Ronald Reagan, the most conservative president in half a century, emerged victorious in the election of 1980. He set out immediately to implement a virtual revolution in U.S. politics. He attacked head-on the big-government legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. He slashed the federal budget for social programs and induced Congress to pass a sweeping tax cut. He simultaneously called for massive increases in defense spending, and federal budget deficits soared to nearly $200 billion a year in the mid-1980s. But "Reaganomics" did slay the ogre of inflation that had stalked the economy for more than a decade. Reagan took a hard line with the Soviet Union and announced a major shift in U.S. strategic doctrine in 1983, when he called for the construction of a space-based defense system against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Jolted, the Soviets made the abandonment of this so-called Star Wars scheme the precondition for any further discussion of arms control. Reagan meanwhile flexed his military muscle in the Caribbean by dispatching U.S. troops to invade the tiny island of Grenada in 1983. Central America posed more frustrating problems, as Reagan struggled against congressional opposition to send aid to rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration's frustrations over congressional opposition to its Central American policies led to the scandalous Iran-contra affair. Meanwhile, new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev undertook some dramatic initiatives that seemed to spell an end to the Cold War--or at least a truce. Triumphantly reelected in 1984, Reagan embraced some emotional social issues such as prayer in the schools and the antiabortion crusade. He found support among many fundamentalist religious groups, as well as among a group of intellectuals known as neoconservatives.

The Supply-Side Gospel (1984)
Since New Deal days, Keynesian economic theory had dominated federal policy. Named for the brilliant British economist John Maynard Keynes, who had developed his ideas most conspicuously in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936, Keynesian theory emphasized the role of government spending, including deficit financing, in stimulating the economy. Now, so-called supply-side economists argued that continual reliance on government spending sapped money and initiative from the private sector, ballooned deficits, and contained an inherently inflationary bias. The supply-siders came into their own with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Here one of them explains the basics of their approach. What is innovative about it? In the light of the unprecedented deficits chalked up in the Reagan years, can supply-side theory be said to have worked?

Ronald Reagan campaigned for the presidency on a supply-side platform. It gave him an employment policy that did not rely on inflation and government programs. It gave him an anti-inflation policy that did not rely on the pain and suffering of rising unemployment. And it gave him a budget policy that eliminated the deficit through economic growth instead of balancing the budget on the backs of taxpayers. Reagan was a different kind of candidate because he emphasized the capabilities of the people and the American economy. He campaigned on a message of hope that sparked a rebirth of confidence in the people. Reagan's optimism was so unfamiliar to the Republican establishment that its candidate, George Bush, called it "voodoo economics."

The political themes of failures and limits, themes that had created and reinforced insecurities in the people leading them to accept more government programs and controls over their lives, were not a part of Reagan's message. He spoke the language of an American renaissance. His message invigorated the hopes of people whose lives, pocketbooks, and prospects were cramped by a politics that closed all frontiers except those serviced by the federal budget. Here was a man breaking all of the ingrained political rules, and he was winning. . . .

The President-elect wanted to get on with his business of using incentives to rebuild the U.S. economy. He ruled out both wage and price controls and the continuation of demand management--the economic cycle of fighting inflation with unemployment and unemployment with inflation. In place of a stop-go monetary policy ranging from too tight to too loose, there would be steady, moderate, and predictable growth in the money supply. And instead of pumping up demand to stimulate the economy, reliance would be placed on improving incentives on the supply side.

This is the policy package that became known as Reaganomics. Its controversial feature is its belief that the economy can enjoy a rise in real gross national product while inflation declines. Monetary policy would first stabilize and then gradually reduce inflation, while tax cuts would provide liquidity as well as incentives and prevent the slower money growth from causing a recession. By creating the wrong incentives and damaging the cash flow of individuals and businesses, the tax system had produced a nation of debt junkies. With the economy strung out on credit, it had to be carefully rehabilitated so as not to produce a liquidity crisis.

A decade of taxflation (inflation and rising marginal tax rates) had taken most of the gains in individual incomes, leaving people no recourse but to turn to debt to finance their gains in consumption. Since the interest on debt is tax-deductible, being in debt was the only way for people to get some of their income back from the government and experience a rise in living standards. Businesses were equally encouraged by the tax system to go into debt. The only way out of this dilemma is to improve production incentives and the cash flow of individuals and businesses, while gradually reducing the rate of money growth. The tax cuts had two purposes. One was to lower tax rates and improve incentives. The other was to prevent a reduction in money growth from causing liquidity problems in the private sector. With incentives restructured, money growth would be used to finance the growth of real goods and services rather than to bid up the prices of houses and commodities. . . .

Keynesian theory explained the economy's performance in terms of the level of total spending. A budget deficit adds to total spending and helps keep employment high and the economy running at full capacity. Cutting the deficit, as the Republicans wanted to do, would reduce spending and throw people out of work, thereby lowering national income and raising the unemployment rate. The lower income would produce less tax revenue, and the higher unemployment would require larger budget expenditures for unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other support programs. The budget deficit would thus reappear from a shrunken tax base and higher income-support payments. Patient (and impatient) Democrats, economists, columnists, and editorial writers had explained many times to the obdurate Republicans that cutting the deficit would simply reduce spending on goods and services, drive the economy down, and raise the unemployment rate. Keynesians argued that the way to balance the budget was to run a deficit. Deficit spending would lift the economy, and the government's tax revenues would rise, bringing the budget into balance. Since cutting the deficit was believed to be the surest way to throw people out of work, there were not many Republican economists. When Democrat Alice Rivlin was asked why there were no Republican economists on her "nonpartisan" Congressional Budget Committee staff, she was probably telling the truth when she said she could not find any.

The focus on the deficit had left the Republicans without a competitive political program. They were perceived by the recipients of government benefits as the party always threatening to cut back on government programs such as social security, while the taxpaying part of the electorate saw Republicans as the party that was always threatening to raise taxes in order to pay for the benefits that others were receiving. The party that takes away with both hands competes badly with the party that gives away with both hands, and that simple fact explained the decline of the Republican Party, which had come to be known as the tax collector for Democratic spending programs.

Supply-side economics brought a new perspective to fiscal policy. Instead of stressing the effects on spending, supply-siders showed that tax rates directly affect the supply of goods and services. Lower tax rates mean better incentives to work, to save, to take risks, and to invest. As people respond to the higher after-tax rewards, or greater profitability, incomes rise and the tax base grows, thus feeding back some of the lost revenues to the Treasury. The saving rate also grows, providing more financing for government and private borrowing. Since Keynesian analysis left out such effects, once supply-side economics appeared on the scene the Democrats could no longer claim that government spending stimulated the economy more effectively than tax cuts.

The Supply Side Revolution: An Insiders Account of Policymaking in Washington by Paul Craig Roberts, 1984, pp. 20-25, 89-94, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

President Reagan Asks for a Tax Cut (1981)
Ronald Reagan scored a stunning electoral victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980, and after his inauguration he set out energetically to cut the federal budget and reduce federal taxes. A former actor and television personality, Reagan used the electronic media with more effectiveness than almost any other modern president--earning for himself the title of Great Communicator. In his nationally televised address of July 27, 1981, reproduced here, Reagan called on Congress to grant a three-year, 25-percent personal income tax cut across the board to all U.S. taxpayers. Why did he feel that such a cut was necessary?

It's been nearly 6 months since I first reported to you on the state of the Nation's economy. I'm afraid my message that night was grim and disturbing. I remember telling you we were in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression. Prices were continuing to spiral upward, unemployment was reaching intolerable levels, and all because government was too big and spent too much of our money.

We're still not out of the woods, but we've made a start. And we've certainly surprised those longtime and somewhat cynical observers of the Washington scene, who looked, listened, and said, "It can never be done; Washington will never change its spending habits." Well, something very exciting has been happening here in Washington, and you're responsible.

Your voices have been heard--millions of you, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, from every profession, trade and line of work, and from every part of this land. You sent a message that you wanted a new beginning. You wanted to change one little, two little word--two letter word, I should say. It doesn't sound like much, but it sure can make a difference changing "by government," "control by government" to "control of government."

In that earlier broadcast, you'll recall I proposed a program to drastically cut back government spending in the 1982 budget, which begins October 1st, and to continue cutting in the '83 and '84 budgets. Along with this I suggested an across-the-board tax cut, spread over those same 3 years, and the elimination of unnecessary regulations which were adding billions to the cost of things we buy.

All the lobbying, the organized demonstrations, and the cries of protest by those whose way of life depends on maintaining government's wasteful ways were no match for your voices, which were heard loud and clear in these marble halls of government. And you made history with your telegrams, your letters, your phone calls and, yes, personal visits to talk to your elected Representatives. You reaffirmed the mandate you delivered in the election last November--a mandate that called for an end to government policies that sent prices and mortgage rates skyrocketing while millions of Americans went jobless.

Because of what you did, Republicans and Democrats in the Congress came together and passed the most sweeping cutbacks in the history of the Federal budget. Right now, Members of the House and Senate are meeting in a conference committee to reconcile the differences between the two budget cutting bills passed by the House and Senate. When they finish, all Americans will benefit from savings of approximately $140 billion in reduced government costs over just the next 3 years. And that doesn't include the additional savings from the hundreds of burdensome regulations already cancelled or facing cancellation.

For 19 out of the last 20 years, the Federal Government has spent more than it took in. There will be another large deficit in this present year which ends September 30th, but with our program in place, it won't be quite as big as it might have been. And starting next year, the deficits will get smaller until in just a few years the budget can be balanced. And we hope we can begin whittling at that almost $1 trillion debt that hangs over the future of our children.

Now, so far, I've been talking about only one part of our program for economic recovery--the budget cutting part. I don't minimize its importance. Just the fact that Democrats and Republicans could work together as they have, proving the strength of our system, has created an optimism in our land. The rate of inflation is no longer in double-digit figures. The dollar has regained strength in the international money markets, and businessmen and investors are making decisions with regard to industrial development, modernization and expansion--all of this based on anticipation of our program being adopted and put into operation.

A recent poll shows that where a year and a half ago only 24 percent of our people believed things would get better, today 46 percent believe they will. To justify their faith, we must deliver the other part of our program. Our economic package is a closely knit, carefully constructed plan to restore America's economic strength and put our Nation back on the road to prosperity.

Each part of this package is vital. It cannot be considered piecemeal. It was proposed as a package, and it has been supported as such by the American people. Only if the Congress passes all of its major components does it have any real chance of success. This is absolutely essential if we are to provide incentives and make capital available for the increased productivity required to provide real, permanent jobs for our people.

And let us not forget that the rest of the world is watching America carefully to see how we'll act at this critical moment.

I have recently returned from a summit meeting with world leaders in Ottawa, Canada, and the message I heard from them was quite clear. Our allies depend on a strong and economically sound America. And they're watching events in this country, particularly those surrounding our program for economic recovery, with close attention and great hopes. In short, the best way to have a strong foreign policy abroad is to have a strong economy at home.

The day after tomorrow, Wednesday, the House of Representatives will begin debate on two tax bills. And once again, they need to hear from you. I know that doesn't give you much time, but a great deal is at stake. A few days ago I was visited here in the office by a Democratic Congressman from one of our Southern States. He'd been back in his district. And one day one of his constituents asked him where he stood on our economic recovery program--I outlined that program in an earlier broadcast--particularly the tax cut. Well, the Congressman, who happens to be a strong leader in support of our program, replied at some length with a discussion of the technical points involved, but he also mentioned a few reservations he had on certain points. The constituent, a farmer, listened politely until he'd finished, and then he said, "Don't give me an essay. What I want to know is are you for 'im or agin 'im?"

Well, I appreciate the gentleman's support and suggest his question is a message your own Representatives should hear. Let me add, those Representatives honestly and sincerely want to know your feelings. They get plenty of input from the special interest groups. They'd like to hear from their home folks.

Now, let me explain what the situation is and what's at issue. With our budget cuts, we've presented a complete program of reduction in tax rates. Again, our purpose was to provide incentive for the individual, incentives for business to encourage production and hiring of the unemployed, and to free up money for investment. Our bill calls for a 5-percent reduction in the income tax rates by October 1st, a 10-percent reduction beginning July 1st, 1982, and another 10-percent cut a year later, a 25-percent total reduction over 3 years.

But then to ensure the tax cut is permanent, we call for indexing the tax rates in 1985, which means adjusting them for inflation. As it is now, if you get a cost-of-living raise that's intended to keep you even with inflation, you find that the increase in the number of dollars you get may very likely move you into a higher tax bracket, and you wind up poorer than you would. This is called bracket creep.

Bracket creep is an insidious tax. Let me give an example. If you earned $10,000 a year in 1972, by 1980 you had to earn $19,700 just to stay even with inflation. But that's before taxes. Come April 15th, you'll find your tax rates have increased 30 percent. Now, if you've been wondering why you don't seem as well-off as you were a few years back, it's because government makes a profit on inflation. It gets an automatic tax increase without having to vote on it. We intended to stop that.

Time won't allow me to explain every detail. But our bill includes just about everything to help the economy. We reduce the marriage penalty, that unfair tax that has a working husband and wife pay more tax than if they were single. We increase the exemption on the inheritance or estate tax to $600,000, so that farmers and family-owned businesses don't have to sell the farm or store in the event of death just to pay the taxes. Most important, we wipe out the tax entirely for a surviving spouse. No longer, for example, will a widow have to sell the family source of income to pay a tax on her husband's death.

There are deductions to encourage investment and savings. Business gets realistic depreciation on equipment and machinery. And there are tax breaks for small and independent businesses which create 80 percent of all our new jobs.

This bill also provides major credits to the research and development industry. These credits will help spark the high technology breakthroughs that are so critical to America's economic leadership in the world. There are also added incentives for small businesses, including a provision that will lift much of the burden of costly paperwork that government has imposed on small business.

In addition, there's short-term but substantial assistance for the hard pressed thrift industry, as well as reductions in oil taxes that will benefit new or independent oil producers and move our Nation a step closer to energy self-sufficiency. Our bill is, in short, the first real tax cut for everyone in almost 20 years. . . .

If I could paraphrase a well-known statement by Will Rogers that he had never met a man he didn't like, I'm afraid we have some people around here who never met a tax they didn't hike. . . .

In a few days the Congress will stand at the fork of two roads. One road is all too familiar to us. It leads ultimately to higher taxes. It merely brings us full circle back to the source of our economic problems, where the government decides that it knows better than you what should be done with your earnings and, in fact, how you should conduct your life. The other road promises to renew the American spirit. It's a road of hope and opportunity. It places the direction of your life back in your hands where it belongs.

I've not taken your time this evening merely to ask you to trust me. Instead, I ask you to trust yourselves. That's what America is all about. Our struggle for nationhood, our unrelenting fight for freedom, our very existence--these have all rested on the assurance that you must be free to shape your life as you are best able to, that no one can stop you from reaching higher or take from you the creativity that has made America the envy of mankind.

One road is timid and fearful; the other bold and hopeful.

In these 6 months, we've done so much and have come so far. It's been the power of millions of people like you who have determined that we will make America great again. You have made the difference up to now. You will make the difference again. Let us not stop now.

Thank you. God bless you, and good night.

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 17, no. 31 (August 3, 1981): 814-820.

The New York Times Attacks Reagan's Policies (1981)
Critics of President Reagan's budget-slashing and tax-cutting policies fumed furiously but ineffectively during Reagan's first year in office. The new president appeared to be a masterful politician whose will was impossible to thwart. Some observers, however, worried about the real purposes behind Reagan's deft display of presidential leadership. In the following editorial from the New York Times, what are alleged to be Reagan's true intentions? What does the editorial mean when it states that Reagan "gathers power for the purpose of denigrating its value in shaping America"? Is this assessment fair?

One thing is surely settled: the Presidency is no feeble office. Let a shrewd President single-mindedly pursue a policy broadly grounded in his election mandate, and he can put it across.

It does not follow that Mr. Reagan's economic program is therefore wise or efficient, or that a different program, without tax cuts, could have fared so well. But conservatives did not invent the technique of buying votes with Federal monies; democracy tilts toward gratifying private wants. It is plainly untrue, however, as many have complained, that the democracy of Congress is bound to frustrate the democratic will that elects Presidents.

Nor is it true that Presidential power requires a telegenic face. Rest in peace, Lyndon Johnson. Power lies in circumstance and in the skill with which it is exploited. The Democrats who opposed Mr. Reagan's budget and tax bills played weak hands, but they played them badly. By turning for help to special-interest lobbies, they only challenged the President to outbid them. By forcing a showdown when they lacked decisive strength, they only magnified the drama of his victory.

But is this President's paradoxical triumph also the nation's? He gathers power for the purpose of denigrating its value in shaping America. He does not say the nation is overextended financially. He does not say guns are momentarily more important than butter. He does not rerank the nation's needs or argue against assorted remedies. He denounces all Federal government as oppressive, as the cause of economic distress and a threat to liberty.

So Mr. Reagan has arranged to shrink annual Federal spending by 1984 by about $150 billion and cut taxes to let individuals and businesses spend that sum instead. Economically, that is mostly a transfer of purchasing power which cannot much reduce inflation or unemployment, the Federal deficit or debt. On the contrary, a big increase in military spending will enlarge the deficit unless the President finds further huge savings in civilian programs. And the pressure to find them--wherever--is what he values most about his accomplishment.

But why does the President boast that he has thus improved economic prospects? Because he holds, as a matter of faith, that a dollar spent privately creates more wealth than a dollar spent by Government.

That is surely sometimes true: a Government-run railroad that is politically beholden to its unions will tolerate more waste than a private bus company. But it surely also is sometimes untrue: a Government investment in a student or road or depressed community can stimulate more productive activity than the same sum spent by private citizens on diamonds or cameras. Government may be incompetent to achieve some of its social goals. But uncoordinated private spending is notoriously inefficient in meeting large public needs.

Take the obvious, urgent need to cool inflation. Mr. Reagan's answer is a tortuous chain of incentives: cut a family's taxes by $500 and the money goes to banks and merchants who invest in more businesses and machines which will be more efficient and hold down prices. Also: reduce a citizen's tax on the next earned dollar from 29 to 25 cents and he'll work harder longer and thus reduce costs.

But if it were primarily interested in economic results, Government has surer ways to achieve those results--as even Mr. Reagan's plan recognizes. For it aims large tax reductions directly at businesses that buy cost-reducing machines or job-producing plants. A still more efficient plan would have aimed more precisely at the most wanted machines and at workers who hold down wages or communities that reduce sales taxes.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Mr. Reagan wants to use his power primarily to diminish Government--even where that dilutes economic recovery and prevents efficient allocation of resources.

That the President's plan will revive the economy remains to be proved. What is no longer in doubt is that his economic remedies mask an assault on the very idea that free people can solve their collective problems through representative Government. One day soon Americans will rediscover that their general welfare depends on national as well as parochial actions. And then they will want not just a powerful President but one who cherishes the power of Government to act for the common good.

The New York Times (August 2, 1981). (c) 1981 by The New York Times Company.

"Star Wars" Under Attack (1985)
In March 1983 President Reagan surprised the world by announcing a major new departure in U.S. strategic doctrine. For nearly four decades, the superpowers had kept a precarious peace based on the threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD). In essence, the Soviet Union and the United States were both deterred from nuclear aggression by the expectation of massive retaliation in kind. Reagan's new approach, officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) but quickly dubbed Star Wars, rejected the ghastly calculus of MAD and instead held out the prospect of a space-based defensive shield against nuclear attack. By repudiating the conventional strategic wisdom, SDI provoked a chorus of criticism. In the following selection, four distinguished foreign policy experts sharply question the Star Wars concept. What are their principal objections to it? What alternatives do they propose?

The reelection of Ronald Reagan makes the future of his Strategic Defense Initiative the most important question of nuclear arms competition and arms control on the national agenda since 1972. . . .

This new initiative was launched by the President on March 23, 1983, in a surprising and quite personal passage at the end of a speech in praise of his other military programs. In that passage he called on our scientists to find means of rendering nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." In the briefings that surrounded the speech, Administration spokesmen made it clear that the primary objective was the development of ways and means of destroying hostile missiles--meaning in the main Soviet missiles--by a series of attacks all along their flight path, from their boost phase after launch to their entry into the atmosphere above the United States. Because of the central position the Administration itself gave to this objective, the program promptly acquired the name Star Wars, and the President's Science Advisor, George Keyworth, has admitted that this name is now indelible. We find it more accurately descriptive than the official "Strategic Defense Initiative."

What is centrally and fundamentally wrong with the President's objective is that it cannot be achieved. The overwhelming consensus of the nation's technical community is that in fact there is no prospect whatever that science and technology can, at any time in the next several decades, make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The program developed over the last 18 months, ambitious as it is, offers no prospect for a leak-proof defense against strategic ballistic missiles alone, and it entirely excludes from its range any effort to limit the effectiveness of other systems--bomber aircraft, cruise missiles, and smuggled warheads. . . .

The notion that nuclear weapons, or even ballistic missiles alone, can be rendered impotent by science and technology is an illusion. It reflects not only technological hubris in the face of the very nature of nuclear weapons, but also a complete misreading of the relation between threat and response in the nuclear decisions of the superpowers.

The first and greatest obstacle is quite simply that these weapons are destructive to a degree that makes them entirely different from any other weapon in history. The President frequently observes that over the centuries every new weapon has produced some countervailing weapon, and up to Hiroshima he is right. But conventional weapons can be neutralized by a relatively low rate of kill, provided that the rate is sustained over time. The classic modern example is defense against nonnuclear bombing. If you lose one bomber in every ten sorties, your force will soon be destroyed. A pilot assigned to fly 30 missions will face a 95-percent prospect of being shot down. A ten-percent rate of kill is highly effective.

With nuclear weapons the calculation is totally different. Both Mr. Reagan's dream and his historical argument completely neglect the decisive fact that a very few nuclear weapons, exploding on or near population centers, would be hideously too many. At today's levels of superpower deployment--about 10,000 strategic warheads on each side--even a 95-percent kill rate would be insufficient to save either society from disintegration in the event of general nuclear war. Not one of Mr. Reagan's technical advisers claims that any such level of protection is attainable. They know better. In the words of the officer in charge of the program, Lieutenant General James Abrahamson "a perfect defense is not a realistic thing." . . .

The terrible power of nuclear weapons has a second meaning that decisively undermines the possibility of an effective Star Wars defense of populations. Not only is their destructive power so great that only a kill rate closely approaching 100 percent can give protection, but precisely because the weapons are so terrible neither of the two superpowers can tolerate the notion of "impotence" in the face of the arsenal of the opponent. Thus any prospect of a significantly improved American defense is absolutely certain to stimulate the most energetic Soviet efforts to ensure the continued ability of Soviet warheads to get through. Ever since Hiroshima it has been a cardinal principle of Soviet policy that the Soviet Union must have a match for any American nuclear capability. It is fanciful in the extreme to suppose that the prospect of any new American deployment which could undermine the effectiveness of Soviet missile forces will not be met by a most determined and sustained response. . . .

Already important and enduring obstacles have been identified. Two are systemic and ineradicable. First, a Star Wars defense must work perfectly the very first time, since it can never be tested in advance as a full system. Second, it must be triggered almost instantly, because the crucial boost phase of Soviet missiles lasts less than five minutes from the moment of launch. In that five minutes (which new launch technology can probably reduce to about 60 seconds), there must be detection, decision, aim, attack and kill. It is hard to imagine a scheme further removed from the kind of tested reliability and clear presidential control that we have hiterto required of systems involving nuclear danger.

There are other more general difficulties with the President's dream. Any remotely leak-proof defense against strategic missiles will require extensive deployments of many parts of the system in space, both for detection of any Soviet launch and, in most schemes, for transmission of the attack on the missile in its boost phase. Yet no one has been able to offer any hope that it will ever be easier and cheaper to deploy and defend large systems in space than for someone else to destroy them. The balance of technical judgment is that the advantage in any unconstrained contest in space will be with the side that aims to attack the other side's satellites. In and of itself this advantage constitutes a compelling argument against space-based defense.

Finally, as we have already noted, the President's program offers no promise of effective defense against anything but ballistic missiles. Even if we assume, against all the evidence, that a leak-proof defense could be achieved against these particular weapons, there would remain the difficulty of defense against cruise missiles, against bomber aircraft, and against the clandestine introduction of warheads. It is important to remember here that very small risks of these catastrophic events will be enough to force upon us the continuing need for our own deterrent weapons. . . .

The inescapable reality is that there is literally no hope that Star Wars can make nuclear weapons obsolete. Perhaps the first and most important political task for those who wish to save the country from the expensive and dangerous pursuit of a mirage is to make this basic proposition clear. As long as the American people believe that Star Wars offers real hope of reaching the President's asserted goal, it will have a level of political support unrelated to reality. The American people, properly and sensibly, would like nothing better than to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," but the last thing they want or need is to pay an astronomic bill for a vastly intensified nuclear competition sold to them under a false label. Yet that is what Star Wars will bring us, as a closer look will show.

The second line of defense for the Star Wars program, and the one which represents the real hopes and convictions of both military men and civilians at the levels below the optimistic President and his enthusiastic secretary of defense, is not that it will ever be able to defend all our people, but rather that it will allow us to defend some of our weapons and other military assets, and so, somehow, restrain the arms race.

The objective is very different from the one the President has held out to the country, but it is equally unattainable. The Star Wars program is bound to exacerbate the competition between the superpowers in three major ways. It will destroy the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, our most important arms control agreement; it will directly stimulate both offensive and defensive systems on the Soviet side; and as long as it continues it will darken the prospect for significant improvement in the currently frigid relations between Moscow and Washington. It will thus sharpen the very anxieties the President wants to reduce.

As presented to Congress last March, the Star Wars program calls for a five-year effort of research and development at a total cost of $26 billion. The Administration insists that no decision has been made to develop or deploy any component of the potential system, but a number of hardware demonstrations are planned, and it is hoped that there can be an affirmative decision on full-scale system development in the early 1990s. By its very nature, then, the program is both enormous and very slow. This first $26 billion, only for research and development, is not much less than the full procurement cost of the new B-1 bomber force, and the timetable is such that Mr. Reagan's second term will end long before any deployment decision is made. Both the size and the slowness of the undertaking reinforce the certainty that it will stimulate the strongest possible Soviet response. Its size makes it look highly threatening, while its slowness gives plenty of time for countermeasures.

Meanwhile, extensive American production of offensive nuclear weapons will continue. The Administration has been at pains to insist that the Star Wars program in no way reduces the need for six new offensive systems. There are now two new land-based missiles, two new strategic bombers, and two different submarine systems under various stages of development. The Soviets regularly list several other planned American deployments as strategic because the weapons can reach the Soviet homeland. Mr. Reagan recognized at the very outset that "if paired with offensive systems," any defensive systems "can be viewed as fostering an aggressive policy, and no one wants that." But that is exactly how his new program, with its proclaimed emphasis on both offense and defense, is understood in Moscow.

We have been left in no doubt as to the Soviet opinion of Star Wars. Only four days after the President's speech, Yuri Andropov* gave the Soviet reply:

On the face of it, laymen may find it even attractive as the President speaks about what seem to be defensive measures. But this may seem to be so only on the face of it and only to those who are not conversant with these matters. In fact the strategic offensive forces of the United States will continue to be developed and upgraded at full tilt and along quite a definite line at that, namely that of acquiring a first nuclear strike capability. Under these conditions the intention to secure itself the possibility of destroying with the help of the ABM defenses the corresponding strategic systems of the other side, that is of rendering it unable of dealing a retaliatory strike, is a bid to disarm the Soviet Union in the face of the U.S. nuclear threat

The only remarkable elements in this response are its clarity and rapidity. Andropov's assessment is precisely what we should expect. Our government, of course, does not intend a first strike, but we are building systems which do have what is called in our own jargon a prompt hard-target kill capability, and the primary purpose of these systems is to put Soviet missiles at risk of quick destruction. Soviet leaders are bound to see such weapons as a first-strike threat. This is precisely the view that our own planners take of Soviet missiles with a similar capability. When the President launches a defensive program openly aimed at making Soviet missiles "impotent," while at the same time our own hard-target killers multiply, we cannot be surprised that a man like Andropov saw a threat "to disarm the Soviet Union." Given Andropov's assessment, the Soviet response to Star Wars is certain to be an intensification of both its offensive and defensive strategic efforts.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand this political reality is to consider our own reaction to any similar Soviet announcement of intent. The very thought that the Soviet Union might plan to deploy effective strategic defenses would certainly produce a most energetic American response, and the first and most important element of that response would be a determination to ensure that a sufficient number of our own missiles would always get through.

Administration spokesmen continue to talk as if somehow the prospect of American defensive systems will in and of itself lead the Soviet government to move away from strategic missiles. This is a vain hope. Such a result might indeed be conceivable if Mr. Reagan's original dream were real--if we could somehow ever deploy a perfect defense. But in the real world no system will ever be leak-proof; no new system of any sort is in prospect for a decade and only a fragmentary capability for years thereafter; numerous powerful countermeasures are readily available in the meantime, and what is at stake from the Russian standpoint is the deterrent value of their largest and strongest offensive forces.

In this real world it is preposterous to suppose that Star Wars can produce anything but the most determined Soviet effort to make it fruitless. . . .

Some apologists for Star Wars, although not the President, now defend it on the still more limited ground that it can deny the Soviets a first-strike capability. That is conceivable, in that the indefinite proliferation of systems and countersystems would certainly create fearful uncertainties of all sorts on both sides. But as the Scowcroft Commission correctly concluded, the Soviets have no first-strike capability today, given our survivable forces and the ample existing uncertainties in any surprise attack. We believe there are much better ways than strategic defense to ensure that this situation is maintained. . . .

The President seems aware of the difficulty of making the Soviet Union accept his vision, and he has repeatedly proposed a solution that combines surface plausibility and intrinsic absurdity in a way that tells a lot about what is wrong with Star Wars itself. Mr. Reagan says we should give the Russians the secret of defense, once we find it, in return for their agreement to get rid of nuclear weapons. But the only kind of secret that could be used this way is one that exists only in Mr. Reagan's mind: a single magic formula that would make each side durably invulnerable. In the real world any defensive system will be an imperfect complex of technological and operational capabilities, full understanding of which would at once enable any adversary to improve his own methods of penetration. To share this kind of secret is to destroy its own effectiveness. Mr. Reagan's solution is as unreal as his original dream, and it rests on the same failure of understanding.

There is simply no escape from the reality that Star Wars offers not the promise of greater safety, but the certainty of a large-scale expansion of both offensive and defensive systems on both sides. We are not here examining the dismayed reaction of our allies in Europe, but it is precisely this prospect that they foresee, in addition to the special worries created by their recognition that the Star Wars program as it stands has nothing in it for them. Star Wars, in sum, is a prescription not for ending or limiting the threat of nuclear weapons, but for a competition unlimited in expense, duration and danger.

We have come this way before, following false hopes and finding our danger greater in the upshot. We did it when our government responded to the first Soviet atomic test by a decision to get hydrogen bombs if we could, never stopping to consider in any serious way whether both sides would be better off not to test such a weapon. We did it again, this time in the face of strong and sustained warning, when we were the first to deploy the multiple warheads (MIRVs) that now face us in such excessive numbers on Soviet missiles. Today, 15 years too late, we have a consensus that MIRVs are bad for us, but we are still deploying them, and so are the Russians. . . .

This has not been a cheerful analysis, or one that we find pleasant to present. If the President makes no major change of course in his second term, we see no alternative to a long, hard, damage-limiting effort by Congress. But we choose to end on a quite different note. We believe that any American president who has won reelection in this nuclear age is bound to ask himself with the greatest seriousness just what he wants to accomplish in his second term. We have no doubt of the deep sincerity of President Reagan's desire for good arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and we believe his election night assertion that what he wants most in foreign affairs is to reach just such agreements. We are also convinced that if he asks serious and independent advisers what changes in current American policy will help most to make such agreements possible in the next four years, he will learn that it is possible to reach good agreements, or possible to insist on the Star Wars program as it stands, but wholly impossible to do both. At exactly that point, we believe, Mr. Reagan could, should, and possibly would encourage the serious analysis of his negotiating options that did not occur in his first term.

We do not here explore these possibilities in detail. They would certainly include a reaffirmation of the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, and an effort to improve it by broadening its coverage and tightening some of its language. There should also be a further exploration of the possibility of an agreement that would safeguard the peaceful uses of space, uses that have much greater value to us than to the Soviets. We still need and lack a reliable cap on strategic warheads, and while Mr. Reagan has asked too much for too little in the past, he is right to want reductions. He currently has some advisers who fear all forms of arms control, but advisers can be changed. We are not suggesting that the President will change his course lightly. We simply believe that he does truly want real progress on arms control in his second term, and if he ever comes to understand that he must choose between the two, he will choose the pursuit of agreement over the demands of Star Wars.

We have one final deep and strong belief. We think that if there is to be a real step away from nuclear danger in the next four years, it will have to begin at the level of high politics, with a kind of communication between Moscow and Washington that we have not seen for more than a decade. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the Star Wars initiative is that it was launched without any attempt to discuss it seriously, in advance, with the Soviet government. It represented an explicit expression of the President's belief that we should abandon the shared view of nuclear defense that underlies not only the ABM Treaty but all our later negotiations on strategic weapons. To make a public announcement of a change of this magnitude without any effort to discuss it with the Soviets was to ensure increased Soviet suspicion. This error, too, we have made in earlier decades. If we are now to have renewed hope of arms control, we must sharply elevate our attention to the whole process of communication with Moscow.

Such newly serious communication should begin with frank and explicit recognition by both sides that the problem of nuclear danger is in its basic reality a common problem, not just for the two of us, but for all the world--and one that we shall never resolve if we cannot transcend negotiating procedures that give a veto to those in each country who insist on the relentlessly competitive maintenance and enlargement of what are already, on both sides, exorbitantly excessive forces.

If it can ever be understood and accepted, as a starting point for negotiation, that our community of interest in the problem of nuclear danger is greater than all our various competitive concerns put together, there can truly be a renewal of hope, and a new prospect of a shared decision to change course together. Alone among the presidents of the last 12 years, Ronald Reagan has the political strength to lead our country in this new direction if he so decides. The renewal of hope cannot be left to await another president without an appeal to the President and his more sober advisers to take a fresh hard look at Star Wars, and then to seek arms control instead.

*Andropov was the chairman of the Soviet Communist party, and therefore, de facto head of the Soviet government.

"The President's Choice: Star Wars or Arms Control" by McGeorge Bundy, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara, and Gerard Smith,  pp. 264-278 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

Star Wars Defended (1985)
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter, was one of the few Democrats to give (qualified) support to the Star Wars concept. To what extent does his proposed version of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) differ from President Reagan's? Which version is sounder? Why? Is Brzezinski's conception of Star Wars exempt from the criticisms of the president's plan made in the preceding selection?

The usual danse macabre of American-Soviet arms control negotiations is about to begin. The process is typically initiated by a Soviet announcement to leaders of the U.S. government, and to the myriad self-appointed American accommodationists trooping to Moscow to seek on their own a "fair" solution, that the ongoing stalemate is due entirely to American rigidity. The Soviets insist that they cannot give an inch, and that only a massive display of American good faith--translated into unilateral concessions--can revive the negotiations.

In the late 1970s the Soviets made it clear that progress in negotiations would be contingent upon U.S. abandonment of its cruise missile program. In 1984 they premised even the beginning of arms control talks on the dismantling of the U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles already deployed in Europe. Then the MX missile came to be designated as the impediment to any compromise. And now the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's so-called Star Wars proposal, has been identified as the mortal enemy of arms control.

These arguments are then faithfully reproduced on the Op-Ed pages of U.S. and West European papers. Renowned professors, former ambassadors, various politicized scientists, and leaders of the arms control lobby plead for a demonstration of American good faith--which happens to coincide with the acceptance of what the Soviets have been demanding. The process of negotiation thus begins in earnest--but among us Americans! The Russians, meanwhile, sit at the table in Geneva and wait for the eventual U.S. concessions.

It is normal procedure for the United States to prepare for serious negotiations with the Soviet Union by defining a tough opening gambit, to be followed by a more flexible position that would be exercised in conjunction with some demonstrated Soviet willingness to compromise. But it is usually only a matter of time before some disgruntled official leaks the substance of the fallback position to one of the ex-ambassadors, peace-loving professors, or any one of the 535 representatives and senators who have lately become our surrogate secretaries of defense and state. Any one of them then feels free to publicize the fallback position as his constructive suggestion. Indeed, the latest fashion is to compose a joint letter published under three or four prestigious signatures, strongly urging the U.S. to make further unilateral concessions in order to convince the Soviets that we are negotiating in earnest. After we prove our good intentions, the Russians may be prepared to accept our third--or fourth--fallback position as a proper match for their own unyielding position.

The Soviet argument against SDI and the domestic critics' case against SDI are politically complementary. The Soviets say that SDI threatens the militarization of space, and that there will be no arms control agreement unless it is abandoned. The American critics say SDI will not work, that it will cost too much, that the Soviets can very easily overcome it, and that the Soviets are dreadfully fearful of it. The logical inconsistency of these arguments is less important than the political symmetry of their intended effect--namely that the U.S. should unilaterally forgo the SDI program.

In fact, nothing could be more damaging to the prospects for real arms control than the jettisoning of SDI. Indeed, the time has come for the United States to bite the bullet on the SDI question. Only if a strategic defense system is deployable within the next decade or so, and only if our will to deploy it is proven credible, can the United States trade it for a genuine and comprehensive arms control agreement with the Soviets. It is essential that this system be capable of disrupting and rendering militarily useless a Soviet first strike by intercepting missiles early in flight or by knocking them out as they descend toward the United States. Anything less than that virtually guarantees that there will be no comprehensive arms control agreement.

The reason for this proposition, unpalatable though it may be to the arms control lobby, is rooted both in the changing character of nuclear weaponry and in the nature of Soviet strategic deployments. In the 1970s both sides enjoyed large strategic forces whose primary function was to pose the threat of annihilation to the other country. These systems were not susceptible to preemptive destruction. The emerging reality of the 1980s and 1990s is that both sides are deploying far more accurate weapons. These weapons are capable of a preemptive first strike that could eliminate the opponent's strategic forces--and prevent effective retaliation. For the first time it is possible to contemplate the possibility of an attack that destroys an overwhelming majority of the other side's forces while also disrupting its command and communications structures to such an extent that any response would be marginal, spasmodic and conceivably not totally destructive. In short, as accuracy increases so does the benefit of striking first.

This is not to argue that the Soviets (or the United States) are likely or certain to launch a first strike. It is simply to say that the nuclear relationship is growing ever more precarious. This is the current danger in the American-Soviet military situation. It needs to be addressed and resolved by the arms control process, if possible; or unilaterally, if arms control remains stalemated.

But there is another problem raised by the advent of the highly accurate weaponry. The Soviet Union is now deploying such forces in large numbers; the United States is not. How can we negotiate effectively in this situation? We somehow have to convince the Soviets to limit the further deployment of their new SS-24 and SS-25 missiles, and to limit significantly the deployment of existing SS-18s and SS-19s, all of which have counterforce capability. Without such limitations, by the early 1990s the Soviets--even by conservative estimates--will have enough missiles to place the entire U.S. arsenal in jeopardy. Only our Trident and Poseidon submarines already out at sea might escape destruction from a Soviet first strike. And with the confusion and resulting disintegration of communications systems, the submarine forces might not be in a position to retaliate effectively.

In contrast, the United States is not likely to be able to threaten the Soviet Union in a comparable way. No ongoing or likely deployment program will enable us to launch a disarming attack. Even if the U.S. had some form of strategic defense in order to protect its missile forces, we would still have far too few MX missiles, D-5 missiles on Trident submarines, and Midgetmen to even permit contemplation of such a disarming first-strike attack at any point between now and the end of the century.

In these circumstances, the decision to go ahead with the SDI makes eminent sense. But it also means reformulating it politically and strategically. The U.S. should drop or at least de-emphasize President Reagan's idealistic hope for total nuclear defense for all our population. We should also abandon our unwillingness to consider SDI in the bargaining process. If we implement that part of the SDI program which by the mid-1990s would enable us to disrupt a Soviet first strike, we would reinforce deterrence and promote nuclear stability. That means concentrating on terminal defense and boost-phase interception.

Once we establish our determination to act on the SDI, we are in a better position to strike a bargain. We can say to the Soviets that we both face essentially two choices, one mutually beneficial, the other especially costly to them, but both stabilizing. The first choice is to renegotiate the 1972 ABM treaty to permit deployment of strategic missile defense, but without either side improving its ability to carry out a first strike. Then, in return for significant reductions in SS-24s, SS-25s, SS-18s, and SS-19s, the United States would not deploy its strategic defense system. The second option would be pursued if Soviets were unwilling to accept such a bargain. The United States would unilaterally terminate the ABM treaty and proceed with the SDI. This would render the Soviets' new generation of accurate missiles useless and wipe out their multibillion ruble investment in them.

Some critics of the SDI argue that the Soviets could respond by vastly increasing their offensive deployments. There are two problems with this line of thinking. First, if the Soviets do respond by building up, they will confirm the ominous suspicion that they are intent on preserving a first-strike capability against the United States; if so, the urgency of negating that threat is all the greater.

Second, if the Soviets expand their offensive forces, the strategic defense could be expanded proportionally. Remember that such a system would not need to be foolproof since it would not be designed to defend populations; it would only need to be capable of significantly disrupting an attack on U.S. strategic forces. In such a competition we would have the advantage. It would be far cheaper for us to add defensive missiles than for them to add highly accurate offensive missiles. (Those who make the most ambitious claims for the SDI should bear in mind that we could not compete so well if we were seeking to build a foolproof defense of our cities. If our defense had to be 100 percent effective, it would cost us far more to expand it than it would cost the Soviets to expand their offensive forces.)

To shape such an effective U.S. defense strategy and a meaningful negotiating posture, President Reagan's SDI needs to be redefined. We must show the Soviets both that we can deploy a strategic defense system soon and that we will negotiate over its deployment if they are willing to make stabilizing reductions in their offensive missile forces. In the event of Soviet unwillingness to accept such an arrangement, we would be in position unilaterally to achieve strategic security for ourselves. And because the SDI would not be accompanied by a massive deployment of disarming first-strike offensive U.S. systems, we would in no way increase our strategic threat to the Soviets. Either way SDI promises a genuinely stabilized nuclear equilibrium between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is time to act.

"A Star Wars Solution" by Zbigniew Brzezinski in The New Republic, July 8, 1985, pp. 16-18.

Reagan Sees Red in Nicaragua (1986)
Central America was shaken by political turmoil in the Reagan years. El Salvador, thrown into chaos by a coup in 1979, was finally stabilized only with the help of U.S. military "advisers." In the same year, a revolution in Nicaragua against the dictator Somoza brought to power a leftist government (the Sandinistas) that President Reagan regarded as a festering thorn in his flesh. He tried repeatedly to win congressional approval for sending military aid to the Nicaraguan "contras," or antigovernment rebels. But American memories of the bloody disaster of Vietnam were still vivid, and Congress balked at giving the president the authority he wanted. On March 16, 1986, President Reagan made the following case for his policy in an emotional television address. What are his strongest and weakest arguments? How convincing are his historical analogies?

My fellow Americans, I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States. This danger will not go away; it will grow worse, much worse, if we fail to take action now.

I am speaking of Nicaragua, a Soviet ally on the American mainland only two hours' flying time from our own borders. With over a billion dollars in Soviet-bloc-aid, the Communist Government of Nicaragua has launched a campaign to subvert and topple its democratic neighbors.

Using Nicaragua as a base, the Soviets and Cubans can become the dominant power in the crucial corridor between North and South America. Established there they will be in a position to threaten the Panama Canal, interdict our vital Caribbean sea lanes and, ultimately, move against Mexico. Should that happen, desperate Latin peoples by the millions would begin fleeing north into the cities of the southern United States, or to wherever some hope of freedom remained.

The United States Congress has before it a proposal to help stop this threat. The legislation is an aid package of $100 million for the more than 20,000 freedom fighters struggling to bring democracy to their country and eliminate this Communist menace at its source. But this $100 million is not an additional $100 million. We are not asking for a single dime in new money. We are asking only to be permitted to switch a small part of our present defense budget--to the defense of our own southern frontier.

Gathered in Nicaragua already are thousands of Cuban military advisers, contingents of Soviet and East Germans and all the elements of international terror--from the P.L.O. [Palestine Liberation Organization] to Italy's Red Brigades. Why are they there? Because, as Colonel Qaddafi has publicly exalted: "Nicaragua means a great thing, it means fighting America near its borders. Fighting America at its doorstep."

For our own security the United States must deny the Soviet Union a beachhead in North America. But let me make one thing plain, I am not talking about American troops. They are not needed; they have not been requested. The democratic resistance fighting in the Nicaragua is only asking America for the supplies and support to save their own country from Communism.

The question the Congress of the United States will now answer is a simple one: Will we give the Nicaraguan's democratic resistance the means to recapture their betrayed revolution, or will we turn our backs and ignore the malignancy in Managua until it spreads and becomes a mortal threat to the entire New World?

Will we permit the Soviet Union to put a second Cuba, a second Libya, right on the doorsteps of the United States?

How can such a small country pose such a great threat? It is not Nicaragua alone that threatens us, but those using Nicaragua as a privileged sanctuary for their struggle against the United States.

Their first target is Nicaragua's neighbors. With an army and militia of 120,000 men, backed by more than 3,000 Cuban military advisers, Nicaragua's armed forces are the largest Central America has ever seen. The Nicaraguan military machine is more powerful than all its neighbors combined. . . .

If maps, statistics and facts aren't persuasive enough, we have the words of the Sandinistas and Soviets themselves. One of the highest-level Sandinista leaders was asked by an American magazine whether their Communist revolution will--and I quote--"be exported to El Salvador, then Guatemala, then Honduras, then Mexico?" He responded, "That is one historical prophecy of Ronald Reagan's that is absolutely true."

The Soviets have been no less candid. A few years ago, then Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko noted that Central America was "boiling like a cauldron" and ripe for revolution. In a Moscow meeting in 1983, Soviet Chief of Staff, Marshal Ogarkov, declared: "Over two decades ago there was only Cuba in Latin America. Today there are Nicaragua, Grenada and a serious battle is going on in El Salvador."

But we don't need their quotes; the American forces who liberated Grenada captured thousands of documents that demonstrated Soviet intent to bring Communist revolution home to the Western Hemisphere.

So, we are clear on the intentions of the Sandinistas and those who back them. Let us be equally clear about the nature of their regime. To begin with, the Sandinistas have revoked the civil liberties of the Nicaraguan people, depriving them of any legal right to speak, to publish, to assemble or to worship freely. Independent newspapers have been shut down. There is no longer any independent labor movement in Nicaragua nor any right to strike. . . .

Like Communist governments everywhere, the Sandinistas have launched assaults against ethnic and religious groups. The capital's only synagogue was desecrated and firebombed--the entire Jewish community forced to flee Nicaragua. Protestant Bible meetings have been broken up by raids, by mob violence, by machine guns. The Catholic Church has been singled out--priests have been expelled from the country. Catholics beaten in the streets after attending mass. The Catholic Primate of Nicaragua, Cardinal Obando y Bravo, has put the matter forthrightly: "We want to state clearly that this Government is totalitarian. We are dealing with an enemy of the church."

Evangelical pastor Prudencio Baltodano found out he was on his Sandinista hit list, when an army patrol asked his name: "You don't know what we do to the evangelical pastors. We don't believe in God," they told him. Pastor Baltodano was tied to a tree, struck in the forehead with a rifle butt, stabbed in the neck with a bayonet--finally his ears were cut off, and he was left for dead. "See if your God will save you," they mocked. Well, God did have other plans for Pastor Baltodano. He lived to tell the world his story--to tell it, among other places, right here in the White House.

I could go on about this nightmare--the blacklist, the secret prisons, the Sandinista-directed mob violence. But, as if all this brutality at home were not enough, the Sandinistas are transforming their nation into a safe house, a command post for the international terror.

The Sandinistas not only sponsor terror in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras--terror that led last summer to the murder of four U.S. marines in a cafe in Salvador--they provide a sanctuary for terror. Italy has charged Nicaragua with harboring their worst terrorists, the Red Brigades.

The Sandinistas have been involved themselves in the international drug trade. I know every American parent concerned about the drug problem will be outraged to learn that top Nicaraguan Government officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking. This picture, secretly taken at a military airfield outside Managua, shows Federico Vaughn, a top aide to one of the nine commandantes who rule Nicaragua, loading an aircraft with illegal narcotics, bound for the United States.

No there seems to be no crime to which the Sandinistas will not stoop--this is an outlaw regime. . . .

Through this crucial part of the Western Hemisphere passes almost half our foreign trade, more than half our imports of crude oil and a significant portion of the military supplies we would have to send to the NATO alliance in the event of a crisis. These are the choke points where the sea lanes could be closed.

Central America is strategic to our Western alliance, a fact always understood by foreign enemies. In World War II, only a few German U-boats, operating from bases 4,000 miles away in Germany and occupied Europe, inflicted crippling losses on U.S. shipping right off our southern coast.

Today, Warsaw Pact engineers are building a deep-water port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, similar to the naval base in Cuba for Soviet-built submarines. They are also constructing, outside Managua, the largest military airfield in Central America--similar to those in Cuba, from which Russian Bear bombers patrol the U.S. East Coast from Maine to Florida.

How did this menace to the peace and security of our Latin neighbors--and ultimately ourselves--suddenly emerge? Let me give you a brief history.

In 1979, the people of Nicaragua rose up and overthrew a corrupt dictatorship. At first the revolutionary leaders promised free elections and respect for human rights. But among them was an organization called the Sandinistas. Theirs was a Communist organization, and their support of the revolutionary goals was sheer deceit. Quickly and ruthlessly, they took complete control.

Two months after the revolution, the Sandinista leadership met in secret, and, in what came to be known as the "72-hour document," described themselves as the "vanguard" of a revolution that would sweep Central America, Latin America and finally the world. Their true enemy, they declared: the United States.

Rather than make this document public, they followed the advice of Fidel Castro, who told them to put on a facade of democracy. While Castro viewed the democratic elements in Nicaragua with contempt, he urged his Nicaraguan friends to keep some of them in their coalition--in minor posts--as window dressing to deceive the West. That way, Castro said, you can have your revolution, and the Americans will pay for it.

And we did pay for it. More aid flowed to Nicaragua from the United States in the first 18 months under the Sandinistas than from any other country. Only when the mask fell, and the face of the totalitarianism became visible to the world, did the aid stop.

Confronted with this emerging threat, early in our Administration I went to Congress and, with bipartisan support, managed to get help for the nations surrounding Nicaragua. Some of you may remember the inspiring scene when the people of El Salvador braved the threats and gunfire of Communist guerrillas--guerrillas directed and supplied from Nicaragua--and went to the polls to vote decisively for democracy. For the Communists in El Salvador it was a humiliating defeat.

But there was another factor the Communists never counted on, a factor that now promises to give freedom a second chance--the freedom fighters of Nicaragua.

You see, when the Sandinistas betrayed the revolution, many who had fought the old Somoza dictatorship literally took to the hills, and like the French Resistance that fought the Nazis, began fighting the Soviet bloc Communists and the Nicaraguan collaborators. These few have now been joined by thousands.

With their blood and courage, the freedom fighters of Nicaragua have pinned down the Sandinista Army and bought the people of Central America precious time. We Americans owe them a debt of gratitude. In helping to thwart the Sandinistas and their Soviet mentors, the resistance has contributed directly to the security of the United States.

Since its inception in 1982, the democratic resistance has grown dramatically in strength. Today it numbers more than 20,000 volunteers and more come every day. But now the freedom fighters' supplies are running short, and they are virtually defenseless against the helicopter gunships Moscow has sent to Managua.

Now comes the crucial test for the Congress of the United States. Will they provide the assistance the freedom fighters need to deal with Russian tanks and gunships--or will they abandon the democratic resistance to its Communist enemy?

In answering this question, I hope Congress will reflect deeply upon what it is the resistance is fighting against in Nicaragua:

Ask yourselves, what in the world are Soviets, East Germans, Bulgarians, North Koreans, Cubans and terrorists from the P.L.O. and the Red Brigades doing in our hemisphere, camped on our own doorstep? Is that for peace?

Why have the Soviets invested $600 million to build Nicaragua into an armed force almost the size of Mexico's, a country 15 times as large, and 25 times as populous? Is that for peace?

Why did Nicaragua's dictator, Daniel Ortega, go [to] the Communist Party Congress in Havana and endorse Castro's cause for the worldwide triumph of Communism? Was that for peace?

Some members of Congress asked me, Why not negotiate? Good question--let me answer it directly. We have sought--and still seek--a negotiated peace and a democratic future in a free Nicaragua. Ten times we have met and tried to reason with the Sandinistas. Ten times we were rebuffed. Last year, we endorsed church-mediated negotiations between the regime and the resistance. The Soviets and the Sandinistas responded with a rapid arms buildup of mortars, tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships.

Clearly, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact have grasped the great stakes involved, the strategic importance of Nicaragua. The Soviets have made their decision--to support the Communists. Fidel Castro has made his decision--to support the Communists. Arafat, Qaddafi, and the Ayatollah have made their decision--to support the Communists. Now, we must make our decision. With Congress' help, we can prevent an outcome deeply injurious to the national security of the United States.

If we fail, there will be no evading responsibility, history will hold us accountable.

This is not some narrow partisan issue; it is a national security issue, an issue on which we must act not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans.

Forty years ago, Republicans and Democrats joined together behind the Truman Doctrine. It must be our policy, Harry Truman declared, to support peoples struggling to preserve their freedom. Under that doctrine, Congress sent aid to Greece just in time to save that country from the closing grip of a Communist tyranny. We saved freedom in Greece then--and with that same bipartisan spirit we can save freedom in Nicaragua today.

Over the coming days, I will continue the dialogue with members of Congress, talking to them, listening to them, hearing out their concerns. Senator Scoop Jackson, who led the fight on Capital Hill for an awareness of danger in Central America, said it best: On matters of national security, the best politics is no politics.

You know, recently one of our most distinguished Americans, Clare Booth Luce, had this to say about the coming vote.

"In considering this crisis," Mrs. Luce said, "My mind goes back to a similar moment in our history--back to the first years after Cuba had fallen to Fidel. One day during those years, I had lunch at the White House with a man I had known since he was a boy--John F. Kennedy. 'Mr. President,' I said, 'no matter how exalted or great a man may be, history will have time to give him no more than one sentence. George Washington--he founded our country. Abraham Lincoln--he freed the slaves and preserved the union. Winston Churchill--he saved Europe.'"

"'And what, Clare,' John Kennedy said, 'do you believe my sentence will be?'"

"'Mr. President,' she answered, 'your sentence will be that you stopped the Communists--or that you did not.'"

Tragically, John Kennedy never had the chance to decide which that would be. Now, leaders of our own time must do so. My fellow Americans, you know where I stand. The Soviets and the Sandinistas must not be permitted to crush freedom in Central America and threaten our own security on our own doorstep.

Now the Congress must decide where it stands. Mrs. Luce ended by saying: "Only this is certain. Through all time to come, this, the 99th Congress of the United States, will be remembered as that body of men and women that either stopped the Communists before it was too late--or did not."

So tonight I ask you to do what you have done so often in the past. Get in touch with your representatives and senators and urge them to vote yes; tell them to help the freedom fighters--help us prevent a Communist takeover of Central America.

I have only three years left to serve my country, three years to carry out the responsibilities you have entrusted to me, three years to work for peace. Could there be any greater tragedy than for us to sit back and permit this cancer to spread, leaving my successor to face far more agonizing decisions in the years ahead? The freedom fighters seek a political solution. They are willing to lay down their arms and negotiate to restore the original goals of the revolution. A democracy in which the people of Nicaragua choose their own government, that is our goal also, but it can only come if the democratic resistance is able to bring pressure to bear on those who have seized power.

We still have time to do what must be done so history will say of us, We had the vision, the courage and good sense to come together and act--Republicans and Democrats--when the price was not high and the risks were not great. We left America safe, we left America secure, we left America free, still a beacon of hope to mankind, still a light [u]nto the nations.

Thank you and God bless you.

New York Times, March 17, 1986, p. 8.

A Journalist Urges Caution in Nicaragua (1986)
Tad Szulc, an experienced reporter on Caribbean affairs, saw some disturbing parallels between Reagan's proposed steps in Central America and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during John F. Kennedy's presidency. How convincing is he? What similarities in the two situations are most disturbing?

April 17 marks the nearly forgotten 25th anniversary of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba--organized, financed and directed by the United States. That sorry enterprise provides an uncannily real analogy with President Reagan's latest efforts to arm the Nicaraguan contras in order finally to oust the Sandinistas. Congress may do well to ponder this analogy as it prepares to vote on President Reagan's request for $100 million in new aid to the rebels.

There is, to begin with, an eerie similarity in the assumptions underlying United States involvement in Cuba 25 years ago and in Nicaragua today. There are also parallels in the sequence of policy making decisions that gradually linked United States geopolitical objectives, first with Cuba, now with Nicaragua.

In the case of Nicaragua, the White House began by asserting that the Sandinistas were threatening to spread the virus of Communism throughout Central America. A secret decision was made, apparently in the early days of the Reagan Administration, in the National Security Council to uproot Managua's Marxist-Leninist leadership. This was followed by the self-serving declaration that most Nicaraguans were determined to be rid of the Sandinistas and that all it would take to help them accomplish this would be clever paramilitary support provided by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In the case of Cuba, the National Security Council met on March 10, 1959, to discuss, in secret, ways to "bring another Government to power." This was barely two months after Fidel Castro swept into power with overwhelming national support for his social revolution.

On March 17, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime" because Fidel Castro was moving toward Communism and a stronger relationship with the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, his Administration had begun to develop a paramilitary force outside of Cuba for "future guerrilla action."

On Feb. 3, 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a "Military Evaluation of the C.I.A. Paramilitary Plan--Cuba," but with the warning that "it is obvious that ultimate success will depend upon political factors, i.e., a sizable popular uprising or substantial follow-on forces."

However, the C.I.A. misled President John F. Kennedy about the likelihood of an uprising after the landing of the Cuban exiles' brigade. Secretary of State Dean Rusk later told a Presidential board of inquiry "that the uprising was utterly essential to success."

No major uprising occurred in Cuba along with the landing, and not only because Mr. Castro had had the foresight to round up thousands of potential opponents. Even those who had become increasingly disenchanted with Mr. Castro refused to welcome what they suspected to be a United States-engineered return to the status quo of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship--indeed, the invading forces included several Batista officers.

Let us now turn to the Nicaraguan rerun of the Bay of Pigs operations.

Obviously, the conditions are not identical. The Sandinista commandantes have been in power for nearly seven years, and, notwithstanding their generally appalling leadership they have managed to consolidate their police and political hold on the population. Bad as life is in Nicaragua, and repressive as the Government's internal policies may be, the masses have not rushed to join or support the contras after nearly four years of C.I.A. entreaties.

In other repressive societies, the people have risen against well-armed dictatorships--as in Poland with Solidarity, and in the Philippines--without C.I.A. manipulations. They have had convincing reasons to rebel, and they have done so with clean hands. Clearly, this point entirely escapes President Reagan when he compares the contras with the Filipinos or real freedom fighters elsewhere in the world.

Despite its failures, the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 has brought considerable social justice and care to Nicaragua's impoverished people. The United States cannot ignore this fact any more than it can ignore the strong nationalistic sentiments of the Nicaraguan people arising, in part, from earlier armed interventions by United States Marines.

Nor can it ignore the fact that the leadership of the contras is probably as repugnant to ordinary Nicaraguans as the leadership of the Bay of Pigs force was to the ordinary Cuban 25 years ago. That the contras are led by key officers of the old Somoza dictatorship's National Guard, the main oppressors of the population in the old days, is either sheer C.I.A. folly or a confession that no better leaders could be produced.

The Administration confronts this argument by pointing out that respected democrats from the first Sandinista regime, including Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, are members of the umbrella political organization attached to the contras, and that this in turn suggests the existence of widespread support inside Nicaragua for the anti-Sandinista effort.

Here again the Cuban experience is instructive. The C.I.A.-backed Democratic Revolution Front was headed by José Miró Cardona, the first Prime Minister after the Cuban revolution, and included Manuel Ray, who had been Mr. Castro's liberal-minded public works minister. But despite their individual popularity, and the fact that they had been dismissed by an increasingly radical Fidel Castro, they did not have significant backing inside Cuba, and when the invasion came, the C.I.A.-controlled Democratic Revolutionary Front turned out to be totally useless.

Just as the C.I.A. misled the Kennedy Administration about the internal support for the exiles' invasion, the Reagan Administration--equally misleadingly--applies self-fulfilling prophecies to the Nicaraguan dispute. The President says he is willing to forget the contras if Managua agrees to negotiate, but what he evidently means by negotiation is either a Sandinista capitulation or power-sharing with the contra-backed opposition outside the country.

Since, as President Reagan must realize, this is an unacceptable proposition to any government, he will be able to proclaim that, having turned down his peacemaking ultimatum, Nicaragua is now fair game for the use of force. And at that juncture he will have trapped himself.

Recent history shows that the United States can impose its will in Latin America only by applying or threatening the use of its armed forces. The leftist regime in Guatemala was thrown out in 1954 by a ragtag guerrilla army directed by United States officers, ushering in a corrupt rightist dictatorship. In 1965, it took two United States combat divisions to make the civil war in the Dominican Republic come out our way. In 1983, tiny Grenada was simply knocked out by American forces.

What happens, therefore, in Nicaragua if the contras, even with a fresh $100 million, fail to win their war? Will President Reagan, in desperation, order the use of American troops there? This is the one thing that John F. Kennedy chose not to do at the Bay of Pigs.

"Nicaragua, an Echo of the Bay of Pigs" by Tad Szulc (March 16, 1986): section E, p. 25.

A Film Critic Assesses Oliver North (1987)
As the congressional inquiry into the Iran-contra scandal ground on in the summer of 1987, boyish-looking Marine Colonel Oliver North appeared on millions of American television screens as a kind of national hero: vigorous, resolute, can-do, proud, unapologetic. He was later convicted of federal crimes for his role in the scandal. Here movie critic David Denby suggests some of the reasons why North was popularly lionized even while exposing himself as a criminal with small respect for the Constitution. What does Denby's analysis suggest about the power of the media in modern America? about the public's understanding of fundamental political and ethical values?

America has just had a profound movie experience. A frightening one, too. The face that was gazed at, studied, and apparently loved, day after day--Oliver North's face--possessed the power and guile of an actor's instrument. A myth became flesh, and most people reacted as if they were still looking at a myth.

The signs of North's mastery of movie iconography were unmistakable. In the movies, a good actor's features and voice become a map of moral significance. The raising of an eyebrow is an opening to a soul, an emotional review of an entire life; the curve of a lip suggests a readiness for love or death. What the actor does in his roles becomes less important to audiences than their conviction that he is real when he is doing it. They know: they can read his face. In a few days Oliver North achieved that kind of belief, and the trust that comes with it.

How else to explain what North got away with at the Iran-contra hearings? He turned the event into an appreciation of his "sincerity." His admission of numerous illegal acts became proof of his commitment to what he believed in; the admission of innumerable lies became proof of his veracity. The paradoxes were dazzling. He gave people the glimpse of a deeply anti-democratic mind--the mind, say, of a young Argentine officer preparing a coup--and they saw a moral man. His audience was willing to follow him, as they followed James Cagney, through evil moments as well as good. He projected heroic sweetness and candor mixed with a stern adherence to duty. When he said that the hearing had brought disgrace on the country, no one replied that on the contrary it was his behavior that had brought the disgrace. No one dared straighten out his arrogant muddle. He was perceived to have an essence that remained incorruptible apart from his acts. He conveyed an aesthetic impression of rectitude that was assigned moral significance by an audience too lazy to work out the difference. The meaning of his conduct, and the point of the inquiry into it, got completely lost.

Mere handsomeness didn't do the trick. It never has. All truly successful faces are ambiguous, containing contradictory elements, touches of disharmony, waywardness, mystery, and rage. A face that expresses only one thing is understood too easily and judged as unequal to the complexity of the world. In a word, it is the face of the character actor rather than a leading man. North is not "straight from Central Casting." If he had looked and acted like a drill sergeant, he wouldn't have impressed anyone. But North possesses the kind of rich ambiguity that Gary Cooper had for three decades and Paul Newman has today. That is part of the reason he struck so many as credible and even heroic--even those who "disapprove" of his acts.

Look at the features again. The jawline is clean and strong, the chin not blatantly square but beautifully molded and thrusting. The mouth is handsome, its thin lips pressed together suggesting determination, resolve. The cheeks are grayed and slightly shiny from vigorous shaving of a strong beard (though the shadow stops at an attractive three o'clock). So far, all is manly, straightforward, earnest. But North's mouth, when it opens, reveals boyishly gapped teeth, a reminder of rogue escapades, pleasure in deception, and midnight trips to the airfield. The impression of roughneck joys is boosted by the ears, which, like Clark Gable's, stick out nicely--a bad boy's badge. And the hair is a masterpiece--short, but not too short, with a clear part (no Paris Island DI's brushcut here), and a slight but unmistakable cowlick--the child who once drank milk is still alive in the man. At the same time--no end of miracles!--North's hair is flecked with enough gray to suggest experience, judgment, maturity. The ambiguities are all in place.

If his appearance came from God and the Marine Corps, the use he made of it came from MGM. When he listens, he gazes directly at the speaker, blinking rarely, more serious than Joan Crawford; and when he speaks, he raises his face slightly, sometimes in yearning (as if to appeal to the gods of right reason whose demands he at least has always honored), but often in defiance, a lone hero surrounded by fools, cowards, and weaklings. His high-mindedness is unrelenting, a mortification to the rest of us. He may have moments of humor, but never triviality. No matter how much we care about the state of the world, he cares more.

His politeness, of course, is ironic, an obvious imitation of Clint Eastwood's joking mildness. At the hearing, his deferential tone honors the civics-class value of the congressman he addresses--the office but not the man. Husky but never guttural, his voice cracks with emotion at every mention of the bruised contras and then hardens again at those who would threaten to abandon them. Boyishness and fearlessness, ardor and experience, youth and tragic knowledge of the "dirty world"--all the mythic elements that a leading man must convey are there, all larger than life and impeccably displayed within clear "moral" coordinates. He is a complex man whom everyone can read.

The movie antecedents are not just Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda, but, more centrally, James Stewart. Especially Stewart the small-town idealist in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the hick who almost falls victim to the capital's cynicism but triumphs in the end, his victory urged on and celebrated by a storm of telegrams. More than once, North was on the verge of dissolving into tears, as Stewart had, but valiantly he held back. John Wayne is there as well in the swaggering touches, the almost masochistic readiness to suffer, endure, die.

But most of all, North is a chip off the old block. The model is not so much Ronald Reagan the star of Kings Row as it is Reagan the President. The superbly timed catch in the voice, the mixture of truculence and maudlin self-pity; the anecdotal view of world politics; the habit of referring to himself, with rueful affection, in the third person, as if he too were a fan of Ollie North's, and one with a generous degree of tolerance for the hero's occasional lapses--it is Ronnie all over. Seeing himself as a hero, he experiences a high degree of indignation when others differ. What role does he play? Himself, of course. An American leading man always plays himself.

So Oliver North is "sincere." But why does that matter to anyone? Pathological liars, terrorists, and military dictators are sincere too. It's a measure of how thoroughly values in this country have become subsumed to media considerations that "sincerity"--i.e., how well someone plays himself--becomes an issue in the Iran-contra hearings. In this country, we no longer have a culture and a set of standards that we can draw on in times of trouble--a way, short of the law, of judging anything. There's no center, no core, just endless media images that are believed or not believed, and anyone who tries to see something for what it is risks sounding priggish, dull, and out of it.

In the Reagan period, all of this has been noticed often enough, but North's performance may have marked the first time that appearances ever hustled the Constitution off the stage. Faced with a star turn like North's, reporters and media personalities with a reputation for critical acumen either kept their mouths shut--as if, suddenly, their own opinions had become worthless--or jumped on the bandwagon, connoisseurs of the image-maker's success. The man was a hit, and that was all that mattered. This awe-struck manner before a box-office smash disgraced a proud profession. A myth was ready, the residue of 200 years of American bullying, American "archetypes," and 50 years of the movies, and a man stepped into it. Better get out of the way.

As Arthur Liman pointed out, Oliver North displayed contempt for democratic values while claiming to uphold democracy. But that unsavory paradox didn't seem to bother the public much--they may well have felt irritation at Liman for pointing it out. North is a classic authoritarian personality--charismatic, self-dramatizing, a dreamer who dreamed himself and was blessed with the physical equipment and the skill to act the role. When we look at his face we should feel not love but fear. Or rather: one thing to be frightened of is the love that the face inspires.

David Denby, "Ollie North, The Movie," August 3, 1987, pp. 7-9. 

George Kennan Hails the End of the Cold War (1988)
Ronald Reagan came into the presidency in 1981 condemning the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" that knew no morality and could not be trusted. He ended his presidency by establishing cordial relations with new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and concluding a landmark treaty that removed intermediate nuclear forces (INF) from Europe. Some saw in these developments the end of the forty-five-year-old Cold War, a perception that was reinforced by the dramatic political changes that washed over Eastern Europe in 1989--sweeping oppressive communist regimes from power and apparently paving the way for lifting the "iron curtain" that had separated democratic from communist Europe since the end of World War II. George Kennan was the architect of the containment policy that had guided American relations with the Soviet Union from the 1940s through the 1980s (see Chapter 40, George Kennan Proposes Containment, 1946). In the following interview, he assesses the surprising and far-reaching changes set in motion in the Reagan years. How much credit does he give to the Reagan policies? How permanent does he believe the changes to be?

You have long been regarded as one of the American figures who best understands the "nature" of the Soviet system. Under Gorbachev, has the nature of the Soviet system changed in ways that no longer render it an inevitable threat to the West?

What kind of a threat--military or political? It is important to distinguish.

I have never thought of the Soviet Union as a military threat to this country--except during the Berlin blockade. Yet even then, Soviet motives were primarily defensive. Otherwise, since World War II, I have seen no evidence of Soviet desire or intention to attack us or our allies.

The Soviet Union was a serious political threat only in the immediate aftermath of World War II, primarily because Western Europe was politically and economically unstable. Since Western Europe recovered (largely through the Marshall Plan), the Soviet Union has scarcely been a political threat to us.

Given this, it is hard for me to say whether the Gorbachev reforms have made it less of a threat. However, no Soviet leader has had less incentive than Gorbachev to muddy the international waters by threatening the United States.

The task of internal economic and political reform he has undertaken is gargantuan and extremely difficult. Accomplishing it will require every ounce of energy and attention he can give. No international complication or tension can fail to detract from the success of his effort, and hence would not be welcome by him.

The strategy of containment outlined in your famous 1947 "X" article in Foreign Affairs sought to achieve several objectives: to block the expansion of Soviet power "short of war"; to expose the falsities of Soviet pretensions; to induce a retraction of Kremlin control and influence in the world; and to foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system so as to make its behavior conform to accepted international standards. Have these objectives been achieved? If so, is their achievement primarily the result of the internal evolution of the Soviet system, or a result of U.S. containment policy?

The strategy of containment embraced the hope, and envisaged the possibility, that it would lead to a "mellowing" of the rigidities of Stalinist power and to a Russia that would be easier for us to deal with.

This is precisely what has occurred. The change began with Stalin's death. It has been slow, but it has never been insignificant. And today, under Gorbachev's influence, change is proceeding faster than ever.

But these changes are primarily the result of forces operating within Soviet society: the general dislike of the Stalinist system (even within the party); the change of the generations; the influence of the non-Russian nationalities, as well as the Jews, within the Soviet empire; and the gradual recognition on the part of many people (outstandingly, Gorbachev himself) that the remaining Stalinist rigidities were seriously undermining the Soviet system and making it uncompetitive with the advanced countries of Asia and Europe.

To the extent that we have tended to overmilitarize our relationship with the Soviet Union, we have been more of a hindrance than a help to this "mellowing" process.

What do you mean by "Stalin's rigidities"?

I'm referring to the terrorism that affected the people closest to power even more than the mass of the population. The party itself abhorred Stalin's terror. The people around Stalin were immensely relieved when he died. If he hadn't died when he did, they would have surely tried to pull together and remove him. Everybody hated government by terror.

This feature of the Soviet system is gone. There is simply no comparison between the Gorbachev era and the Stalin years.

Is the Soviet system beyond reverting to Stalinism?

I don't think it could possibly revert to Stalinism. Brezhnev's death marked the end of Stalinist influence. There are very few remnants in the Soviet bureaucracy that remain loyal to Stalinist principles. Very few.

There are some people who would like to return to Brezhnevism, but every serious person in the senior ranks of the party realizes that even this is impossible. Even Yegor Ligachev, the man considered to be Gorbachev's chief opponent, realizes that there is no returning to what existed just ten years ago. He, too, is committed to perestroika.

How should the United States relate to a Soviet Union that has mellowed? Should we keep up the pressure of a "containment" policy?

In 1947, containment was devised against the political threat of international communism under Stalin's control, especially the Communist parties in France and Italy. Those parties are in no sense a danger today. In short, the notion of containment is today irrelevant.

Should we accommodate perestroika by loosening up trade and technology restrictions?

Yes. Of course we must limit the flow of technology that has sensitive military aspects to the Soviet Union or to any great power that is not an ally of this country. But beyond that we shouldn't attempt to influence the course of events in Russia very much. I don't think we can be successful in that, and I don't see why we should try to make things more difficult for Gorbachev. It is completely in our interest that Gorbachev succeed in his program of liberalization.

Would you venture to put a new name on what our strategy toward the Soviet Union should be today?

We should regard our relations with the Soviet Union today as being relations with a normal great power that is the heir to the congenital problems of the Russian empire. The communist aspect of it all has very little to do with the Soviet Union today.

The Marxist-Leninist ideology is a stale and sterile ritual to which lip service must be paid because it is the only ostensible source of legitimacy for the Communist party in Russia. Beyond that, nobody takes it seriously.

Gorbachev and his chief ally in the Politburo, Aleksandr Yakovlev, believe in socialism but not in communism in its world-revolutionary sense. That is clear. The whole rhetoric of communism that existed from Stalin to Brezhnev has now been abandoned.

Can U.S. public opinion and the politicians let go of the Soviet bogeyman as the defining point of our worldview?

I am skeptical about that possibility. A large segment of the American population has the need to cultivate the idea of American innocence and virtue--which requires an opposite pole of evil.

When will the Cold War be over?

I feel very strongly that the extreme military anxieties and rivalries that marked the high points of the Cold War have increasingly lost their rationale. Now they are predominantly matters of the past. The Cold War is outdated.

Of far greater importance are problems that demand collaboration between the Soviet Union and the United States. Of these, I cite global environmental deterioration; the need to manage the revolution in electronic communication; North-South economic relationships; and the situations in the Near and Middle East. Compared with the dangers these situations present, the perceptions of danger that inspired the Cold War are insignificant.

Yakovlev said similar things in an interview with this publication in Moscow last year. "The world has become multi-polar. With the revolution in electronics, it has become interwoven and interdependent. With nuclear weapons, war has become impossible. Ecologically, the world is interdependent." Are Yakovlev and Gorbachev sincere?

They are sincere. In adapting to the new global realities--especially the fact that military competition is less and less important in the affairs of great powers--they are more serious than people in high positions in this country.

We have a community of interests with the Soviets. The Soviet leaders today see this.

Have the Soviet leaders succeeded better than our own leaders in stepping out of the Cold War frame of mind and adapting to new realities?

Yes. They don't have to deal with a public opinion that can only be changed very slowly.

What worries me more than whether Gorbachev has changed the Soviet Union for the better is the American media's persistent dramatization of Cold War myths and stereotypes. The Soviets dropped the Cold War mentality. Now, it's up to us to do the same.

Adapted from "Obituary for the Cold War," an interview with George Kennan, appearing in New Perspectives Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2. 

A Political Scientist Sees a Continuing Soviet Threat (1988)
Angelo M. Codevilla, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, here takes a more cautious view than George Kennan toward the fast-moving diplomatic events of the late 1980s. On what does he base his caution? How valid is his suggestion that Americans will lose their national identity if they have no example of "tyranny" against which to define themselves?

On the campaign trail this fall, George Bush observed that as a result of policies pursued by the Reagan administration, "Peace is breaking out all over." He is not alone in this assessment, which is hardly limited to Republicans. According to Harold Brown, who served as Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration, the policy of "containment of the Soviet Union," originally devised by Democrats, "has succeeded."

Among policy intellectuals, too, there is a general consensus: although few may go so far as Stanley Hoffmann in proclaiming that in recent years the world has learned the inutility of force, many do believe (as Robert Scheer has written) that the Soviet Union has largely abandoned its side of the global tug-of-war and left the U.S. with a limp rope and an embarrassment of peace. Even the foreign-policy establishment's more sober wing appears to believe that, with the luxury of a reduced military-political threat, we can now concentrate on economic competition from Japan, Europe, and the newly industrialized nations of East Asia. As a piece in The Wall Street Journal put it, "After more than forty years of containing an enemy, the next administration faces the challenge of drawing up a security policy directed more at shared leadership in a world of powerful friends."

The case for the proposition that "peace is breaking out all over" rests, at best, on American hopes attached to Soviet actions. And there are indeed a few Soviet actions that may (or may not) be part of trends that may (or may not) lead to real peace in the long run: for example, some Soviet troops have left Afghanistan. The case also rests on American interpretations of the general Soviet situation, especially the economic situation, which, it is believed, should force profound changes in the direction of disarmament and peace. Finally, the case rests on American hopes attached to Soviet words--in particular on what Soviet officials say about a new defense emphasis in Soviet military doctrine and about a total pullback in Angola and Nicaragua.

The now highly unfashionable case to the contrary--that the Soviet Union is as much of a threat as ever, maybe more--is based on a different set of assessments: Soviet military power relative to that of the United States continues to grow, while Soviet efforts to cushion the consequences of military spending by acquiring Western capital and technology are more successful now than they have been in many years. [

The contest between these views is of the greatest significance for U.S. policy in the years ahead, regardless of which party controls the White House or the Congress. Shall we continue to cut our military budget in real terms, as (contrary to what many people imagine) we have done every year since 1985; or shall we spend whatever is needed to deter a war by preparing to fight, survive, and win one if it should nevertheless break out? Shall we help to finance and build up the Soviet economy; or shall we work to cut off its access to Western credits and expertise? Shall we help those who are fighting Soviet and Soviet-supported regimes, from Angola to Nicaragua to Poland; or shall we advise them to work as best they can within a Soviet empire that may be evolving in a good direction?

Another consideration is even more important. Ever since the Founding, we Americans have defined ourselves in opposition to tyranny. Since World War II, the ongoing need to counter the Soviet Union has served to remind us that the United States of America is not just another nation among nations but a beacon and a help to free men everywhere. Are we going to live by, or put aside, the concerns with political, personal, and religious liberty that the struggle against Soviet Communism has energized among us? A host of commitments, including our geopolitical relationship with Europe and Japan, make sense only in the context of opposition to Soviet Communism. Have they become obsolete?

In truth, much of the controversy in this country over what is and is not happening in the Soviet Union is really about what directions American policy should take. The focus is less on ascertaining Soviet reality than on vindicating one or another side in an intramural American quarrel. This sort of solipsism is unfortunate, because the extent to which the Soviet Union actually threatens us makes a big difference. It would be worse than wasteful to base our policy on opposition to the Soviet Union if that country were on its way to a true political transformation. But if that is not the case, we would by the same token be criminally foolish to repeat our mistakes of the 1970's (a succinct summary of which was offered at the time by Harold Brown: "When we stop, they build"). A serious, prudent evaluation of the Soviet threat must begin by eschewing the temptation to treat our own hopes or fears about the future as if they were an incontestable reality. . . .

Angelo M. Codevilla, "Is There Still a Soviet Threat?" November 1988