Low key photography of grungy old Soviet Union and United States of America flags. USSR, CCCP, USA.
Author of new book on Reagan and the end of the Cold War — Lessons for today?
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Scott LaMar
Low key photography of grungy old Soviet Union and United States of America flags. USSR, CCCP, USA.
Airdate: November 17, 2022
When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed – the world rejoiced – at least the world’s democracies were happy. Many thought the capitulation of the USSR would result in a more peaceful world.
Thirty years later, Russia with a former KGB agent as president has invaded Ukraine and has threatened to use nuclear weapons. Communist China is now a superpower economically and militarily. Much has happened in those 30 years. Can lessons be learned from when the Cold War actually ended?
A new book, published just this week is one of, if not the most detailed account of President Ronald Reagan’s role in defeating the Soviet Union and reducing the stockpile of nuclear weapons. It’s called The Peacemaker Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World On The Brink by William Imboden. William Inboden is executive director and William Powers, Jr. Chair at the Clements Center for National Security and associate professor of Public Policy and History at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to academia, he worked for fifteen years as a policymaker in Washington, DC and overseas, including senior positions with the State Department and the National Security Council in the George W. Bush Administration.
Appearing The Spark Thursday, Inboden described Reagan taking a different approach to the Cold war and the Soviet Union than his predecessors,” Every previous Cold War president from Harry Truman on forward to Jimmy Carter had conceived of the Cold War, primarily as this superpower competition between two rival nations, United States and Soviet Union. That happened to have different ideological differences once communism won, once capitalist. And so for them, the Soviet Union had been a problem to be managed and contained. And Reagan reversed that. He saw the Cold War primarily as a battle of ideas, and he saw Soviet communism as an idea to be defeated. And so that’s why he pursued a much more aggressive strategy of applying pressure on the Soviet system, thinking that he could bring it to an end. But very important. And this goes even to the title of my book, The Peacemaker. He wanted to keep the Cold War cold. He was terrified of nuclear war. He did not want to start what he certainly didn’t want to accidentally stumble into one. And that’s why he also did the diplomatic outreach to the Soviets. In hindsight, I think we could see it worked out quite well, but it was a very difficult, tricky balance to navigate.”
Inboden said that one of the keys is that there was a leader in the Soviet Union who was willing to talk with Reagan, talk with the United States, and that was Mikhail Gorbachev,” This is a very important part of the book, and it’s not a story I’ve seen many other scholars pick up on. Part of his pressure on the Soviet system isn’t just to weaken it, but to force it to produce a more reformist leader. Because the previous Soviet leaders that Reagan was trying to deal with, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko they were not open in negotiating with him. They were not open to doing reforms. They were old time, Soviet dinosaurs, if you will. And then in March of 85, the start of Reagan’s second term, along comes Gorbachev. And that’s why I titled that chapter Waiting for Gorbachev, because Reagan had been waiting for a Gorbachev or someone like him to come along. That’s why he embraces Gorbachev pretty quickly as a partner, a partner for peace. Now, Gorbachev is very important to the story. I want to give him his due. You would not have the peaceful end of the Cold War the way we did without Gorbachev as well. But I try to lay out in the book the the indispensable role that Reagan played in that as well.”
Inboden was asked if there are lessons that could be applied to today’s foreign policy issues,”Reagan saw allies as a key source of American strength. Even if they can also be annoying, we need to we need to recover that. Second, of course, is the battle of ideas. Fundamentally, the United States can stand for different values and ideas than communist China or Putin’s Russia. And we need to put that front and center in developing our strategies against them. Third would be, I think, support for human rights and democracy, not just as American values, but as universal values, that these tyrannies in China and Russia are. They’re terrified of their own people. Their own people want American support. So let’s speak up for them, just as Reagan spoke up for them as well.”
