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TechnoratiOver the years, conservative America has transformed Ronald Reagan from president to icon to deity. You could see that in this year's first Republican debate, in which everybody on the stage was desperately trying to out-Reagan the others, hardly mentioning the current conservative occupant of the White House, and never, of course, reminding viewers of Reagan's divorce, his, er, rather early first-born child, his quadrupling of the national debt, his silence on AIDS, his debacle in Lebanon or the Iran-Contra affair.
To those omissions have been appended additions, as well, of equal veracity. The greatest of these, of course, is that Reagan defeated the Soviets and ended the Cold War. As we mark today the twentieth anniversary of the Gipper's "tear down this wall" speech, a veritable Hollywood production of misty-eyed adulation is once again surfacing around this myth, on a scale Cecil B. DeMille would admire.
I've noticed in recent years that conservatives no longer seem to do facts much anymore. Particularly the inconvenient kind, which - from Iraq to record deficits to global warming to Katrina - seem to be the sort mostly showing up nowadays.
Such is apparently the case with the Reagan tale. You might think, for instance, that one superpower conceding a monumental half-century long struggle without either side firing a shot at each other would seem improbable. You might think that the costly Soviet blunder in Afghanistan, the USSR's anemic economic system, the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, or even the aborted coup against him might have had something to do with the demise of the Evil Empire.
But, as Reagan himself would have said, "There you go again!" with those pesky facts and that annoying logic.
Meanwhile, it turns out according to documents recently unearthed from a drawer in somebody's desk at the Heritage Foundation, that it was indeed the case that Ronald Reagan not only spent the Soviet Union into defeat and submission, but even into their very demise - just as conservatives claim! We go now to a Soviet cabinet meeting in late 1991, as the fateful decision is being made.
President Mikhail Gorbachev: "Comrades, I've assembled you here today with grave news. As I see it, because of external pressures from the great cold warrior Reagan, we have to throw in the towel."
Entire Cabinet: Gasps. Mumbled expressions of bewilderment and exasperation.
Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov: "I think I speak for all of us here, Mikhail Sergeyevich, when I say that I do not understand how this can be. We are a strong country. We are a superpower!"
Gorbachev: "The problem is that Reagan has massively increased American defense spending. We simply cannot compete."
Prime Minister Vladimir Orlov: "But how does he pay for this absurdly expensive program?"
Gorbachev: "He is borrowing and spending like a drunken sailor."
Orlov: "Well, then Comrade President, whatever is the problem? Should we not hand this sailor another bottle of cheap vodka and stand by watching while he commits fiscal suicide?"
Gorbachev: "You are missing the point. With all this new military hardware, we can no longer compete with the Americans in the Third World."
Yazov: "Do I understand you to say that you want us to throw in the towel because we can no longer necessarily win a proxy war in Botswana?"
Gorbachev: "Don't try to be clever, comrade, it doesn't suit you. The situation is worse than that. We cannot even realistically defend Poland against an American attack."
KGB Director Vladimir Kryuchkov: "Reagan is a cowboy, that is for sure, but our intelligence confirms that he would never risk conflict with us on that scale, nor is there any support in Europe or even America for such a war. The Yanks have left us in place in Eastern Europe for fifty years. They will do so for another five hundred if necessary. May I remind the Comrade President that whatever else one can say about the state of this country, we still possess over twenty thousand strategic nuclear warheads aimed at the United States?"
Gorbachev: "It doesn't matter. You're not seeing the big picture here. We can't keep up with these guys."
Yazov: "So let us match them, then. If we spend less on housing and food and healthcare, we can afford all the expensive hardware Reagan is buying - just like they're doing. Do not forget, Mikhail Sergeyevich, that our people are patriots capable of sustaining the worst deprivations in order to support the motherland. We are Russians! That is what we do! Twenty million of us died in World War Two alone. If every one of us just turned down the heat in winter by two degrees, we could match the capitalists ruble for dollar."
Gorbachev: "Still, comrades, you don't get it. The game is over. We must throw in the towel."
Orlov: "You keep using that phrase. Just what does that mean?"
Gorbachev: "Everything. The entire piroshki."
Kryuchkov: "My goodness, you can't be serious! Are you saying that just because the Americans are spending themselves into penury for weapons they really cannot and dare not use against us, we must not only give up our outposts in the Third World and let our Eastern European empire go, but also retire from the Cold War and cease being a superpower?"
Gorbachev: "No, actually it's worse than that, comrade. We must also cease to exist as a country. Because of Reagan's build-up, we will henceforth be breaking the Soviet Union into fifteen separate countries. And we, my friends, no longer have our jobs, because the country we serve no longer exists."
Entire cabinet: Gasps, sighs, general consternation. "But why?!?!"
Gorbachev: "Because, my short-sighted former comrades, there are important myths to be served for the American right, and that, of course, is and must be our first priority."
Cabinet: "Ohhhhh... well, yes, of course. Now that you put it that way..."
And that's the true story, improbable as it may seem, of how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. The meeting was adjourned. The Soviet Union was demolished. And the heroic story of Reagan the Savior was preserved. Almost as if it came out of some B-rate Hollywood western...
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
23 Comments so far
Show AllGREAT piece.facts are a bit like cigarets,smoke 'em if you have 'em.the heritage foundation goes through facts like Agamemnon went through trojans.couldn't get enough.
The old soviet union was rotten to the core. Reagan just kicked in the door and the whole house collapsed.
I remember one tagline from an anti-Reagan TV spot (I don't remember if it was a Carter ad or an Anderson ad): "...now Ronald Reagan is auditioning for the biggest role of his life. Are you sure he should get the part?"
Everything he said or did was scripted and rehearsed, and many of the same prople who whote his scripts are doing the same thing for Dumbya. Those people have a vested interest in conflict, and the fall of the wall was actually the worst thing that could have happened. The "them" suddenly weren't there any more, so a new "them" was needed. Unfortunately, now most of the rest of the world is "them".
Thank you for your informative post, Edward1793.
I get really pissed off when I hear these flakes tell us that Ron Rayguns won the cold war. Let's get real. My parents generation and my generation won the cold war by PAYING FOR IT!. It was all the hard working Americans that paid the taxes to put all those hyper expensive nuclear war heads and ballistic missiles into the ground in the hopes that they would never be used. Talk about insane behavior. What great way to make money. Build all this expensive crap and bury it. Then upgrade them for 50, 60, 100, 200 years. Just like the American people won the cold war we can defeat the fascists in Washington. Only this time it will take more than money.
Reagan did not connect Soviet leaders until forced to by Nancy.
Reagan big Defense buildup had NOTHING to do with Soviet Decline.
Soviet military Spending was FLAT in Reagan first term and CUT by Gorby in the second term.
Reagan big spend was false.
He told aides "I will not let Carter be known as the Defense President".
Carter increased military spending by 50%(anyone ever give him credit). Nixon-Ford cut Army Combat Troops by 41%. Carter final budget proposed a 5% increase per year in "real" dollars for five years.
Reagan proposed 13%. House Democrats prevented it.
RR whined his budgets were DOA. True. Traded military dollars for social dollars.
Tear Down that Wall. It ws yelled to Reagan by a German woman in a morning speech. Reagan knew a good punch line.
Soviet Union was changed by Gorby with Glasnost nd Pertestroika.
A Man of Courage and Intelligence.
Star Wars. Gorby said it would give military cause to increase spending and he wanted to cut it.
He said it was a dumb idea.
Billions spent and even today our Pentagon says we cannot shoot down Russian ICBM in flight for they have multiple decoys with high heat emissions that will attract any oncoming missile.
The only way is to destory on launch. That is why Russians are upset over missiles in Burlgaria.
200 ICBM in ONE silo seven stories underground can destroy America in a few hours. Ten hi-tech nukes per missile. Hit Ft.Bragg NC and I am toast.
A massive research book by Russian scholars on the cause of Soviet demise is considered the Big one.
Find Reagan name in it.I could not. It was not in the index.
Conservatives have the press,talk shows and rich $$$$ to reinvent history.
Please show me ONE (1) number by which Reagan can be considered a Great president.
I await it. I made that claim to a major university history department and they said "none".
His big success(?) was the redistribution of income-wealth upwards.
His legacy shows 137 charged with crimes.
for details google-clarence swinney + reagan scandals.
clarence swinney--political research historian of reagan-clinton-bushII administrations since 1991.
cwswinney@netzero.net
There is an old folk tale of two kingdoms so afraid of one another they each bought a Watch-Dragon for protection, the problem was the Dragons were so hungry they ate everything the countries produced.
Prediction:
Bush will preside over the dissolution of the USA into 50 statelets, each with its' own currency.
Osama Bin Laden will claim credit for causing the USA to spend itself into bankruptcy battling Al Queda.
China will be the next superpower.
The Soviet Union failed because it thought it could use force to oppress people. And you can, for a while, but not forever.
The United States is using force to oppress people. But it won't last forever. As a matter of fact, it is slowly disintergrating as we speak.
Unfortunately, it will most likely be replaced by another oppressive form of government.
Until the people stand up and realize that knowledge is good, facing problems is better than ignoring them, that ignorance allows for injustices, and that we all lose when we allow society to commit acts of oppression, only then will it change. But I'm not holding my breath.
Truth and justice were never advanced during Ronald Raygun's folly, and in fact many of the current Bush politicos got their start under Raygun.
so it goes
AG
http://www.notonemore.us/staythecourse.htm - The President does not Cut and Run (slight humor)
Reagan: Just another deluded republican who came to believe his own lies. He lived in a make believe world and confused reality with delusion, and I'm not speaking about his later days with mental problems.
He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Central America, Afganistan, and other places around the world. Reagan was also the criminal that armed and supported Saddam Hussein, (in order to wage war against Iran, causing more deaths). There was also the questionable invasion of Granada, and prior destablization attempts.
He employed cheats, liars (Ollie North), con-men, and killers (CIA in Central America). His policies put the mentaly ill back on the street (elimination of social programs and closing of mental hospitals),which then became a law enforcement problem. His elimination of social programs caused thousands to become homeless and live on the street. In fact many homeless rights activists say the single most devastating thing Reagan did to create homelessness was when he cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor. Add this to Reagan's overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes and you had a major crisis for low-income families and individuals. Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988. But it wasn't just the poor he ignored, in 1981 it was also the start of the AIDS epidemic which Reagan ignored for over 6 years while thousands died. Reagan is responsible for the rapid spread of this disease through his lack of interest of a disease that was mostly directed (at the time)at Gays and drug users.
The Great communicator he was called, likened to a wise grandfatherly figure. In my opinion he was more like a Mafia Gangster god-father, ready to send his hired killers to wipe out opposition, and anybody else that didn't conform to his 50's era Hollywood make believe life.
Reagan was also supportative of South Afrikan apartheid government and even labeled Nelson Mandela's African National Congress a notorious terrorist organization
He was also notoriously anti-union. In the 1960's and 70's, as Governor of the State of California, Reagan fought the efforts of migrant farm workers to win union contracts, vetoing the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a bill granting farm workers collective bargaining rights. In one well-publicized episode, then-Governor Reagan appeared on television eating grapes in defiance of a union-sponsored boycott against miserable working conditions in California's vineyards.
In August of 1981, thirteen thousand members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, ignored federal laws prohibiting strikes and walked off the job in protest of long shifts and mandatory overtime. Reagan made good on his promise, firing more than eleven thousand air traffic controllers, jailing strike leaders and ultimately abolishing the union. It was the first time in U.S. history that permanent replacement workers had been used on such a wide scale to break a strike.
In the late 1940's, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild union, Ronald Reagan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on "subversive activity" (communist activity) in Hollywood, reporting on actors, directors, and screenwriters deemed Communist sympathizers.
And what did he really do for us? Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the ultra conservative staff that Reagan hired, are some of the same criminals that we have working for the current occupant in the white house.
Overall, Reagan was not only an incompetent president, but he was a very evil person.
Today George W Bush is fulfulling the Republican King Ronnie fantasy in reverse - bankrupting America with astronomical spending and unprecedented debt to prosecute a Mideast war which we never should have started. Thus the Republicans not only fail to record or recall history accurately, but take no lessons from their own warped interpretation.
I am writing in response to this sentence of yours:
"You might think that the costly Soviet blunder in Afghanistan, the USSR's anemic economic system, the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, or even the aborted coup against him might have had something to do with the demise of the Evil Empire."
While I agree with the premise of your essay - that the idea that Soviet Union collapsed because it could not keep up with Reagan's military spending is nothing but right wing propaganda used to falsely credit Ronald Reagan with ending the cold war- you have left out the most important reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The straw that broke the camels back was the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. If you ask people who were in the effected areas at the time, they will tell you that The Soviet Union collapsed because of Chernobyl. The first government to declare that it was no longer a part of the Union was Belarus, and at the time the President said that it was a direct result of and direct rebellion against their treatment in the experience with Chernobyl, of being told to counter the effects by sending hundreds of thousands of its citizens into the radioactive zone to deal with it with shovels and then being told that the resulting health effects were imaginary. The Soviet Union, already burdened by the war and 600 billion in Chernobyl related expenses, now faced outright rebellion and could not do anything about the secession. Other countries, seeing what they could get away with, soon joined Belarus.
If you are interested in the exact quote of the President and the source, I might be able to dig it up. I have it here somewhere. I think I read it in Utne Magazine.
You are right to question what The Soviet military spending to catch up with Reagan would involve. More missiles, more soldiers in Germany? What are the figures ? We never hear the specifics, and I think there is a reason: even with Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union was not inclined to greatly increase spending on missiles or soldiers in Eastern Europe. It never happened. If that increase had actually happened, then Eastern Europe would have not been able to secede.
The US was partially responsible for the problems The Soviet Union had in Afghanistan, but I think you'll find that the amount that the US actually spent there was not that great, and that most of the money it spend was supporting Al-Qaeda's Afghanistan operations. It was certainly not enough to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. If it were, then the salient point would be that American Support for Al-Qaeda ended the Cold War.
"As we mark today the twentieth anniversary of the Gipper's "tear down this wall" speech, a veritable Hollywood production of misty-eyed adulation is once again surfacing around this myth, on a scale Cecil B. DeMille would admire."
Some of us non-Americans have long memories. I remember the day this "tear down this wall" production number made its debut. I and my pals in grad school thought we would pee our pants laughing. We were dumb enough to believe that the press would have a field day taking it apart. That laughter slowly turned to awe over the years since then -- awe at the way in which the vast majority of Americans have been made to believe this bulls--t myth. And now Reagan is a saint. Amazing . . .
Good points! Earl: a most excellent allegory.
Edward1793: Don't you wish your ACCURATE bio could be posted in some D.C. building standing in veneration to this ACTOR. Evil with a handsome smile, always a good sell.
Wcdevins: Right on!
Rodeored: thank you for the detailed explanation on Russia. Makes good sense.
Jedediah, you're right. It seems that Brzezinski started supplying the Afghan resistance on July 3, 1979, of course by order of Carter. This was BEFORE the Soviet invasion. Brzezinski wanted to maneuver the Russian into their Vietnam, supposedly.
Nonetheless, Reagan came to power 18 months after Brzezinski started supplying the resistance. The Afghan war with the Soviets lasted for 9 years.
look at russia vs the us now. russia on the rise and the us on the decline.
Uh, Jebediah, have you seen the life expectancy statistics in Russia? It is hard to be on the rise when your males are dying at about age 50, on average.
I can't find you the link, but there was an article in the New Yorker about how the Soviets essentially decided to call America's bluff: let the Yankees spend themselves into oblivion on stupid weapon systems ("Star Wars") that the Soviet scientists knew wouldn't work.
Of course the Soviet system was ailing by then, and it took a Gorbachev to dismantle it, but St Ronnie's contribution to this was highly overrated. As you knew.
good point Jaded Prole!
and fpal, a minor correction: habitat for humanity's darling, nobel peace prize winning Jimmy Carter started the mujahideen thing in afghanistan (per zbig brezinski, carter's Nat'l insecurity advisor, in his book, "the great game"). it was continued and accelerated under ronny raygun, but carter started it, w/the express purpose of giving the USSR its own "vietnam."
I appreciate the good humor in this article, somewhat different than the regular fair.
BTW, I'd also like to mention an omission. Ronald Reagan armed, trained and supported the Mujahadeen during the 80s in Afghanistan. The Mujahaddeen grew in strength and prominence and they latter became the Tailban and Al-Qaeda. And, of course, Al-Qaeda is responsible for 911.
Who lost the cold way? We workers did. Without even the pretense of ideological competiton workers rights and working conditions took a big hit.
As for Reagan, he was a demented monster fomenting terrorism worldwide. If he's the best repugs can aspire to then they are a sorry lot indeed.
This is the freedom and prosperity the average Russian got in the deal:
Russian Labour Still Reeling from Capitalist Shock Therapy (http://www.socialistvoice.ca/index.htm)
A Review of David Mandel's 'Labour After Communism'
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/Soc-Voice/Soc-Voice-19.htm
The "shock therapy" applied in Russia after 1991 led not to a capitalist flowering but to a social catastrophe whose depth and duration is without parallel in any industrialized society. Mandel marshals the key statistics: industrial production down 55%, capital investment down 80%, research and development down 90%.
The Soviet empire died as empires do.
Including the one GW is trying to build.
who really "won" the cold war again? sure, the soviets lost a lot, but look at russia vs the us now. russia on the rise and the us on the decline.
where or where will the fascist neocons find another vacuous ronny raygun to save us from this situation?