OPINION — As we debate whether we’re in a new cold war, a recent movie and book about the legacy of President Ronald Reagan have inspired Americans to become more familiar with the legacy of our 40th president. This is especially appropriate, given the upcoming presidential election on November 5. But it also merits a response, given the conclusion reached by the author and historian Max Boot, whose book and article in Foreign Affairs say Ronald Reagan didn’t win the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and that the suggestion that he did is a “myth.”
From 1981 to 1987, I worked for William J. Casey, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the campaign manager for Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential election. Director Casey – who died in 1987 – was close to President Reagan; they both viewed the Soviet Union as an evil empire that had to be defeated. Indeed, this was a time when the Soviet Union was marching to the tune of the Brezhnev Doctrine (named for then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev): Soviet interference in several corners of the globe, including Vietnam, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Yemen, Libya, Czechoslovakia, Nicaragua, Grenada and of course in Afghanistan, where Soviet troops had invaded in 1979. Reagan’s instructions to Casey were simple: defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, halt their meddling abroad, highlight their economic shortcomings and encourage internal liberalization.
The following is an excerpt about that policy from an article – The Long Path to the Current State of Sino-American Relations – published in 2022 in the Journal of Policy and Strategy,
“National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 32 of March 1982 said the United States would seek to neutralize Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet organizations in the region. NSDD-75 of January 1983 said the United States should not just coexist with the Soviet Union but change it fundamentally. Bill Casey… replaced (Stansfield) Turner as DCI with the election of Ronald Reagan. Casey, a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from World War 2 and an understudy of ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who headed the OSS, was an avid anti-communist and, working with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Reagan adviser William Clark, and others, took the lead in the implementation of these national security directives, determined to defeat the Soviet Union in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan. NSDD-166 in 1985 spoke of expelling Soviet forces from Afghanistan, where the Kremlin was spending between $4-$5 billion per year. With this new directive, efforts to support the Mujahedin increased exponentially and, working primarily with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, the Soviets were now spending more money in Afghanistan and taking significant casualties, affecting the morale of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and families in the Soviet Union. The approval to provide Stinger missiles to the Mujahedin was the decisive upgrade in weaponry that eventually convinced Moscow that victory was not possible, and withdrawal was its only viable option.”
The article continued: “In November 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made the decision to withdraw all Soviet combat troops by the end of 1988. He said Afghanistan had become ‘a bleeding Wound.’ The Soviets eventually withdrew all soldiers in February 1989 and the last Soviet aircraft left Bagram Airfield on February 3, in line with the Geneva Accords of April 1988 between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the Soviet Union and the United States as guarantors…President George H.W. Bush replaced Reagan in January 1989 and initially ordered a strategic policy review of relations with the Soviet Union and met with Gorbachev in Malta in December 1989. Discussion dealt with the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and developments in Eastern Europe, with Bush encouraging Gorbachev to move forward with Democratic reforms.”
In 1985 the Soviet Politburo elected Gorbachev as the Communist Party’s General Secretary, replacing Konstantin Chernenko, who replaced Yuri Andropov, who replaced Leonid Brezhnev who died in 1982, after serving 18 years as the General Secretary. What Gorbachev inherited in 1985 was a Soviet Union under siege in Afghanistan; confused and perplexed with efforts to address the U.S.’s Strategic Defense initiative (missile defense shield); the Solidarity anti-communist labor movement in Poland and a Polish Pope, John Paul II, critical of Moscow’s interference in Poland; and the Samizdat movement in the Soviet Union to make literature –banned by the government — by dissident activists like Aleksander Solzhenitsyn available to the people. The pressure on Gorbachev was great. He courageously implemented a policy of Glasnost — openness; and a policy of Perestroika – political reforms. He worked with President Reagan who in 1983 said the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” and then in 1988, after working with Gorbachev, in Moscow’s Red Square, said that the Soviet Union was “no longer an evil empire.” That was the impact Gorbachev had on Reagan.
But in the final analysis, it was President Reagan’s policies that defeated the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. That’s quite a legacy.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times
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