President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev
RONALD WILSON REAGAN – So, did Ronald Reagan bring on the end of the Cold War? Well, yes. Recently declassified documents leave no doubt about the matter. But how did he accomplish it? Through hostile rhetoric and a massive arms buildup, which the Soviets knew they couldn’t match, as Reagan’s conservative champions contend? Or through a second-term conversion to detente and disarmament, as some liberal historians, including Slate’s David Greenberg, argue?
This is an uncomfortable position for an opinion columnist (and occasional Cold War historian) to take, but it turns out that both views have their merits; neither position by itself gets at the truth. Reagan the well-known superhawk and Reagan the lesser-known nuclear abolitionist are both responsible for the end of that era—along with his vital collaborator Mikhail Gorbachev.
Here was Gorbachev speaking at a session of the Politburo in October 1986, days before he traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to offer Reagan a groundbreaking disarmament plan, including a 50 percent reduction in nuclear arsenals. If he didn’t propose these cuts, Gorbachev told his colleagues:
We will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities. … If the new round [of an arms race] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable.
Of course Ronald Reagan was illiterate; an “actor”; a dunce; and a fool. As we were all taught by our lib teachers in school.
Read In It’s Entirety Here –