by Danny Varat, Phd from the Greenville news
We remembered earlier this month the fall of the Berlin Wall and the resulting wave of freedom that washed across eastern Europe. The wall officially came down in 1989, but the seeds of its destruction were sown and nurtured by the greatest American of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan.
And, even while most Americans know that without Ronald Reagan the Cold War would still be “cold,” they may not remember just how much work Reagan had to do. Thankfully, Reagan believed in freedom — for us and everyone else.
Perhaps few recall that Jimmy Carter pledged not to be driven solely by opposition to communism. The United States under Carter therefore disarmed while the Soviets staged a massive military buildup and simultaneously funded Marxist political insurgencies around the world.
American readiness was an oxymoron in 1981 when Reagan entered the White House. America had not built a new long range bomber (the B-52) since 1954. The United States Navy stored less than a one-week supply of most major defensive missiles and torpedoes. The fleet had been cut in half since 1969, and we could not fill out the ships’ magazines even once, let alone refill them.
Reagan fixed the problem. The Reagan buildup produced “smart” bombs and stealth technology, Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot defenses, Aegis cruisers, Abrams tanks, Apache helicopters, night-fighting capabilities, and other systems focused on the Soviets.
The most potent arrow in Reagan’s military quiver was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Some mocked it as “Star Wars,” but one Gorbachev aide noted that, “we understood that it was a new stage, a new turn in the armaments race,” and that if SDI continued, “we would have to start our own program … and this (would bring) further exhaustion of the country.”
The enduring legacy of Ronald Reagan however remains the fact that as Margaret Thatcher said in 1991, “he won the Cold War without firing a single shot.”
Reagan never hid his anti-communism. Reagan always proclaimed that freedom is morally and materially superior to communism, and constantly linked the two in his speeches. Reagan declared that in denying freedom via tyranny, the Soviet Union crippled the human spirit. Reagan noted in a 1982 speech to the British Parliament that, “one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our times is this: Of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the communist world.”
Reagan labeled communism “the focus of evil in the modern world” and the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Reagan said both privately and publicly that the inherent weaknesses of communism, its denial of personal and economic freedom, would kill it. Reagan designed his foreign policy to that end, and it worked.
His effectiveness was marked at the 27th Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1986 which declared that, “without an acceleration of the country’s economic and social development, it will be impossible to maintain our position on the international scene.”
Then Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate on June 1987. There he proclaimed that, “we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Gorbachev in 1988 announced a unilateral cutback of 500,000 men from the Soviet forces in eastern Europe. Even Newsweek reported that this “was surely a move forced by economic woes.” Gorbachev himself told Reagan “I’m not doing this for show… I’m doing this because I need to. I’m doing this because there’s a revolution taking place in my country.” The rest is history.
Soviet troops began to withdraw from eastern Europe, and the populations there threw off their dictators. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. Communism died in the Soviet Union in 1991. Its precipitous fall occurred when its engine lost the remaining fuel of captive populations and finally blew. Reagan was right. Communism was inherently flawed, and he applied just enough pressure to topple it.
The lesson of 1989, that Ronald Reagan taught us and the world, remains true today. Freedom conquers, if we give it half a chance. The leaders of today should stand up for freedom with the zeal of Ronald Reagan. They will find not only that is it more satisfying than apologizing, but also that it actually works.
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