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The Myth of the Wall's Fall
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The Berlin Wall, toppled 20 years ago today, was brought down by Ronald Reagan's hawkish stand, right? Peter Beinart explodes conventional wisdom—crediting Reagan's dovish side instead.
Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. And as soon as it did, a myth began to arise: that it was Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising anti-communism that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. The myth’s consequences have been immense: Again and again, post-Cold War hawks have invoked Reagan to oppose negotiations with America’s enemies, and to justify the threat—if not the actual use—of force. There’s just one problem: The myth is almost entirely false. Two decades later, it’s high time ordinary Americans learn what most serious historians already know: that Reagan didn’t end the Cold War because he was a hawk. He ended it because he turned into a dove.
• More Daily Beast takes on the Berlin Wall anniversaryTo be sure, Reagan began his presidency as a hawk: He jacked up defense spending, created "Star Wars," and called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” That’s the Reagan conservatives know and love today. What they conveniently forget is that Reagan began to ditch that hard line in early 1984—more than a year before Mikhail Gorbachev took power. In a dramatic January 1984 speech, Reagan abandoned his previous hostility to negotiations, declaring that “the fact that neither of us likes the other’s system is no reason not to talk.” And not only did he call for reducing nuclear weapons, he announced that “my dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the earth.” From that moment until the end of his presidency, as Beth Fischer and other historians have documented, Reagan talked less about the Soviet threat than about the threat of nuclear war, and he never called the USSR an evil empire again.
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Why the shift? Firstly, because Reagan’s advisers feared that if he stuck to his hard line, Americans would not reelect him. By 1984, the American public had turned sharply against Reagan’s military buildup, largely because after three years of no negotiations and lots of bellicose rhetoric, they were terrified by the prospect of nuclear war. The second reason for the shift was that Reagan was terrified of nuclear war, too. A movie-obsessive who often had trouble distinguishing reality from celluloid, he was deeply disturbed by the 1983 made-for-TV film The Day After, which depicted Lawrence, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. And late that year, when a U.S. military exercise called Able Archer briefly convinced the Soviets that America was planning a nuclear strike, he realized that things were getting out of hand. Thirdly, Reagan believed that because of his military buildup, the U.S. could finally negotiate from a position of strength.
When Gorbachev took power in early 1985, Reagan immediately launched serious disarmament talks... At the time, almost every prominent conservative commentator and politician said Reagan was being duped.
At first, Reagan’s overtures didn’t get very far because his Soviet counterparts, Yuri Andropov and then Konstantin Chernenko, each had one foot in the grave. (“I keep trying to negotiate with the Soviet leaders, and they keep dying on me,” Reagan quipped). But when Gorbachev took power in early 1985, Reagan immediately launched serious disarmament talks, even though Gorbachev had not even announced his domestic economic reforms, let alone set Eastern Europe free. At the time, almost every prominent conservative commentator and politician—from George Will to Norman Podhoretz to William F. Buckley to Dick Cheney to Dan Quayle—said Reagan was being duped. Charles Krauthammer called Gorbachev “Khrushchev with a tailor.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page declared that “Historians may someday explain what turned Mr. Reagan into a utopian disarmer.” When he signed the INF disarmament deal with Gorbachev in 1987—two years before the Berlin Wall came down—the Washington Times compared Reagan to Neville Chamberlain. Today, conservatives pretend that Reagan was always a hawk. But at the time, they knew all too well that he had morphed into a dove. And Reagan knew it, too. At his first summit with Gorbachev, he whispered to his Soviet counterpart, “I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands.”
There’s a grain of truth to the right-wing notion that Reagan’s early military buildup scared the Soviet Union into submission: Some (though not all) in the Kremlin hierarchy did genuinely fear that the USSR, because of its technological backwardness, could not compete with Star Wars. But the larger reality is that even without Reagan’s initial buildup, a Soviet leader would have eventually tried to curb the arms race. By the 1980s, military spending constituted an eye-popping 40 percent of the USSR’s budget, Moscow was importing vast quantities of grain, and the Russian people were growing restive. Sooner or later, a reformer like Gorbachev would have emerged. What really mattered was that when Gorbachev did emerge, he was able to convince the Politburo that the USSR could dramatically reduce military spending—and let Eastern Europe go free—without fearing American attack. (The USSR, it’s worth remembering, had been attacked through Eastern Europe in both World War I and World II.) And Gorbachev could do that because Reagan’s dovish rhetoric and his embrace of arms control made America seem far less menacing. As Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin noted, “If Reagan had struck to his hard-line policies in 1985 and 1986…Gorbachev would have been accused by the rest of the Politburo of giving everything away to a fellow who doesn’t want to negotiate. We would have been forced to tighten our belts and spend even more on defense.”
Had Reagan refused to negotiate seriously with America’s enemies between 1984 and 1988, we would not be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Cold War’s end today. Luckily for the world, he ignored Dick Cheney and made peace. Let’s hope Barack Obama does, too.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
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byline
Peter Beinart has it exactly right. President Reagan did not bring the Berlin wall down, but he gets credit for making it possible for Mikhail Gorbachev to do it, and thus end the cold war.
ConstitutionalRights
I'm afraid you're wrong here. The wall came down for one key reason. We outspent the Russians into financial collapse through our military spending and their centralized bureacracy could not maintain control over the masses they were trying to dominate because they could not keep up. We had a rebounding economy built on the backs of small business, and the tax revenue allowed us to spend like drunken sailers and the Soviets could not keep up..
Our current President and Congress should take a note from history, because we are doing to ourselves what the Soviet Union did to try to keep up with us. We are now trying to centralize decision making and bureacratize our lives through daddycare and joint venture government private business partnerships and the result is self destruction.
PRKL8R
"the tax revenue allowed us to spend like drunken sailers [sic]" It sounds like you mean to say that, because of the "rebounding economy", the Treasury had so much extra tax revenue on hand that it could pay for Reagan's military buildup and the rest of the gvt. out of cash on hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/hist.pdf, Table 1.1. By the third year of his presidency, the deficit exceed $200B, about THREE TIMES the highest deficit ever seen under a previous President. See the same source, Table 7.1, for the federal debt. It stood at a little over $900B at the end of 1980 At the end of 1988, it was $2.6 TRILLION. Yeah, we spent like drunken sailors during the Reagan years, but we didn't do it by creating an economic miracle that lead to such enormous tax receipts that it allowed us to pull that money out of our pockets. We did it by borrowing the money and almost tripling our national debt during the Reagan presidency.
TommyB
I'd argue that Reaganomics played their part - the diplomacy opted for by Gorbachev would have been unnecessary had the arms race not crippled the Soviet economy, while the prosperity witnessed under the free trade agenda was something I hoped to see preserved. It's understandable that the recession has dampened some people's faith in neoliberal economics, but it bothers me that the European Union has never given it a chance in some sectors, hence the campaign at www.right2bet.net seeking basic competition restrictions to be removed from the gambling industry.
20 years on from "There Is No Alternative", there hasn't been enough evidence of following through on the original for my liking!
Napolis
Reaganomics was a boondoggle. It initiated the collapse of the middle class and the belief that temporary, credit-driven bubbles equaled long term economic success. The much vaunted trickle down effect didn't happen, in real dollars. Furthermore, Reagan (not Congress) increased government spending well beyond what the allegedly higher tax revenues under Reaganomics produced. Reagan was a good politician and deserves credit for helping end the Cold War, but we need to be honest about the economic effects of his policies.
jaydeekay
We are fighting Regan's wars and dealing with Reagan's economy.
The 'B' actor was a 'D' President.
ConstitutionalRights
You forget Reagan came into the Presidency from the failed Carter administration. Carter had 18% interest rates, double diget unemployment, a failed diplomacy attempts, a botched militry rescue, and proclaimed that the vote between Reagan and himself was a "vote between peace and war".
After Reagan took over he implemented policies which created a 12 year economic run, he lowered taxes which and engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was a "B" actor, but a great President (A ).
Napolis
The economy had begun to fail under Ford (remember his election slogan was "WIN = Whip Inflation Now); Carter was unable to get us out of it, but the structural problems were not of his own making. Reaganomics did not get the economy out recession (that didn't happen until 1983, after Reagan increased corporate income tax). Unemployment was not in double digits under Carter -- but it was under Reagan (10.8% in September 1982). By the end of the 1980s, middle class income had barely budged while the poverty level had increased. Hardly "a 12 year economic run." And, by 1990 (two years into Bush) we were in recession again.
jaydeekay
Well hold on there, CR...
If you blame Carter for Reagan's economy, can't you blame the shrub for Obama's?
And most of the homeless you see on the streets? Thank Mr. Reagan. And leaving Afghanistan to fend for themselves when Russia left after arming and training them to fight Russia? Thanks, Gipper. And arming Iraq and backing their crazy leader in their fight against Iran, only to have that crazy leader use the same arms against it's other enemies, including the US? Good old Ronnie. Who nearly tripled the national debt? Well... there you go. Deregulation? DING DING... wake UP Mr. President!
You know he thought unemployment was for lazy people? And he thought Medicare and Medicaid should be done away with? And that storing spent nuclear rods was no big deal (they would fit under a desk)? And did you know that he was a Dem. before Nancy told him to switch because there was better opportunity in the GOP? That makes him an opportunist, no?
Oh he was a saint.
Ozone69
After defeating the inept Jimmy Carter, the US hostages in Iran were released 20 minutes after Reagan was sworn in as President. Reagan began to deploy advanced Pershing II tactical missiles and land-based Tomahawk cruise missiles to meet the Soviet SS-20 threat. He labeled the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire" and went to the Berlin Wall demanding that the USSR "tear down this wall."
I don't think it is a myth that Reagan was responsible for the wall coming down. I think it is one of many factors that brought it down. The Reagan factor was indeed a giant catalyst for it coming down.
pennsykid2000
The resumption of economic growth in the west, after the stagnation of the 1970s, is probably more responsible. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe couldn't keep up, and the economic gap between east and west was too large for the people of the east to ignore.
daveinboise
I guess the myths are still too hard to die even after reading this?
piktor
The Wall came down because Gorbachev did not play the Stalinist game.
In my view, the end of Soviet Communism would have happened sooner if Reagan had abandoned his rhetorical bluster sooner.
PRKL8R
"the US hostages in Iran were released 20 minutes after Reagan was sworn in as President" because Reagan and GHW Bush negotiated with Iran behind Carter's back to have Iran hold our people until after the election. It was a happy day when the hostages were freed, the timing of which was dictated by the treasonous actions of Reagan & Bush 1. It's curious that someone who appears to support Reagan would bring that up.
Ozone69
Could you please cite your source for this conspiracy theory. I will prepare your tin-foil hat while I await your response.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
PRKL8R
Ozone69, I'm going to be generous and assume that you are not actually stupid enough to think that I'm the first person to say this (indeed, there are entire books written about it) and that if I have any sources to cite that they must be so obscure that you couldn't find them yourself in about 2 seconds with Google if you were so inclined. In other orders, I assume you are only PRETENDING to be that stupid.
PRKL8R
"orders" should be "words"
thollandpe
And what about Afghanistan? I think missing from these discussions is the crippling effect of Russia's 9-year war there. Called the "Afghan Trap" by Carter's National Security Advisor, it was also a big part of Reagan's strategy.
There are lessons to be learned in Russia's entanglement, as well as our support of that insurgency.
jaydeekay
We were funding the Afghan war rebels with guns and training.
Then, when Russia left, so did we... leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban was more than happy to fill.
Our troops are still being killed by the weapons and training Reagan provided Afghanistan.
Another thing to remember.
Rafter
As I watch this country sinking into an abyss of progressive nonsense I am truly sad. I would wager that (along with the author) had you lived as an adult through the 70's and 80's, you would appreciate truth rather than progressive constant rewriting of history. Today it astounds and saddens me that even as we sink further into bankruptcy, socialism (for the betterment of elite politicians), the citizens continue to vote themselves into the "tank" consistently. Pelosi, for instance, has never received less than 70% of the vote in her small district and yet has the abiliity to damage the entire citizenry who are helpless to participate in taking a part in expressing their opinions other than through polls (which indicate she couldn't be elected to dog catcher nationally. Unless voters correct this "Perfect Storm" (ie: Pelosi, Reid, Obama) by voting out a huge chunk of Congress next year, I fear that our country may go beyond the ability to turn around until it's simply too late and we're a top heavy strictly run government run country.
jaydeekay
Fear is a great motivator... right, Rafter?
pennsykid2000
I was an adult in the 1970s and 80s and believe Beinart, with whom I often don't agree, has it generally correct in this case. He's still giving Reagan credit, which many on the left do not, but he's saying it was his willingness to negotiate with Gorbachev, not his sabre rattling, that made it easier for Gorbachev to meet him half way. Gorbachev didn't realize that there was no half way when the economy of eastern Europe was so far behind that of the West. (See my comment above).
pennsykid2000
Read Krugman's column today to understand why you feel the way you do:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html
crypto
Rafter, You have it to the "T". I have an excellent insight as to what's coming. I'll remember that I wrote this if you Pelosi worshippers will admit that somebody tried to warn you. After the first quarter of 2010, around April or May we will have an economy that is in almost twice worse shape than now. The reason is the lack of success in the retail sales this holiday season (people don't have the money) and the fact that you still have the same people in charge, Pelosi, Rengal, Reid, Obama and his cronies, and a job market that is absolutely stagnant. This won't change until (as Rafter stated) that Perfect Storm is broken up. I said it and all I ask is that some of you remember that I did.
BlueRidgeBystander
As far as nonsense, US politics ague from two sides of the middle as if they are actually quite distant. Obama's health care initiative will not bankrupt us, although hearing it combined with the Wall coming down may cause some health problems. My heart skipped. I was stationed in the Army in Germany in MI and think the author states what happened pretty accurately. It is not re-writing, just writing history. I voted for Reagan both times and did so because he was hawkish when we needed it and a dove when it was time. Of course, that doesn't fit anyone's drama queen view of left/right. I am conservative and pro health care reform. Check Germany's stats on their over 40 year public option and their healthy insurance industry. Free market with a public option is only a slippery slope if you ignore any information as propaganda but somehow believe one "news" entertainment channel. Personalizing heath care in this country to "Pelosi" or "Obama" is not a service to this country. We all deserve better.
JohnConnughton
I agree on this: Mr. Gorbachev gets nearly all the credit for this historical turn because dissolution of the USSR in a peaceful manner could only be engineered from within. Mr. Reagan gets a lot of credit for pulling back the very real threat the USSR could see in the West, which made Gorbachev's moves possible.
However, Mr. Beinart, your sudden conclusion, that Mr. Obama should also ignore Dick Cheney AND MaKE PEACE,
JohnConnughton
Sorry all, I mis-keyed before I finished...
However, Mr. Beinart, your sudden conclusion, that Mr. Obama should also ignore Dick Cheney AND MAKE PEACE, does not follow. It is not any government we are fighting now, no one person who could sign for them even if one of them wanted to.
rodtanner
And that's precisely why it makes no sense to remain in Afghanistan. The Afghani government doesn't speak for or control al Quaeda, and most of the members of al Quaeda who resided in Afghanistan in 2001-02 have since relocated to Pakistan. There is a simplistic argument that if the US withdraws from Afghanistan al Quaeda will move back in, but al Quaeda exists throughout the world, so our presence in Afghanistan will have little prophylactic benefit anyway.
jimcolli
Whatever Reagan did pales alongside the effects of the Chernobyl. American rightards are simplified uninformed. The Chernobyl fire and meltdown made a huge swath of the Soviet heartland, from northwest of Kiev nearly to Minsk, uninhabitable. After that, the Soviet economy was devastated. Reagan didn't plan this.
In 1985, his CIA was advertising that the East German economy had reached parity with the West! Their strategy was not to frighten the Warsaw Pact nations, but rather to frighten Americans. In early 1989 when the East Germans began permitting residents to drive east and southeast into Czechoslovakia and around through Austria to West Germany, with the Soviet Union's tacit approval, the Bush administration was totally taken by surprise. From then on, it was only a matter of time before the DDR would open the Wall. The Wall fell with or without Ronald Reagan, and as a matter of history *after* Ronald Reagan.
nortonclybourn
Oh come on, no serious person believes that Reagan pulled down the Berlin Wall and freed the Soviet Bloc. Those who do believe it will not be dissuaded by facts.
periscope
I am no admirer of Raygun, but I do credit him for realizing that Gorbachev was an "opportunity" to end the Cold War and not a continued threat.
The right-wing pundits, as pointed out in the article, were wrong about Raygun being duped, as they usually are about everything. Why anyone listens to George Will or Dick Cheney is beyond me!
And while Raygun was willing to negotiate, the world was lucky to have Gorbachev become the last premiere of the U.S.S.R., as he refused to send in Soviet troops to put down the uprisings in Poland and Czechoslovakia, as his predecessors had done.
PRKL8R
Amen to your comment about George Will and Dick Cheney. World's worst advisors. I would add William Kristol to the list of wingers who are never right about anything and whose counsel should be ignored, not that that has anything to do with this article.
mrbadexample
Thank you for a re-assessment of the Reagan myth. This theory misses some telling points: First, Reagan's bellicosity damn nigh destroyed NATO. The locals in Germany and France greatly resented the presence of the Pershings, and Reagan's warlike language lead to a near-schism in NATO proper. Second, the Soviet fall had a lot to do with extraneous forces such as the Chernobyl disaster, which devastated their economy and lead to a widespread distrust of the government among the people. Had the Three Mile Island accident broken in a different manner, we might've failed instead of the Soviets. And, as Dmitri Orlov (Reinventing Collapse) points out, the US hardly achieved its victory unscathed, and the institutions and mindsets that are a legacy of the Reagan administration have hampered the US' ability to think about our problems in different ways.
Unfortunately (as Dick Cheney's continuing presence on the national scene proves), Reagan's shadow is still spread across the US approach to both foreign policy and its 'deregulation is good' approach to business and markets. Debunking the Reagan Legacy would go a long way toward getting people to look at our problems with new eyes.
periscope
There was an excellent book written called, "Into the Wild Blue Yonder," about the Raygun/Gorbachev relationship, and while Raygun did negotiate with Gorbachev, he often acted like an ass while doing so.
ConstitutionalRights
Gorbachev is hailed by the media and left wingers as a great man. Lets recap some history.
1) he as APPOINTED
ConstitutionalRights
Gorbachev is hailed by the media and left wingers as a great man. Lets recap some history.
1) he as APPOINTED not elected.
2) he refused to honor is agreement with the East Germans to go into Berlin to guard the wall
3) he was being outspent by the US in the arms race and collapsing his economy and losing people support as they starved.
4) he was a leader of a country with the largest racist policies in the planet, drafting minorities and sending them to war while the "russian russians" became moscow police
The only thing Gorbachev did was hang onto Reagans coattails and for that he was brilliant.
bcaldwell
While many here want to blast Reagan as some sort of amiable fool, one should read what Mort Zuckerman(no conservative) had to say about him. That being said, a confluence of things happened starting around 1984-85 in the West that tipped the scales in the West's favor. In 1984, the US economy and that of Western Europe had started to take off on scale that had not been seen in unison since the 1880's.Also a series of crop failures in this period coupled with the race to keep up with the West's military spending put a strain on the USSR that it could not keep up. Then Chernobyl hit and contaminated the crop for another 3 years- Gorbachev knew this as did Reagan and Schultz as did Baker-the Russians were desperate for imported grain and beef. In fact, one of the things that Gorbachev secured during that period was a below market interest rate from the IMF for grain purchases, this showed Reagan and his guys that they now had leverage in their favor.
Additionally, during the mid 1980's there was the technical revolution in the West that was just beginning. At this time, the personal computer and the mac were being unleashed in the West. Now school kids even were starting to learn about this stuff and as a result the standard of living began to really take off- also video games believe it or not convinced the Russians that they did not have the capacity at that time to keep up.
Far from being an ass with Gorbachev, Reagan acted shrewdly from a position of overwhelming strength by this time. He had the cards and he knew it. he had Pershings and Tomahawks in W. Germany, Italy and Britain. He was funding the USSR's version of Vietnam in Afghanistan and he was doing a lot of business with China in the East. Couple that with an overwhelming superiority in naval strength in the Pacific, adding in the economic growth and letting Gorby know that he could pursue SDI as a hobby convinced Gorbachev and also Yeltsin(he was an important player in domestic Russian politics at the time) that the game was up and that they could no longer afford to play the game they had been playing since 1946. In reality it was Baker and Schultz who ended the Cold War and brought down the Berlin Wall. They were the Reagan Administration's braintrust along with Don Regan.
PRKL8R
See the Nation's interview with Gorbachev at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091116/kvh_cohen for more detail on these issues.
bcaldwell
I never listen to the loser's take on history as it applies to him and Gorbachev and his ideology was a loser. He worked in a losing system and was bested by a man many thought an old fool . Plus I never believe a word that comes out of the Nation. vandenHeuvel, Alterman, et al are bit too much to the left and they NEVER give Reagan and his guys any credit and they did quiote a bit to ensure Western victory- a concept that seems repugnant to Katrina and her Waves.
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