Ronald Reagan will go down as a critical leader at a critical time and as one of the United States' most important presidents. A review of James Mann's The Rebellion of Ronald Reaan: A History of the End of the Cold War.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War
by James Mann
Hdbk., 416 pgs.
Published by Viking Adult (March 5, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0670020540
ISBN-13: 978-0670020546 

Remember the 1980s?

President Ronald Reagan was vilified universally by the Left and much of the liberal establishment for his strident rhetoric, his "cowboy" approach to foreign policy, his deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe and his support of anti-communist groups in Africa, Central America and Afghanistan.

He was at best a dunce, at worst a criminal. The Democrats and their minions wanted him destroyed, politically and historically. Further evidence of the academic disdain for Reagan arises each time rankings of presidential greatness are published, with liberals routinely relegating Reagan (at best) to the middle of the pack.

A strange thing happened on the way to universal left/liberal conformity. First, Reagan's collections of letters and commentaries were published, underscoring that his knowledge of issues and people was deeper and broader than his long-time critics could admit. When Reagan died, Mikhail Gorbachav, the former Soviet general secretary, hailed him as a great and historic president.

Now along comes James Mann, in The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, asserting that perhaps the Gipper knew what he was doing after all. Mann's study, which focuses primarily on negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev during the 1980s, documents that Reagan's policies and diplomatic approach were shrewd and effective.

Mann's conclusion that Reagan was a driving force in ending the Cold War is not exactly news to those of us not bitten by the anti-conservative, anti-Reagan bug. It is nevertheless noteworthy that a liberal Los Angeles Times reporter gives this much credit to Reagan. His conclusion: because of his adept diplomacy, Reagan helped trigger events that led to the end of the Cold War and the liberation of much of the communist world from Soviet tyranny.

Reagan's success can be summarized by focusing on a few themes, which are alluded to in Mann's study.

Reagan won the war of ideas

Reagan rejected moral equivalence – the idea that coexistence with Soviet tyranny required neutering political language rooted in principles of difference. The status quo might have been acceptable for pragmatic reasons, but Reagan never accepted it as a moral imperative. Freedom was better than tyranny and Reagan articulated this in ways that led critics to cringe – from his evil empire comments to his call for Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"

Guided by his own instincts, occasional input from Susan Massie, a citizen diplomat whose influence might be overstated here, and Secretary of State George Schultz, Reagan navigated with skill and intuition, seasoning his tough rhetoric and policies with sincere diplomatic overtures aimed at bringing the Soviet Union and Gorbachev out of the dark prison of repression and economic stagnation.

Notes Mann: "Any examination of Reagan's policies in the last years of the Cold War will show that he acted with what certainly looks like guile – or if not guile, then crafty instincts. His actions sometimes did not fit with his rhetoric – and it is the blend of the two, of his words and his actions, on which Reagan should be judged. Ringing anti-Soviet speeches served to marshal support for conciliatory policies. Conversely, the continuing diplomacy made it easier for Reagan to give speeches reaffirming a belief in democratic principles without raising the hackles of Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders."

Mann provides detailed accounts of Massie's influence on Reagan and of Reagan's "tear down this wall" line delivered in West Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate, which line both the State Department and many European leaders wanted excised for fear it would endanger relationships between the two great powers. Reagan stuck to his guns, showing the Soviets that while he was willing to talk, he was not willing to compromise on core principles for "detente" or co-existence or even arms control agreements that would shape his own legacy for the better within certain spheres of influence.

Reagan grasped what many Soviet experts on both the Left and the Right failed to see, that the Soviet regime was both inferior morally and in trouble economically, its aging leadership (Reagan saw three leaders – Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko — die in his first term) an indices of Soviet decrepitude. In short, Reagan offered moral clarity while also illuminating a path toward redemption and reconciliation. He believed the many in the Soviet Union longed for freedom just as those in the West did and so he never saw the conflict as interminable. Reagan approached Gorbachev with the certainty of a man who knew he was on the right – and winning — side of history.

Reagan had superior instincts

Even as the Left savaged Reagan, it was ironic that among his sharpest critics were the old guard American architects of detente — Nixon, Kissinger and Scowcroft. They sought to lecture Reagan, unsuccessfully, on the dangers of negotiations with the Soviets. They considered Gorbachev a more polished but equally hard-line communist; Reagan saw a man with whom he could do business. Not that Reagan looked into Gorbachev's eyes and saw a humanitarian, but his confidence in the American ideal – freedom and prosperity – convinced Reagan that Gorbachev had a desperate need to remake his relationship with the West.

Mann writes: "Gorbachev's initiative reflected an intensified determination to change the direction of his country's foreign policy. According to Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev's principal foreign-policy adviser, the Soviet leader's initial strategy after taking office had been to try to create divisions between Western Europe and the United States, creating indirect pressure on Washington to limit its military spending. But by early 1986, after nearly a year as general secretary, Gorbachev had decided instead to push for arms control through a direct dialogue with the Reagan administration."

Did Gorbachev have a revelation, a vision, a sudden change of heart?

Though Mann can't quite bring himself to admit it, Reagan's forceful dealing with the communists around the globe during the period leading up to Gorbachev's rule helped create the context that made negotiations with Gorbachev, and Gorbachev's reforms, possible.

One can understand the liberal reluctance to credit hawkish policies they opposed in reshaping the geopolitical context, but from the deployment of the Pershings, to the defense buildup, to his support of the resistance in Afghanistan, to the anti-Sandanista campaign, Reagan let it be known that he would be a serious adversary of Soviet-inspired tyranny. Even when cynics from both sides of the left-right divide believed him naive, Reagan (with help from Solzhenitsyn, Thatcher, Kohl and Pope John Paul II) practiced the highest form of diplomacy by establishing the terms of negotiations and then proving a dependable partner.

Gorbachav was a different kind of Soviet leader

History will not and should not minimize Gorbachev's role. His transformation from hard-line party man to a world leader capable of seeing the need for compromise and tolerance was certainly critical. But even Mann, a fan of Gorbachav, admits that the Soviet leader came along reluctantly.

"Reagan's polices gave Gorbachav enough time, latitude, and prestige to proceed with his reforms to the point where they could no longer be undone. Gorbachav was hardly radical in his domestic policies; he was opening up the Soviet system, but always with the goal of maintaining the leadership of the communist party."

In short, change happened with and around Gorbachav. Some of it he drove, much of it was the result of the dynamic that Reagan and his alllies put into practice – which underscored that the old ways of doing things would no longer work. A new approach had to be tried because the Soviets could no longer compete with Reagan's defense buildup and his tough approach to the conflict. (This was documented by the Washington Post in the early 1990s, when papers made public from the Soviet archives were made public.)

Nevertheless, when it came time to crush dissent and lower the iron curtain again, Gorbachav, to his everlasting credit, refused.

The mystery of the man

For all the research and analysis evident here, one senses that Mann struggles with Reagan because he cannot shed totally his liberal biases, which were encouraged no doubt by Reagan himself, who never seemed to be eager to dispel mythologies that he was half-witted and barely in charge.

In this regard, Reagan has remained a puzzle to biographers, reporters and even close friends and family. Was he smart, lucky or some combination of both? We all remember Edmund Morris' tortured and failed attempt to get a handle on Reagan the man and the myth. 

Mann experiences a similar frustration. Reagan could be aloof and yet a serene, sunny person. He was so self-assured that no amount of criticism knocked him off balance. One long-time aide, interviewed in Mann's book, said he had seen Reagan lose his stride only three times – when Nancy Reagan had breast surgery, when a report on Iran-Contra accused him of trading arms for hostages, and at Reykjavik, when his negotiations with Gorbachev came to an impasse because Reagan refused to give up a missile defense program in exchange for historic massive arms reductions.

The secret of his resilience seems to be his connection to every day Americans whose goodwill enabled him to weather the scorn of much of the Washington elite and the global Left even as he went about the business of winning the Cold War.

Reagan the hawk made the Soviets rethink their aggressive expansionism; Reagan the idealist offered a helping hand as a new approach began to flower into freedom and liberation. Mann writes: "If Ronald Reagan, the most determined and most prominent of all anti-communists, accepted that the Gorbachav reforms were a sign of fundamental change, than others would be considerably less skeptical."

Reagan will go down as a critical leader at a critical time and as one of the United States' most important presidents. This book, written from a liberal perch, only underscores the inevitability of this well deserved legacy and, yes, vindication.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan is available on Amazon.com.