In retrospect, the ending of the Cold War may seem inevitable. Of course the Berlin Wall eventually came down. Of course the long-subjugated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe eventually threw off the shackles of totalitarianism. Of course the chronically dysfunctional Soviet economy eventually plunged into a terminal crisis. Communism depended on lies and terror to survive; it produced miserably poor living standards; and it clashed with the most basic elements of human nature — so of course it was destined to collapse.
Well, not exactly. Communism was always doomed to fail in its stated mission; but the precise timing, circumstances, and nature of its implosion were hardly preordained. “At the beginning of 1989,” notes the eminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, “the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe seemed as solid as it had been for the past four and a half decades.” (Or almost as solid: Poland had been rocked by a series of massive labor strikes in 1988, but instead of jailing Lech Walesa and the other leaders of the Solidarity trade union, the Communist government was negotiating with them.) Only later did we discover that “the Soviet Union, its empire, its ideology — and therefore the Cold War itself — was a sandpile ready to slide.” The unraveling of Communism was among the most remarkable geopolitical developments the world has ever seen. Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, we are still grappling with the significance of what transpired in November 1989.
The end of the Cold War “may well be one of the most misunderstood episodes in all of American history,” wrote the late intellectual historian John Patrick Diggins. Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of promoting overly simplistic narratives about the role played by Ronald Reagan. The latter tend to emphasize Reagan’s first-term hawkishness and tough rhetoric but neglect his crucial second-term diplomacy; the former, meanwhile, have long resisted giving the 40th president his due, though that is slowly changing.
Indeed, a growing number of non-conservative analysts have come to appreciate Reagan’s vital importance. In his 2007 book, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, Diggins lauded Reagan as “one of the three great liberators in American history,” along with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. One might have expected conservatives to welcome such an assessment — except that Diggins rejected the standard conservative narrative of how the Cold War ended. In his view, Reagan brought the superpower conflict to a close “by creating what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher insisted was the ‘essential trust’ that would be necessary to allow the peaceful exit of the Soviet Union from history.”
Earlier this year, veteran journalist James Mann published The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, another thoughtful effort to counter Reagan mythology and explain the Gipper’s true Cold War legacy. As Mann notes, those who credit the Reagan administration with exhausting the Soviet economy generally point to a host of U.S. actions that strained Moscow’s finances, such as cranking up defense spending, proceeding with the Strategic Defense Initiative, collaborating with the Saudis to reduce global oil prices, limiting Soviet access to high-tech exports, and secretly aiding anti-Communist movements in Poland (Solidarity) and Afghanistan (the mujahedeen). While Mann dismisses the idea that Reagan’s policies caused the Soviet Union to collapse, he acknowledges that some of these policies — particularly covert support for the Afghan mujahedeen — did indeed weaken it.
Popular memories of President Reagan as a hawkish Cold Warrior stem chiefly from his first-term record: predicting that Communism was headed for “the ash heap of history,” rebuffing calls for a nuclear freeze, branding the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” invading Grenada, installing Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Mann’s book focuses heavily on the period from 1986 to 1988, when Reagan and Soviet boss Mikhail Gorbachev pursued sweeping arms-control negotiations. During those years, prominent Republicans of diverse ideological stripes expressed concern that Reagan had misread Gorbachev and gone perilously soft on the Soviet leader. These critics included Jesse Helms, Dan Quayle, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Nixon. Their anxieties were shared by leading conservative journalists and intellectuals.
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