President’s Backup Copy: Address on Defense, March 23, 1983
• Download both files in a  .zip  archive.

5. Reykjavik Summit

• Cold War Card 5: Reykjavik Summit, Iceland
• Memorandum of Conversation, October 12, 1986

6. Brandenburg Gate

• Cold War Card 6: Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin
• President’s Backup Copy: Remarks at Brandenburg Gate Berlin, Germany, June 12, 1987
• Draft of the President’s Remarks at Brandenburg Gate Berlin, Germany, June 12, 1987
• Download all three files in a  .zip  archive.

7. Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty

• Cold War Card 7: President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room of the White House
• Remarks on Signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty December 8, 1987
• President’s Backup Copy: Signing Ceremony for I.N.F. Agreement Tuesday, December 8, 1987

8. Fall of the Berlin Wall

• Cold War Card 8: The Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Power Map of the World, Cold War Era
• Download both files in a  .zip  archive.

9. Correspondence

• Correspondence Addressed to President Brezhnev From President Reagan August 24, 1981
• Correspondence Addressed to President Reagan From President Brezhnev October 15, 1981 (Translation and Original Version in Russian.)
• Correspondence Addressed to President Brezhnev From President Reagan November 17, 1981 (President Reagan’s Response Final Version and Draft.)
• Correspondence Addressed to General Secretary Andropov From President Reagan July 11, 1983
• Correspondence Addressed to President Reagan From General Secretary Andropov August 28, 1983
• Correspondence Addressed to General Secretary Gorbachev From President Reagan April 4, 1985
• Correspondence Addressed to General Secretary Gorbachev From President Reagan November 28, 1985
• Correspondence Addressed to President Reagan From General Secretary Gorbachev December 5, 1985
• Download all eight files in a  .zip  archive.

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How Ronald Reagan Won the Cold War

Lee Edwards, Ph.D.

Former Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought

Key Takeaways

Based on intelligence reports and his life-long study, Reagan concluded that Soviet communism was cracking and ready to crumble.

He directed his top national security team to develop a plan to end the Cold War by winning it.

In Margaret Thatcher’s words, Ronald Reagan had ended the Cold War without firing a shot. 

As Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency, he was greatly troubled by what he saw around the world. For more than three decades, the U.S. and its allies had striven to contain communism through a series of diplomatic, economic and military initiatives that had cost hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. Yet communism still gripped the Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea, and had spread to sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

Whatever its early success, the policy of containment clearly no longer worked. Reagan determined that the time had come for a new strategy: “We win and they lose.”

In his first  presidential press conference , Reagan stunned official Washington by denouncing the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to “world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state.” As he wrote in his official autobiography, “I decided we had to send as powerful a message as we could to the Russians that we weren’t going to stand by anymore while they armed and financed terrorists and subverted democratic governments.”

Based on intelligence reports and his life-long study, Reagan concluded that Soviet communism was cracking and ready to crumble. In May 1982 he went public with his assessment of the Soviets’ systemic weakness. Speaking at his alma mater, Eureka College,  he declared  that the Soviet empire was “faltering because rigid centralized control has destroyed incentives for innovation, efficiency, and individual achievement.”

One month later, in a prophetic address to the British Parliament at Westminster, Reagan said that the Soviet Union was gripped by a “great revolutionary crisis” and that a “global campaign for freedom”  would ultimately prevail . He boldly predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy … 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.”

He directed his top national security team to develop a plan to end the Cold War by winning it. The result was a series of top-secret national security decision directives that:

• Committed the U.S. to “neutralizing” Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region. 
• Adopted a policy of attacking a “strategic triad” of critical resources –financial credits, high technology and natural gas – essential to Soviet economic survival. Author-economist Roger Robinson said the directive  was tantamount to  “a secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union.”
• Determined that, rather than coexist with the Soviet system, the U.S. would seek to change it fundamentally. The language, drafted by Harvard historian Richard Pipes, was unequivocal: America intended to “roll back” Soviet influence at every opportunity.  

Following these directives, the administration pursued a multifaceted foreign policy offensive that included covert support of the Solidarity movement in Poland, an increase in pro-freedom public diplomacy (through instruments like the National Endowment for Democracy), a global campaign to reduce Soviet access to Western high technology and a drive to hurt the Soviet economy by driving down the price of oil and limiting natural gas exports to the West.

A key element of Reagan’s victory strategy was the support of anti-communist forces in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and Cambodia. The “Reagan Doctrine” (a name coined by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer) was the most cost-effective of all the cold war doctrines, costing the United States less than a billion dollars a year while forcing the cash-strapped Soviets to spend some $8 billion annually to deflect its impact. It was also one of the most politically successful doctrines in Cold War history, resulting in a Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, the election of a democratic government in Nicaragua and the removal of 40,000 Cuban troops from Angola and the holding of United Nations-monitored elections there.

And then there was SDI—the Strategic Defense Initiative. Dismissed as “Star Wars” by U.S. skeptics, it put the Soviet military in a state of fear and shock. A decade later, a top Soviet strategist revealed what he had told the Politburo at the time: “Not only could we not defeat SDI, SDI defeated all our possible countermeasures.”

The American president who effectively wrote finis to the Cold War was Ronald Reagan. He entered the Oval Office with a clear set of ideas he had developed over a lifetime of study. He forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world communism by challenging its legitimacy, regaining superiority in the arms race and using human rights as a powerful psychological weapon.

By the time Reagan left office in January 1989, the Reagan Doctrine had achieved its goal: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet system, publicly acknowledged the failures of Marxism-Leninism and the futility of Russian imperialism. In Margaret Thatcher’s words, Ronald Reagan had ended the Cold War without firing a shot.   

This piece originally appeared in The Hill on 12/26/19

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Bibliography

• “Cold War Quotes (82 Quotes).” Goodreads. Accessed December 11, 2019. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/cold-war.
• DOBSON, ALAN P. 'The Reagan Administration, Economic Warfare, and Starting to Close Down the Cold War.' Diplomatic History 29, no. 3 (2005): 531-56. www.jstor.org/stable/24915133.
• Fischer, Beth A. 'Toeing the Hardline? The Reagan Administration and the Ending of the Cold War.' Political Science Quarterly 112, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 477-496. Accessed November 6, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2657567.
• Leffler, Melvyn P. 'Ronald Reagan, and the Cold War: What Mattered Most.' TNSR. Accessed October 23, 2019. https://tnsr.org/2018/05/ronald-reagan-and-the-cold-war-what-mattered-most/.
• Pruitt, Sarah. 'The Myth That Reagan Ended the Cold War with a Single Speech.' History.com. Last modified October 19, 2018. Accessed October 23, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/ronald-reagan-tear-down-this-wall-speech-berlin-gorbachev.
• Ratnesar, Romesh. Tear down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
• R., Sean, and Dominic S. 'The Significance of the Wall.' Go to the Cover Page Of, St Patrick's College Strathfield, 2012, berlinwall.pressbooks.com/ chapter/the-significance-of-the-wall/.
• Talbott, Strobe. 'Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down.' Brookings. Last modified August 4, 2004. Accessed October 27, 2019. http://Talbott, Strobe. 'Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down.' Brookings, Brookings, 7 Aug. 2016, www.brookings.edu/articles/reagan-and-gorbachev-shutting-the-cold-war-down/.

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Cold War Document Based Question

Utilizing primary source documents from the archives of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan, this piece of curriculum is modeled after the Advanced Placement Document Based Questions. This question invites students to explore U.S. Cold War foreign policy through the lens the office of the presidency, and to develop crucial critical thinking and writing skills.

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Essential Question

Did President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policies serve to heighten or to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union?

In this activity, students examine ten primary source documents to consider the ways the Reagan presidency’s foreign policy altered the trajectory of United States history. This activity is based upon a Document-Based Question (“DBQ”), which is an assessment method commonly used in upper division and advanced placement courses. In a DBQ, students are presented with 6-10 documents from varied sources, and are asked to synthesize the documents with their own knowledge to write a coherent thesis-driven essay. The goal of the activity is to challenge students to think critically and to consider viewpoints that are frequently inconsistent and contradictory.

The documents for this activity are drawn from those that might be typically found on an advanced placement history test, supplemented by materials featured in Teachrock lessons. As such, this activity may be used as a means to prepare students for an advanced placement test, or as an assessment tool at the end of a Cold War unit. A variety of approaches are provided that allow teachers to use the documents to engage their students in the classroom.

Upon completion of this activity, students will:

• Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech
• Sting’s “Russians”
• Steve Greenberg’s “One Giant Step Backwards for Mankind”
• Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech
• Wasted Youth’s “Reagan’s In”
• Subhuman’s “Human Error”
• Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?”
• Prince’s “Ronnie, Talk to Russia”
• Students will evaluate how Americans responded to the President Reagan’s Cold War foreign policy agenda.
• Pass out to students Handout 1 – “Reagan and the Cold War: A Document Based Question Activity” Teachers may then choose from a variety of activities that draw upon the handout:

Activity 1:  AP Test Preparation

• Students follow the directions on the handout and individually craft an essay in the allotted time.

Activity 2:  The DBQ Timeline

• The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
• The Geneva Accords
• Battle of Dien Bien Phu
• The 1968 Democratic National Convention
• The Tet Offensive
• Kent State Shootings
• Fall of Saigon
• The Pentagon Papers
• Operation Rolling Thunder
• US Withdrawal from Vietnam
• My Lai Massacre
• Any other important event your class studied during the Vietnam War period
• How did the Vietnam War progress through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s? Were there any major defeats or victories, for either side? Support your response with at least three pieces of evidence from your timelines.  
• How did America’s role in Vietnam change over the course of the war? Did musicians’ views on the war change? Find examples from the documents that support your response.

Activity 3: HIPPO Analysis

• Split the class into 3-5 groups, and assign each group 1-2 documents from Handout 1. In addition, pass out Handout 2 – “The HIPPO Technique for Analyzing Documents.”
• Ask student groups to analyze the document(s) assigned to them using the HIPPO process.
• Have each group explain their document(s) to the class, based upon their HIPPO analysis.

Activity 4: The Cocktail Party

• Cut out the documents and give each student a single one.
• Who created it? (Students should research the authors’ backgrounds if possible.)
• When was it created? Was it created in response to any particular historical events?
• Does the author discuss any other issues present at the time, outside the Vietnam War?
• Where was it created? Is there any significance to that place?
• What is the content of the primary source? What is the author’s main point? Is there anything surprising?
• Tell students they may write notes on their primary sources to help them remember the key points, but encourage them to become ‘experts’ on their documents.
• After the eight minutes have expired, it is time for the cocktail party. Students will circulate amongst themselves in order to learn about the documents from one another.
• Meet in pairs only
• The person with the earliest birthday discusses his/her document first
• No talking to yourself . . . or someone who read the same document as you did
• At the end of one minute, it is time to move on. (Teacher should monitor time and give a 30-second warning.)
• How did intellectuals, writers, and musicians feel about the U.S.’s engagement with Vietnam? Were there differences in their opinions?
• Was there a significant change over time, as evidenced in the documents, in the reactions to the Vietnam War? Why do you think those changes occurred or failed to occur?

Handout 2 – The HIPPO Technique for Analyzing Documents

Common Core State Standards

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading (K-12)

Reading 1 : Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

Reading 6 : Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

Reading 8 : Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

Reading 9 : Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing (K-12)

Writing 1 : Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Writing 7 : Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

Writing 9 : Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening (K-12)

Speaking and Listening 1 : Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Speaking and Listening 2 : Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Speaking and Listening 3:  Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.

National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies — National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)

• Theme 1 : Culture
• Theme 2 : Time, Continuity, and Change
• Theme 4 : Individual Development and Identity
• Theme 5 : Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

National Standards for Music Education — National Association for Music Education (NAfME)

Core Music Standard: Responding

• Analyze : Analyze how the structure and context of varied musical works inform the response.
• Interpret : Support interpretations of musical works that reflect creators’ and/or performers’ expressive intent.
• Evaluate : Support evaluations of musical works and performances based on analysis, interpretation, and established criteria.

Core Music Standard: Connecting

• Connecting 11 : Relate musical ideas and works to varied contexts and daily life to deepen understanding.
• Theme 9 : Global Connections
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