School of War - Ep 49: William Inboden on Ronald Reagan

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

William Inboden, executive director and William Powers, Jr. Chair at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, joins the show to discuss Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. ▪️ Times  • 01:32 Introduction • 02:09 Inheriting détente  • 06:13 The Soviet understanding • 09:56 Deterring strength, exploiting weakness  • 13:42 Religious Reagan • 17:32 Bush as teammate • 20:54 Win without fighting • 25:47 Contradictions • 30:00 South and Central America • 35:35 Gorbachev • 40:23 Did Reagan’s approach work? • 43:53 Kissinger • 45:09 Reagan as manager • 50:07 Reagan’s legacy on the Right

The 1970s had been, we all know, a tough decade for America. In the early 80s, inflation was rampant. Trusting government was low in America's global prestige in the face of humiliation, such as those dealt out by Iranian hostage takers to the Carter administration, was even lower. Even worse, the Soviet Union appeared to have achieved the upper hand across a range of different competitions, including with respect to its military. The conventional wisdom among foreign policy elites in both parties was that the USSR was a fact of life, here to stay, and it needed to be dealt with on its own terms.

Ronald Reagan disagreed. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave. The situation in Iran. The people who are nasty them. We shall fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm joined the day by William Inboden. He is the executive director in William Powers Jr. Chair at the Clement Center for National Security at the University of Texas Austin.

He's also associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs there and a number of other impressive titles and affiliations. And the most important of which, and relevant to today's discussion, he is the author of The Peacemaker, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Break. Will, thanks so much for joining. Aaron, it's great to be with you.

Thank you. So I thought I would start at the start, even start before the start, as you kind of do in the book, which is really excellent, by the way. And I commend it to our listeners who are curious about Martin Reagan's foreign policy, which is a natural thing that everyone should be.

curious about, talk a bit about the climate, the ideology of detente, into which Reagan kind of emerges and begins his presidency. What is the ethic and the sort of governing mindset of American foreign policy, specifically with regard to the Soviet Union, where Reagan sort of begins? Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's a great question, Aaron, because, you know, when Reagan takes office in January of 1981, the United States is coming out of a very difficult decade of the 1970s. We can talk some more about the many challenges there. But also, Reagan is in some ways inheriting the detente's strategic framework, which had really governed U.S. relations with the Soviet Union across the previous three administrations,

Nixon and Ford and Jimmy Carter. So this had been a essentially a bipartisan consensus. And detente had, when it was first developed by Nixon and Kissinger in the late 60s, the late 60s as the United States is mired in Vietnam and, you know, seeing the limits of its Cold War policies, it made some sense. The premise of Daytona was the Cold War is so terrifying and so costly for both the United States and Soviet Union. We're both find ourselves in these, you know, bloody, bloody commitments and wars around the world and were terrified of nuclear war. Are there ways that we can reduce tensions and coexist with each other? So Daytona is not necessarily

predicated on, you know, complete surrender, just ending the Cold War, but rather it's about reducing tensions and looking for. There's some ways that we can, you know, have temporary cooperation with each other and reduce tensions and coexist. The assumption was the Soviet Union is not going away. It's a permanent part of the geopolitical landscape. And so for Nixon and Kissinger, and then continuing on with Ford and Carter includes doing some arms control agreements with the Soviets, includes the United States reducing its defense budgets, especially as we're going through a decade-long economic recession, dialing back our support for anti-communist activities around the world. And also reducing our criticism of the Soviets on human rights grounds,

not doing as much for, say, the plight of Jewish-refuge and Soviet Union being denied exit to the exit to Israel. The problem, and Dayton works for a little bit of a time, it does reduce tension somewhat. But the problem, as Reagan starts pointing out early on, you know, this is why he runs for president in 1976, challenging Ford for the Republican nomination, and based almost exclusively on foreign policy. The problem with the detente was the United States was honoring our side of the bargain of dialing back our confrontation with the Soviet Union

and our defense budget, and the Soviets were not honoring theirs. They see detente as a chance to really exploit American weakness. So as none other than Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, put it, when we're building up our defense, the Soviets are building theirs. Then when we decide through detente to start reducing our defense and stop building, the Soviets keep building.

And so over the decade of 1970s, the Soviets are expanded their nuclear arsenal, expanding their conventional army, and expanded their support for communist revolutions around the world. And this is why you see a series of developing countries, you know, Ethiopia, Angola, Cambodia, Cambodia, and Nicaragua, of course, and a number of others falling to communist, communist insurgencies. And so it really looks like the Soviet Union is on the march. And so Reagan had this pithy line about detente. He said that, you know, detente is what a farmer has with his thank you. with his turkey until Thanksgiving. And so he had been a critic of this for several years. And once he has elected in 1980 and takes office in 1981, sees it as his opportunity to come up with the new framework. So I want to ask you about that framework and ask you about Reagan. But the way you just framed your answer makes me want to ask a question about the Soviets, you know, under

someone like Brezhnev. I guess one form of the question would be, is Reagan right, the detente is the agreement between a farmer and the Turkey until Thanksgiving Day from their point of view. In other words, if the sort of Nixonian Kisingerian vision of daytod is premised on the notion that, you know, essentially these two great powers will compete and cooperate kind of in the long run and that will be the long run. It's ongoing competition and cooperation between great powers. Is this Soviet vision not that, but rather sort of one of one of victory, one of victory for communism? Is it in between? How do the Soviets look at all this? Yeah. So we now know from declassified and released Soviet documents that came out after the Cold War.

And I'm not a Russian speaker reader, but many of them have translated into English, that there was a clear strategy on the part of the Soviet leadership to use they taught for their own advantages and to use it to press, you know, press their advances around the world. So a KGB leader looking back in the 1970s said this, I think in the early 80s, the world was going our way, right? we were increasing our military power at home and our control over our Warsaw Pact satellites, but also we were spreading these revolution in a more growing number of communist regimes around the world. Now, let me clear, the Soviet Union did not want a hot war with the United States. They knew that that would be catastrophic. They wanted to win without fighting. That was their own goal,

is how much they can use their military power, their revolutionary power to increase their, to support communist regimes around the world to increase their geopolitical strength and, you know, corner and reduce the United States corresponding. So their goal was to win without fighting. And they had a very good strategy of pressing their advantage as far as they could with detente. So when Reagan took office somewhere in the probably the 1981 to 83 window, the Soviet Union we now would know reach the apex of its military strength. I mean, that's when they were the most formidable military power in the world. Now, they also had plenty of internal vulnerabilities, which Reagan saw. And we can talk more about that. But, you know, I do think,

the Cold War's most dangerous moment, especially for the United States, is the early 1980. Certainly the most dangerous since the Cuban Missing Crisis two decades earlier. And of course, you know, certainly folks who are on the right, you know, we look back on Reagan's presidency and we think of the end of the Cold War and the results and the thing takes on a bit of a retrospective Rosie Hugh. But as you as you document in the book, Reagan, despite winning the presidency, is a kind of, certainly a dissident with an elite debate about the Soviet Union in the early East. Talk a bit about the consensus, way, an extension of the earlier question, but beyond the sort of consensus of detente as an American strategy, what is the American

consensus about the Soviet Union and its potential in its future? Yeah, sure. So within political terms in the when Reagan takes office in the early 1980s, we can also almost say there's, you know, really three camps. There's first the Democratic Party, which led by Jimmy Carter, also Ted Kennedy, very prominent there, which is primarily taking a pretty doveish approach to the Soviet Union. There are a few hawkish Democrats who dissent from that, so just Scoop Jackson, the Democratic senator from Washington State, who's a close friend of Regans. But by and large, you've got the Democratic camp. Then you've got a very split Republican Party where you have the Nixon Ford Kissinger camp, which also takes the detot line, you know, looking more for cooperation and reduced

tensions with the Soviets. And then you've got the Reagan camp, which is really an insurgency. It's the conservative insurgency within the Republican Party, which rejects the premises of Dayton. And most expert opinion, most foreign policy experts and scholars at the time, assumed that the Soviet Union was strong and durable and stable and would be a permanent part of the geopolitical landscape. And so it was a competition that needed to be managed. And again, you know, they weren't saying the United States should surrender to the Soviets or anything. But the notion of victory in the Cold War, especially a peaceful victory, the notion that Soviet Union might be brought to collapse was fantastical. I mean, seemed almost delusional. And Reagan was really one of the very few prominent Americans or leaders in public life who believed that the Soviet Union was uniquely vulnerable.

Yes, it was strong in a military sense, but also very weak economically and politically and ideologically. And so his strategy was, you know, deterring them in their points of strength and exploiting them in their areas of weakness. And in hindsight, we can see that that strategy was correct and it worked, but it was a profound challenge to the conventional wisdom of the time to expert opinion and even most of the political consensus in the in the two parties. And so that's why he was, you know, really vilified and as a warmonger or seen as, seen as delusional and dangerous by so much, so much expert opinion. So it took real political courage, I think, on his part to develop this new strategy to be much more confrontational towards the Soviet Union. In hindsight, we can see it worked, but at the time,

that was, you know, far, far from conceded. And that's why I wrote the book the way I did is reminding people that we didn't know how the story was going to end. Right. What was the source or what were the sources, not only of Reagan's substantive objections to the consensus in his view of communism, but of his confidence in that view, his willingness to go as far as he did. Yeah. So much of this comes down to Reagan is much more of a thinker, a student of ideas that I think people had fully appreciated. And so his theory of the case of the Cold War, and we can see him thinking this as early as the early 1960s, these are some ideas he've been developing for 20 years. His share of the case is that the Cold War was fundamentally a battle of ideas between the free world and Soviet communism, you know, between democratic capitalism and a command economy and tyranny. He saw it's fundamentally a battle of ideas that happens to be laid on top of a great power competition.

And every previous president had saw the Cold War is primarily a great power competition that happens to be a battle of ideas or happens to have an ideological component. And so because Reagan framed it that way, he believed very strongly that American ideas were the winning ideas and that Soviet communism as an idea was a losing idea that was really destined to fail eventually, but it needed pressure. And so as he looked at, you know, he had been speaking out on this quite a bit in the 1970s, as he looked at the Soviet Union's oppression of its own people, you know, tormenting dissident Christians, dissident Jews, political dissidents. As he looked at the Soviet Union's, you know, tyrannable control of its satellites in the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe, you know, exemplified, of course, by the Berlin Wall. To him, that just seemed so unnatural almost, that it's such a violation of human dignity and human liberty

that it could not be sustained. if it demands so much power and coercion to be sustained. But, of course, because of his commitment to free markets and free enterprise, he also believes that, you know, communist economic systems just don't work over time. They can't be sustained by being so inefficient and so exploitive. And so because he believes in the falsity of the idea of Soviet communism, he believed that it was vulnerable and that if you press against those vulnerabilities through, you know, full spectrum of Cold War policies that he developed,

that eventually the system could crack apart. And he would often say, look, I think if we get them, they liked the arms race better when they were the only runs running it. If we can start a new arms race, we can show them that we can outbuild them, that we can outsmart them. If we support poises for freedom behind the iron curtain, we'll put internal pressure on them. So he believes that with more pressure,

these bad ideas could be defeated, and that the political system sustained those bad ideas could be cracked apart. A bit, if you would, about the role that faith and religion plays, for Reagan in his foreign policy thinking. I mean, certainly, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems that at the time, certainly the perception among his critics was that it played an enormous role, and it certainly seems to have played some role. And of course, for the critics, it's a very bad thing. You have a sort of, you know, lunatic driven by, you know, millinery and visions taking us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. What's, you know, help us

untangle the truth of the matter. Yeah. Yeah, this is where Reagan, I think, is safe to say, is a deeply devout Christian. And that comes out in his, his diaries, his private letters. You know, this is not just political posturing when he would use religious language in public. Obviously, he's idiosyncratic about it in some ways. You know, so he was, you know, famously indifferent churchgoer, certainly during his time in office. He, of course, you know, allowed the First Lady to indulge her penchant for astrology

for a time to, which is usually not aligned with, you know, traditional Christian teaching, right? So, but in terms of his personal faith, it's very clear. and devout. I give another examples of this in the book. But how it connects to his foreign policy is very interesting. He believed that one of the Soviet Union's greatest vulnerabilities was its official atheism. He thought that the way that communist systems, you know, try to restrict or extinguish all religious belief was just so fundamentally alien to the human condition and to the, you know, the yearning for faith that so many, so many people have. And so, you know, he cared deeply about religious freedom and human rights or religious dissidents, partly as a moral good,

but partly also as his strategy, one of an element of his strategy to put pressure on the sub-union and to highlight that. He would often say, look, the yearning for faith of so many people behind the iron curtain, that's what's eventually going to bring it down. You just cannot squelch that forever. But he also had a kind of a sense of destiny. He particularly talks about this after he survives the assassination attempt in March of 81, where he writes in his diary, he comes very close to dying. We know now that he came really with, you know, if the bullet had been just a couple of millimeters, you know,

in one direction or another, it would have killed him. And if the trauma surgeons at George Washington Hospital had not acted as quickly as they did, he was a few minutes away from dying. So Reagan writes in this diary, he said, I think God has spared me for a purpose. I think he saved my life for a purpose. And that is to end the threat of nuclear war and bring the Cold War to an end. And so that sense of divine destiny gives him, you know, the confidence to whether the criticism that he, that he faces to, you know, both to keep flight of pressure of the Soviet.

But also when it comes to time to do outreach to Gorbachev, where he takes some criticism from the right to do that as well. And then, of course, just is a key to the deep connection he forges with Pope John Paul II to become, you know, one of his key partners in winning the Cold War. the Pope himself survives an assassination attempt just two months after Reagan in May of 81. You know, the details are murky, but it seems to be that the KGB was likely behind the assassination attempt of the Pope. So, you know, the Soviets were terrified of the Pope because, as the first Polish Pope, the spiritual power that he wields for, you know, a billion Catholics around the world, many of whom are living behind the Iron Curt. And so whether it's, you know, Reagan's support for Jewish dissidents, such as Natanzhry, which he's very committed to helping get him freed from the Gullah. or, you know, Soviet Christians or the Solidarity Movement and the Polish, you know, persecuted Polish Catholic Church. For him, supporting religious believers fighting against communism is a very direct outgrowth of his own personal faith and his sense of the Cold War,

is almost this religious war. The counterfactual of American foreign policy in the 80s under President George H.W. But as opposed to President Ronald Reagan is kind of a fascinating one to consider, no? I mean, my impression of Bush senior is his foreign policy instincts much closer to Nixon's than to Reagan's. I should put this in the form of a question. I mean, if the assassins bullet had actually found it smart, where do you think Bush would have taken things? Yeah, it's a really interesting counterfactual. And here's, and I'll answer it directly, but I want to give some background on just the Bush-Ragan relationship itself, which is really fascinating.

And there's, you know, a number of critical judges are obviously, of course, as you said, if, you know, Reagan had died from the assassin's, Bush became president. That's one. But another is even during the 1980 primary, Bush was Reagan's main rival and comes quite close early on to, you know, to winning in New Hampshire and getting the nomination. Of course, Reagan himself gets it. But they were fierce rivals during, during the primary. They had, you know, different visions of the Cold War. You know, Bush as an alum of the Nixon Ford administrations was, again, largely more of that conventional Republican detente camp. And so when Reagan asked Bush to be his running mate, it was done at the time largely for political expediency. Is this a way to unite the conservative and moderate factions of the Republican Party?

And it works as a matter of politics, right? And they go on it and win the election. But the big question is going to be, will Bush now be a good partner for Reagan as vice president? And here I do want to give Bush quite a bit of credit. He always knew that he was vice president and not president. You know, even though, so he was very, I think, conscientious about set inside his own presential ambitions and serving Reagan faithfully, including when Bush might disagree with some of Reagan's policies. And so I certainly grew in

my admiration for Vice President Bush in the role of the Vice President's day. I think he showed tremendous character there when he goes to Chern Yanko's funeral in March of 85. And Bush holds have a long meeting with Gorbachev. And Bush writes Reagan a pretty thoughtful cable afterwards saying, this Gorbachev guy might be the reformer we've been looking for. And I think you ought to give him a chance. However, you know, skipping forward by November 28 when Bush wins election as the new president, you know, Reagan's two terms are over. And then Bush and Reagan have their famous final meeting with Gorbachev in December of 88

at Governor's Island in New York. It's a little awkward because Bush at that point thinks that Reagan has become too trusting of Gorbachev. Bush is still a little more wary of the Soviets. Bush seems to want to return to some more of the coexistence framework rather than Reagan's combination of pressure and outreach. And this is, you know, Bush is not acting inappropriately here. Now he has to the president-elect, he's got the freedom to bring in his own team to set his own policies and so on.

And during Bush's first year as president, they still are pretty aware of Gorbachev. But then, of course, you know, events take their own course where, you know, skipping ahead here. And Bush realizes some of the policies and strategies, that Reagan had put in place over the previous eight years are really, really bearing fruit and crack it apart the Soviet edifice. So, but yeah, I think if Bush had become president earlier, or for that matter, if somehow Jimmy Carter had won re-election of 1980, things would have turned out pretty differently. Yeah. Talk a bit about the core of the Reagan grand strategy, especially

with respect to the Soviet Union. You just made reference to this combination of, of pressure, but also outreach. I mean, what, what characterizes the Reagan approach? Yeah, this is really, really key, you can give it to you in just a sentence. It is a combination of relentless full spectrum pressure on the Soviet system and consistent outreach. I mentioned in passing earlier in our conversation how the Soviet goal had been to win the Cold War without fighting. That was also Reagan's goal, right? He does not want the Cold War to turn hot. He's, you know, desperate to avoid a nuclear war and global destruction, but he also doesn't want to just keep coexisting with this awful system, as he had seen throughout the 1970s how that really set the United States back. And so

because his theory of the case is it's this battle of ideas and because he saw the Soviet Union as this unique perverse combination of strong militarily but weak in every other area. His pressure strategy, you know, embodied in peace through strength, is designed to bring that full spectrum of military and economic and ideological and political and, you know, even human rights pressure on the Soviet system. I put it this way, he's trying to drive three wedges through the Soviet system. He wants to, by his human rights support, his information warfare, he's trying to drive a wedge between the Russian people and the Kremlin, right? He knows that the Russian people are resentful and frustrated and suffering under this evil system. And so he wants to drive a further wedge between them and their rulers. Second, and further isolate the Kremlin.

Second, he wanted to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. This is why he's so active in supporting, again, dissidents in East Germany and in Poland and Romania and elsewhere, but also putting economic pressure on the Warsaw Pact so the Soviet Union can't keep funding and subsidizing it. And then third, he wants to separate the Soviet system from the rest of the world. He wants to really isolate. This is why part of his rhetorical offensive of saying that it is a sad, bizarre chapter in human history, saying that it will end up on Ash, Heap of History, saying that it is an evil emblem. empire, saying that it, you know, embodies evil, evil in the world. These are not just cheap taunts. This is his effort to remind the world of what a, you know, bizarre, perverse and wicked system this is. So that's part of all the pressure. And we can talk, you know, particularly on the

defense strategy part and some of the details. But he also is very consistent from his first month's office in outreach to Soviet leaders. When he's recovering from the assassination attempts, you know, two months into his presidency, he writes a long letter to war to, to Rejnev saying, hey, you and I together can save the world from destruction, right? I mean, we don't have to descend into a nuclear war. Let's talk. Let's see if there's ways that we can negotiate a way out of this. And he continues to outreach to every, you know, follow the one Soviet leader to And

drop up to Chernenko. As he famously says, he's not getting many responses to kids. They keep dying on me. And then finally, forth when he's Lovov comes along. So his outreach to them was designed to, one, reassure them the United States was not continued a nuclear first strike. The Soviets were terrified that they were, right? And that makes it very precarious because if they misunderstand that, they might launch a counter strike and then, you know, then the world is over. But also telling them, look, I want to get to know

you. I want to negotiate with you. Let's see if there's a way that we can reduce tensions between our countries. Now, it's a very arc-called dance because he's trying to outreach, reach out to them and reassure them. At the same time, he's trying to bring their system down, right? and the Soviet leaders start to realize this, but Reagan understood that portion diplomacy are not opposites, they're not antitheses, they're complementary. And so he wanted to have a massive military buildup to have the most potent, advanced, capable military in the world

to deter a Soviet attack, but also to strengthen diplomacy, so that when he was sitting across the negotiating table from Gorbachev, Gorb wasn't just talking to, you know, Ronald Reagan, an individual American president, but he was looking at the full might and power of the United States behind him and was knowing that that might and power was poised to do great damage to him if he did not negotiate, right? And so it was, you know, speaking softly and carrying a very big stick to put it in Teddy Roosevelt terms. So that's, so those two strands of the policy, the strategy,

pressure and outreach, force and diplomacy, they're there throughout his, throughout his eight years. So that's the key to understand the Reagan strategy. Your account of this strategy, both here and in the book itself, really brings to the fore this series of, this embrace of these obvious contradictions, right? So there's the force in diplomacy or, you know, pressure and outreach tension that you just described, and that plays out in so many different ways and relates to so many different things that are all contradictions, right? We're going to pursue arms control agreements on the one hand while engaging in a massive arms buildup on the other. We are going to emphasize the importance of human rights while supporting all manner of insurgencies, the care of which for human rights on a case-by-case basis is, we'll say mixed. You know, was there, to what extent did Reagan reflect on these contradictions,

either individually or in the aggregate? I mean, he seems to be, his policy seems to be defined by these series of contradictions, or is that just kind of to misunderstand what it's like to be president or what it's like to be Ronald Reagan. That is to say, in the flow of events, you're just kind of moving with. with your instincts. What do you think? Yeah. So I think when we look at the big picture, there is this vision of an end goal of a world at peace without Soviet communism and with the growth of democracy and human rights,

even among right-wing authoritarian. So the end goal that Reagan wants is a free world. You know, he wants the growth of self-government, of free peoples, both within the, you know, the American block, if you will, and also within the Soviet bloc, with the eventual demise of the Soviet block. But he is flexible and adaptive in how you get there. And so even though he has these consistent principles of force and diplomacy, of pressure and outreach, he's constantly adjusting and tacking, sometimes, you know, emphasizing one a little bit more, sometimes emphasizing another little more. Same with, you know, the Reagan doctrine and his support of anti-communist insurgents, you know, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Unita rebels in Angola, most famously the Mujahideen,

of course, in Afghanistan, you know, a number of those, you know, forces were certainly not models of human rights and good governance. But Reagan, a quick digression here, but this is, you know, important to appreciate the bigger framework. Reagan is deeply shaped by the Second World War, okay, America's first big fight against totalitarianism, of course, at the time is, is not, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And he knew that in the Second World War, you had to make tactical compromises at times. Sometimes you had to do, you know, really ghastly things. You had to support Joseph Stalin and giving billions of dollars in aid to the Soviet Union for the greater goal of defeating the most urgent, you know, the most urgent threat at the time totalitarianism embodied by Nazi

Germany. And so Reagan also, he sees the Cold War as analogous. He often draws comparisons between the Second World War and the Cold War. First we are fighting against Nazi totalitarianism. Now our contest is with Soviet totalitarianism. And so he's very willing to make some of these moral compromises along the way and some of these tactical adjustments with that bigger strategic goal in mind. And so even, you know, with his support for, you know, right-wing anti-communist dictatorships in Asia and Latin America especially, he assures them, you know, look, you are America's partner. We appreciate that you are helping us keep communism at bay, whether, you know, in your own hemisphere, in your own country, as well as, you know, around the world. But, and here's the other part,

He pretty consistently pressures most of them to ease up on their human rights abuses and then eventually to democratize. And this is why you see this incredible wave of democratizations in South Korea when the military government falls peacefully in 87 and the Philippines when Marcos goes out in 86 in Taiwan, in Chile, when Pinochet, the dictator is removed peacefully in Argentina and Brazil, even in El Salvador. And so with Reagan, the larger goal of supporting freedom in the world, I think is pretty consistent. but he's willing to be, you know, flexible in, you know, sometimes providing short-term support for the greater goal of opposing communism while still, you know, using different, different means for these same ends of supporting the growth of freedom. So it was, again, I think a more consistent strategy than I'd first appreciated and certainly a more consistent strategy than Reagan's critics will give him credit for. So we have a mutual friend who, when he heard I was recording this

interview with you, insisted that I quote, push you on Latin America. So let's Let's focus in on Latin America for a bit. It's obviously related to the points you were just making. You labor in the groves of Academy. I do not. I'm going to guess that the general consensus in terms of historians and analysts of the 80s is that the Reagan Latin American policy was not a success, that it was a series of ultimately very, very damaging and harmful contradictions

in pursuit of a kind of trying to slay a Camara-like enemy of global communism that was a sort of overstated threat at best, certainly when it comes to that South American theater. So I take it that that's kind of the consensus view, and I take it that that is not at least precisely your view. What is the Reagan legacy in South America? In Central America, let's try to combine that. Yeah, everything south of the American borderless say.

So it's a very good question, Aaron, it's a very important one. I do have, you know, as you already alluded, something of a contrarian take to most of the conventional academic wisdom on this. So let me set the strategic context. here because this is really important for understanding Reagan's overall coach. First, remember that he was a two-term governor of California, a border state. And so he was very committed to the Western Hemisphere overall. He was actually very mindful of America's, you know, often sorry history of interventions in Central and South America over the previous century. He would often talk in national security meetings of saying, I'm, I don't want us to be seen as the Colossus of the North. I know. that we have a history of interventions of journalism there. We really want to partner rather with the peoples of the region and support them in, you know, their aspirations for more autonomy and self-government and freedom. So, so there's much more of a commitment to the hemisphere and a mindfulness

of America's history there. So that's, that's one of the first principles to lay out. By the way, this is embodied in November of 79 when he announces his presidential campaign. So this is, you know, his debut speech, right, announcing his candidate to see for president. Most of the speech is about domestic policy, restoring the American economy. morale, so and so forth. He says very little on foreign policy. He makes maybe one passing reference to the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The foreign policy section of a speech, instead, he devotes about three paragraphs just to North America. And his real vision of, he calls a North American accord, Canada, the United States, and Mexico. And so for him, he sees America's entire role in the world

predicated on first building closer ties and partnership with our northern and southern neighbors. And, of course, he sees Mexico as the key gateway to the rest of Central and Central and South America. During the presidential transition, the first and only world leader he meets with is the president of Mexico. Reagan actually travels to Mexico to see him. And so he starts off. He sees, you know, his entire global strategy is predicated in which first get things in order in our own hemisphere. Another key principle to keep in mind is from where he sat in January of 1981, he takes office, the communist threat in Central and South America was very rich.

real. You know, just two years before, a communist revolution, Nicaragua had taken place, right? It's the first successful expansion of communism in the Western Hemisphere since the Cuban Revolution two decades earlier. Okay. So, and he also, it was very clear, you know, certainly from intelligence analysis and reports from the region that the Soviets and Cubans saw Nicaragua as just the first step. They really did have a vision of expanding more and more communist regimes in the region. And so, you know, some differences over viewpoints on Reagan's Latin America strategy jump down to this more fundamental

thing. Do you see the communist threat to the region as real and serious or just fabricated and said these were nationalistic rare and scrabbles? I think the record is very clear that the Kremlin and its allies, especially Cubans, did have not just say hope, but a strategy and were putting a lot of resources into promoting communism in the region. Reagan also, but then Reagan also inherited this problematic framework of up until then, it seemed the only choices in Latin America were either brutal right-wing military dictatorship or communist dictatorship. And, you know, for most of his predecessors as president, including Jimmy Carter, the thought had been, all right, well, we don't like those right-wing military dictatorships, but communist

dictatorships are even worse. And so the United States had mostly supported the right-wing military dictatorships. Reagan worried that if we pulled support from those right-wing military dictatorships, they would go communist. And again, Nick Raghua had, was the most recent constitutional tale. Reagan and his secretary of state, George Schultz, develop a third way. This is really important understanding what they were trying to do. They did not want to be trapped in that military dictatorship or communist dictatorship dichotomy. They wanted to support a third way of democracy. And so in the short term, especially in 1981, 82, they continue supporting those military dictatorships, because they don't want them to go communist. But then they start putting

and plays a very deliberate strategy of let's support transitions to democracy among those military dictatorships. And over eight years, it works pretty well. Now, again, there's other structural forces in play. A lot of this gives credit to the peoples of the different Latin American countries. But, excuse me, over the next eight years, you see democratic transitions in El Salvador, in Brazil, in Chile, in Argentina, and Paraguay and others. And you do not see the growth of any more communist regimes. So it's messy. It takes... moral compromises. There are a number of, you know, mistaken, mistaken policies along the way. But just, you know, criticizing in hindsight in the short term that the Reagan administration

supported some brutal military dictatorships in Latin America, I think misses both the severity of the communist threat and the bigger successes. You know, the pressure they put on American supported regimes to support human rights, to democratize, was very real and very consistent and paid significant fruits. When you look at, when you look at the totality, the record over the eight years. In the book, you talk about among the way of understanding Reagan's goals with respect to the Soviet Union and global communism was kind of negotiated surrender, that that was an end he was pushing towards.

And obviously Gorbachev becomes, I'm sure Gorbachev didn't think of it this way, certainly early on, but he becomes a partner in this. Talk about, you know, the role of Gorbachev in what becomes Reagan and America's success. in the Reagan Gorbachev relationship. Yeah, it's a really important and fascinating story. And I will say, you know, as you mentioned at the beginning of the title of the book is The Peacemaker. And I get that largely from Gorbachev.

So Gorbachev, you know, Reagan's funeral pays tribute to him as the peacemaker. He says he decided to become a peacemaker. And so I think that's important to understand how Gorbichette himself saw Reagan. So back to explore their relationship a little bit more. As I mentioned in passing, but want to drill. drill down on. The big part of Reagan's strategy of pressuring the Soviet unit, which he starts in 1981, is not just pressuring it to exploit its weaknesses and its vulnerabilities, it's pressuring it to produce a reformist leader. And he and his NS National Security Council staff,

especially Dick Pikes, the great Sovietologists from Harvard, served on his embassy staff, are very clear about this, that one pronger of the strategy is putting this pressure on the Soviet system to strengthen reformist voices and produce a reformist leader. This is because Reagan O. Long wanted to have a Soviet leader he could negotiate with, you know, the diplomacy, the outreach part of the problem of his strategy, he needs a partner there. And so this is why Reagan is not so surprised as a lot of others when Reagan, when Gorbachev finally comes to power in March of 85, and Reagan recognizes early on, this guy might be the reformist leader I've been looking for. That's why that chapter in my book is called Waiting for Gorbachev. He had been waiting for

a Gorbachev. And so, you know, this is why they're for summit meetings, Geneva at 187. Rakevick and 86, you know, Washington in 87, Moscow and 88 are such an important part of the book in the story. They really do forge a close personal friendship. You know, there's deep affection and care between the two. I've read every word of the now declassified transcripts of their mediums, and it's really, really interesting. But Reagan is able to forge this friendship and trust with his Soviet counterpart, this leader, while still being unrelenting in the pressure. And Gorbachev is aware of this. And it drives Gorbachev crazy.

And so when I talk about this friendship and affection between the two, it is in the context of deep acrimony and many, you know, very severe confrontations. Because Gorbachev knows that Reagan is trying to bring his system down, you know. And so even though they share an interest in reducing the threat of nuclear war and reducing nuclear arsenals, their interests diverge in that Gorbachev is trying to reform and preserve the Soviet system and Reagan is trying to end it. And so this is why even as they build a close partnership, Reagan increases support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan who are, look, let's, you know, it's a gruesome business. Let's, you know, let's not, let's not disguise this is sending home hundreds of Red Army soldiers and body bags every month, right? I mean, so even as his Reagan has built his friendship with Gorbachev, he is killing his, you know, killing as many Soviet soldiers as he can. This is why he says, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. He wants to, you know, publicly humiliate and challenged Gorbachev, he is killing, you know, he'll leave as many Soviet soldiers as he can. He's, you know, he'll leave him. He'll be killing him. He'll be over the Berlin Wall. This is why he keeps supporting Soviet dissidents who are driving Gorbachev crazy

with their criticisms of the system. This is why Reagan deploys the intermating range nuclear missiles throughout Europe. Gorbachev says these things are a gun at our head. They're terrifying us. This is why Reagan is unrelenting and supporting SDI, the strategic defense initiative, which which terrifies Gorbachev. This is why Reagan is putting economic pressure on the Soviet Union, partnering with the Saudis to increase oil production, drive down global oil prices on Starvation. And Starvation, the Soviet Union of one of its only really many sources of hard currency, right? You know, echoes again of our economics pressure campaign on Putin and Russia today. So Reagan is somehow able, it's a very, you know, deft masterclass, if you will,

and diplomacy to keep this pressure on the Soviet system, well, working with Gorbachev to avoid the whole thing blow it up in nuclear war and trying to bring them, like I said, to a negotiated, negotiated surrender. I just ask a question about this notion that you associate with pipes of applying pressure in order to produce a reformist leader. Sort of a double-barrel question. One, I think a more conventional view, if you want a reformist leader on the other side of the table, which is a longstanding ambition of foreign policymakers with regard to any number

of adversarial countries and challenges, wouldn't it make more sense? I feel like the conventional view would be. It would make more sense to sort of open ones embrace and give succor and support to moderates while avoiding confrontation, allowing the moderates to come to the fore of the conference of the of the you know the foreign countries conversation in politics as opposed to pressure might just you know as it were empower their hardliners yeah and so the questions is you know what what sense does it make to take the other approach the approach that Reagan took a and b did it actually work in the sense that is that what produced gorbachev or or they do they just get

lucky yeah i'll take the second part first because it's an important point to clarify you know as a historian i i rarely believe in model causal events right okay so the point The Politburo selecting Gorbachev as the new, you know, Communist Party General Secretary in March of 1985, there are several influences and forces that go into that. A lot of it is internal to the Soviet system. And so this is not something that only Ronald Reagan engineers from Washington, D.C. I don't want to overstate that at all. But I do think that the Politburo was really feeling backed into a corner. They saw that their economy was crumbling.

They saw that they were in this unsustainable arms race. They saw that the Soviet people and the peoples of Eastern Europe were losing faith in their system. And yet, the Politburo is still desperate to preserve that system, right? They're desperate to preserve their hold on power. They do not want to, you know, collapse and transition to democracy. And they also know that a lot of this pressure that they are feeling and being back to the corners be driven by that American president, Ronald Reagan and his new policies. And, of course, his allies, Margaret Thatcher, Nakasone in Japan, Helmut Cole in West Germany.

the new Kennedy had premier at the time, Brian Mulroney. So they, everywhere they look, okay, they look south and they're seeing Soviet soldiers coming home in body bags from this bleeding wound in Afghanistan. They look to the east and they see this dynamic Japanese economy. They see Japan triplated its own defense spending to help bottle up significant Soviet forces in the Far East and partner with the Americans on that. They see that Reagan has forged this partnership also with China, communist China, which is part of the story, again, countering Soviet force projection in the Far East.

They look to their west and they see, you know, the peoples of Eastern Europe become unrestive. They see Lechfalessa leading the, you know, the Solidarity Movement in Poland. They see that Meppelson Pope stirring up, you know, the Catholic peoples. And then they look elsewhere in the world and they see that they're spending billions of dollars trying to subsidize the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the, you know, the regime in Angola or elsewhere. And so everywhere they look, they are losing. And so they think somehow we've got to preserve our hold on power without letting our system collapse. And so that's why they Gorbachev and that he can reform their system while still preserving it. So there's many factors that go into his selection.

Certainly there's some luck and good fortune at Reagan's part. But I'm just struck that the documentary record is pretty clear that, you know, four years earlier, Reagan and Pipes had been laid out consistently. This is one prong of our strategy to produce the pressure of the system to produce a reformer. They don't think that they taught what's going to produce a reformer, Soviets had just taken advantage of that. You know, we tried the softer attack for a decade. It didn't work.

But this is also why Reagan recognizes Gorbachev as a reformer earlier than most, you know, other other experts, even, you know, Thatcher is actually pretty skeptical. Barberchav initially, I know she says we can do business with him, but she quickly decides, ah, I don't trust this guy so much. But because Reagan had been looking for a reformer, sometimes if you're looking for something, you'll recognize it easier when you actually actually find it. So Gorbachev deserves, you know, quite a bit of credit himself for housing's end up favorably. I don't want to say it's all Reagan, but in the balance, I do think Reagan

deserves more credit. I'll just say that I have it on a pretty good authority that the architects of the Kissinger-Nixon foreign policy attributed Reagan's success to essentially luck. I think I know the authority you're talking about there. And look, I mean, I won't go into this at length, but a little teaser for your listeners who I hope will buy it by and read the book. The Reagan-Nixon relationship is fascinating because even though they were fierce rival, in the 60s and 70s. Once Reagan becomes president, he's consulting pretty regularly with Nixon and with Kissinger, right? He's getting their inputs on Soviet policy on Latin America. Reagan has enough confidence that he's very willing to embrace some of his former political adversaries and differences. But once Reagan starts really moving faster in partnering with Gorbachev for doing the INF Treaty for reducing tensions in the Cold War, Nixon and Kissinger and Brett Skilcroft and others are very critical of him. They think that he is taking taking the taking the too far and that that is quite annoying to Reagan that he felt like he earlier had to you know an understanding of these guys they wouldn't take shots at him while he's in office after Reagan says

tear down this wall Kissinger goes on ABC News the next day and dismisses you know scoffs and says that that's never going to happen yeah talk a bit about Reagan's personal style if you if you would I mean we've been talking for a good chunk of time now about his his convictions and his willingness to prosecute those convictions at a grand scale with great vigor and confidence as a manager maybe a left something to be desired. You quote in the book this amazing witticism of his that, you know, in this White House sometimes our right hand doesn't know what our far right hand is doing. His great Reagan line. But what was it, what was it like to serve in the Reagan administration at the senior level? Yeah. So this is where a lot of the interviews I did with former senior,

senior Reagan staff members and cabinet members were especially revealing. And a few things, things come out. The first is there was across the board great affection for and by so many who served for him because he was just a really decent human being, right? I mean, the guy did not have, you know, he was not consumed with malice or resentments. He was very comfortable with himself. He was, you know, generally had a very genial, sunny disposition. Of course, he'd love to tell jokes, didn't take himself too seriously. He was a generally a very kind person.

And so there's great affection of work. But there is also incredible frustration with him from so many who worked for him because he was just such a neglectful manager, and he was very conflict-averse. And so when his staff was feuding or leaking against each other or bickering over policies or bickering over, you know, personnel or egos or any number of the things that beset every presidency, it became very acrimonious. And Reagan would pretty consistently refuse to intervene, refuse to, you know, come in and say, all right, I wouldn't, you know, knock it off. I'm going to knock some heads together here. We're all going to get along. He was very averse to firing anybody and would just often let these resentments in this shooting fester. And it was, it was very aggravating and

taxing to the people who were working for him. And sometimes it could come at, you know, at real policy costs, too. I mean, one way of understanding the Iran-Contra scandal, you know, that bizarre episode of selling, you know, treating arms to the Iranians for hostage releases and then diverting the funds to supporting the Contras. And that's a very complicated story there. But I bring up one way of understanding that is Reagan's poor management. I mean, he just was not paying attention to what different people underneath him were doing. And that gave autonomy for some rogue elements to do some some really foolish mischief. So, you know, that's one of the puzzles that Reagan administration is how did he achieve such tremendous strategic success in amidst so much organizational dysfunction? And I think

part of it is, you know, part of the key is on the things that he really did care about, especially, you know, Colbrose strategy and the Soviet Union. He had a few key people, National Security Advisor, Bill Clark, Secretary of State, George Schultz, who were effective partners for him and working together with them to implement his strategy was able to overcome or at least compensate for a lot of the organizational mismanagement. Not to keep drawing comparisons with Nixon, but this is one, of course, where there's a strong parallel where they're really quite alike. Both, you know, very bold leaders at a grand scale, even if they have different, different, you know, fundamental principles, but at a personal

level, just deeply averse to confrontation. It's an odd, it's an odd theme and a lot of powerful people. Yeah, yeah, it really is. And this is where to give some credit where credit is due, and he's obviously a very complicated figure, but James Baker, during the first term, when he was Reagan's chief of staff, even though he was more politically moderate than Reagan, Baker was a very capable manager and was pretty loyal to Reagan and committed to helping implement Reagan's vision and managing relations with Congress. And Baker was, and Reagan had chose them for these purposes, right? I mean, you know, they were not close before.

Baker had not supported Reagan during the primary, but Reagan wanted to succeed. And he knew that he needed to have a stronger manager there as his deputy, if you will. And so Baker, even though he was part of the acrimode, part of some of the leaking, was also a very capable manager. And that helped compensate. Whereas once Don Regan became chief of staff in the second term, he was less so. and that's when, you know, things like Iran-Contra happened. I want to ask you about the relevance of Reagan's foreign policy today and its legacy.

And there's a couple different ways we could come at that. There's an obvious sort of strategic one. You know, what can we tease out in terms of competition with China and so forth? But I'm actually, I'm quite interested in his legacy specifically for conservatives and for the conservative debate about foreign policy. Because the way that you, you know, you outline the argument, there's as you are, as you are you were aware there's an element of the debate on the right right now about foreign policy that in certain respects harkens back to Nixon, but it's more radical.

You know, it's a vision of, first of all, it's a vision of the conduct of foreign policy that radically deemphasizes ideology. And then tied to that, not amongst everyone who makes that argument, I want to be fair, but amongst some who make that argument is a kind of doubt about the American project, right? To promote ideology as a central feature of the conduct of foreign policy sort of implies it certainly didn't practice for Reagan, a confidence in the American project, kind of confidence in liberalism broadly understood, you know, Western liberalism. I take it from what you've said in our

interview today, and what you write in the book that you think Reagan, you know, in a way kind of had it right. But there are those today on the right who would, you know, frankly say Reagan's hardly a conservative. he's a liberal and so conservatives ought to be at the very least skeptical if not hostile to conducting themselves in the way that he did so i guess i'll just i'll just ask you to respond to that yeah i have a lot of thoughts i'll try to try to keep them keep them brief here i mean the first disclaimer is you know at least some of ragan's successes do need to be understanding the context of he was elected at the right time and the right moment you know 1981 as a as a product of the 1980s and so and he's he's sui generis right i mean there he's a he's a he's a

very unique figure there. So when I talk about the relevance to some of his principles or ideas for today, which I will in a moment, you know, obviously you have to put that disclaimer now that there's not a perfect analog. There's not another Reagan today. And obviously, there's ongoing debates about what is conservative foreign policy. You know, you and I are both participants in some of those debates and obviously have our own thoughts. But I think some of the keys to understanding Reagan's foreign policy successes do stem from these core convictions. And I do think we rightly understanding him as one of the load stars are pillars on what I think both principled and successful foreign conservative foreign policy principles are you know first it does start with a deep

commitment to American exceptionalism to the uniqueness of the American idea and the American system and yet an understanding and appreciation that some of those values you know the United States stands for limited government human human freedom human dignity open trading order are also benefit to the world and are the aspirations of a lot of other people around the world. And that's why he was pretty consistent in principle to support for human rights and democracy and religious freedom. So that's the first one. The second one is a deep commitment to American leadership in the world and American alliances.

And this is where, again, he's very much a product of the 1930s and 1940s. He regularly references this during his time in office of seeing that isolationism and protectionism of the 1930s were bad for America and bad for the world. He had grown up under that, right? And he saw that lead, you know, he thought very directly to continue the Great Depression and then, of course, into the rise of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and World War II. And so for him, that was not just a lip in 20th century history. That was a permanent warning about dangers that could return if the United States was not active in leading the world and staying strong and free and in working with our allies on that. And again, he's, I think, you know, the American president in history is still

most committed to allies, seeing them as a unique source of American strength. And yeah, don't get started on what it paid to the rear allies can be, right? I mean, some of his biggest frustrations of vexations come from allies, too. So this is not, not by any means being, being naive about that. And then this, this, this vision of carrying military strength and power with diplomatic potency and purpose. Again, you know, we could do a whole other. episode just on Reagan's military buildup and modernization alone, it's much more sophisticated. People realize it's not just let's throw a lot more money at the Pentagon and outbuild the Kremlin. You know, for the defense wanks listening, you know, he's building on the second offset and, you know,

Andy Marshall's competitive strategy's framework to do a next generation of weapons systems that have leverage American technology for asymmetric, you know, cost imposing advantages over over the Soviets. The key there is he wanted to outsmart the Soviets as well as outbuild up, right? and lure them into an arbor race where no matter how many more rubles they threw out things, they wouldn't be able to win. I don't go into that as I digression. I think there's some permanent principles there about the importance of military power and military force and strength in American diplomacy.

And yet, very important. Reagan is also deeply scarred by the Vietnam experience and is very careful about actually deploying ground troops, right? I mean, so in his eight years as president, he will deploy ground sheets in combat once in Grenada. They're also, and I know I'm talking to a Marine here with you, there also, of course, is the ill-fated Marine peacekeeper mission in Beirut. But that's almost the exception that proves the rule. They weren't there in combat. Reagan really mismanaged that. You know, it was a very sorry episode, but he almost deviated from some of his own principles there.

Again, contrasted with Bush 41 who we were talking about, who, you know, I also think kind of lot. But in half the time, and only four years is present, he does two large steel ground combat operations, you know, just cause in Panama, that's worse to go for. And so I think Reagan, there's actually a principle there on being more cautious and prudent about deploying military force while still being assertive about using it for, you know, to win without fighting, if you will. So I think a lot of those principles are still very relevant for today. One final thing, he showed great political courage with these, right? I mean, he was a committed free and open traitor during a time when domestic, bipartisan domestic sentiment was even much more protectionist than it is now. But he just believed as a matter of principle, as a matter of what's best for the American economy, of what's best for our allies and being committed to open trade and resisting protectionism.

That was not a political winner for him. He did it out of conviction out of what he thought was best for the country. And over time, I think he was proved proven right on that. But he also showed political courage and sometimes taking on some voices from the right, who thought that he was going too far in his negotiation of the Gorbachev or trying to try to reduce the threat of nuclear war. And so, you know, I think political courage obviously needs to be married with conservative of principle here. And I think he's a great, great model of fusing both. Willem Bowden, author of

The Peacemaker. Thank you so much for making the time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Aaron. I really enjoyed it. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.