REAGAN AND HIS ASKEW
ECONOMIC IDEAS SCREWED UP AMERICA FOR DECADES - CHAPTER FIVE (Some previously
posted but still relevant years later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — About 300 Taliban fighters
overran the tiny capital of a remote mountainous district in northeast
Afghanistan...www.msnbc.msn.com
MISCONCEPTION: REAGAN DIDN’T CAUSE THE
SOVIET EMPIRE TO FALL –AFGHANISTAN WAR FATIGUE, CONTAINMENT WEAR AND ECONOMIC
FAILURE DID THE SOVIET UNION IN.
While conceding that some of Reagan’s
economic plans did not work out as intended, his defenders – including many
mainstream journalists – still argue that Reagan should be hailed as a great
President because he “won the Cold War,” a short-hand phrase that they like to
attach to his historical biography.
However, a strong case can be made
that the Cold War was won well before Reagan arrived at the White House.
Indeed, in the 1970s, it was a common perception in the U.S. intelligence
community that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was
winding down, in large part because the Soviet economic model had failed in the
technological race with the West.
That was the view of many
Kremlinologists in the CIA’s analytical division. Also, A senior CIA’s
operations official even said that some of the CIA’s best spies inside the
Soviet hierarchy supported the view that the Soviet Union was headed toward
collapse, not surging toward world supremacy, as Reagan and his foreign policy
team insisted in the early 1980s.
The CIA analysis was the basis for the
détente that was launched by Nixon and Ford, essentially seeking a negotiated
solution to the most dangerous remaining aspects of the Cold War.
The Afghan Debacle
In that view, Soviet military
operations, including sending troops into Afghanistan in 1979, were mostly
defensive in nature. In Afghanistan, the Soviets hoped to prop up a
pro-communist government that was seeking to modernize the country but was
beset by opposition from Islamic fundamentalists who were getting covert
support from the U.S. government.
Though the Afghan covert operation
originated with Cold Warriors in the Carter administration, especially national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the war was dramatically ramped up under
Reagan, who traded U.S. acquiescence toward Pakistan’s nuclear bomb for its
help in shipping sophisticated weapons to the Afghan jihadists (including a
young Saudi named Osama bin Laden).
While Reagan’s acolytes cite the
Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as decisive in “winning the Cold War,” the
counter-argument is that Moscow was already in disarray – and while failure in
Afghanistan may have sped the Soviet Union’s final collapse – it also created
twin dangers for the future of the world: the rise of al-Qaeda terrorism and
the nuclear bomb in the hands of Pakistan’s unstable Islamic Republic.
“Ronald Reagan got a lot
of mileage out of his seductive charm and movie star smile. He knew how to
deliver a great line. Love him or loathe him, the man was a wildly successful,
hugely manipulative media presence. A master of the slick sound bite, he
uttered one of his most memorable lines during a trip to Germany in 1987.
Standing at the Brandenburg Gate that divided East and West Berlin, Reagan
pointed to the "iron curtain" and bellowed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" While no
objective historian believes the Berlin Wall tumbled two years later as a
direct result of this dare, Reagan succeeded brilliantly in drawing attention
to one of the world's most heinous creations. His palpable indignation
resonated around the globe.”
There is a
school of thought that prevails even today and it is based on the assumption
that Ronald Reagan's assertive policies
caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.
This school of thought is referred to as “The Victory School” is based on
the misleading concept that winning the cold war was inextricably linked to
obtaining peace through strength and it took a life of its own even after the
Soviet fall. The neo-cons continued with this cold war mentality and that
suited the military industrial complex just fine…the same one that a Republican
predecessor had warned America about. (Eisenhower)
The Reagan victory school and the broader peace-through-strength
perspectives are, however, misleading and incomplete-both in their
interpretation of events in the 1980s and in their understanding of deeper forces that led to
the end of the Cold War. It is important to reconsider the emerging conventional
wisdom before it truly becomes an article of faith on Cold War history and
comes to distort the thinking of policymakers in America and elsewhere.
While
it is true that Reagan called for a “Star War” kind of anti-nuclear program and
as much as he despised, his antipathy for nuclear weapons "I
know I speak for people everywhere when I say our dream is to see the day when
nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the earth," Reagan
said in November 1983.
But this Star Wars program was just a pipe dream, an illusory, wishful
thinking endeavor that did not have the technological capacities nor the
practical workings to be successful…it was as real as Star Trek, which leads us
to believe that as diligent as the Soviets were in their spying, research and
resolve to crush the West, they certainly knew that this anti-nuclear missile
shield was only empty rhetoric as was the pronouncements made in front of the
Berlin Wall by Reagan…the now famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.
In reality,
the bark was much bigger than the bite and the Soviets knew it. Perhaps a more
reasonable explanation for the demise of the Soviet Union could be explained by
saying that after decades of struggling to fight containment and spending huge
amount of treasure and effort to this effect but also, and most dramatically, the mutual vulnerability created
by nuclear weapons overshadowed containment, but the right wing conservatives
love barking, loudly expressing their disdain and even becoming downright
uncivil, arrogance is one of their strongest suits…it is part of their
footprint, it is something that makes them feel good but accomplishes little
and at times creates bigger problems than the ones we had before we employed
aggressive rhetoric as we have so clearly seen with the dismal failure of
George W. Bush’s foreign policy which managed to turn empathy and solidarity
with America after the 9-11 attacks into resentment and hatred.
“In any case,
although containment certainly played an important role in blocking Soviet
expansionism, it cannot explain either the end of the Cold War or the direction
of Soviet policy responses. The West's relationship with the Soviet Union was
not limited to containment, but included important elements of mutual
vulnerability and engagement. The Cold War's end was not simply a result of
Western strength but of mutual weakness and intentional engagement as well.”
Furthermore, as
far as anyone knows, there were no spies or operatives working inside the Kremlin
at the time. There was no effort on the part of the United States to subvert,
sabotage or undermine the Soviet government. No CIA operatives had a role in
the transition and to this day, the levels of military budgets surpass those of
the cold war when the Soviet Union actually presented a real threat to America.
In the end, Reagan partisans have been far more successful in claiming victory in the Cold War than they were in actually achieving it.
* Ronald Reagan's
Presidency Did Not Cause the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Daniel
Deudney and G. John Ikenberry
Amen! I'm so sick of hearing Reagan's praises sung... especially regarding the end of the Soviet Union.
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