Credit Where Credit is Due
Whenever I try to give credit to Ronald Reagan for participating in the fall of the Soviet Union, I often hear that its fall was an inevitability, and it just so happened to occur on Reagan’s watch. I have to point out to them that Reagan was the first President to come along with an intent to defeat communism, not just contain it. And then to have the Soviet Union defeated "on his watch", with nary a nuke dropped, is one of those "coincidences" you don’t often see in politics; where the effect so closely mirrors the cause.
Interestingly, some of those who say the fall of communism was inevitable weren’t around when it happened. I was. And so was Lech Walesa.
Lech Walesa said that there would not be a free Poland without Ronald Reagan, during the unveiling of a statue in Warsaw of the late American president on Monday.
The former Solidarity leader said that “as a participant in these events,” it was “inconceivable” that such changes would have come about without the last American president during the post-1945 cold-war era.
Walesa added that thirty years ago, it seemed that the fall of the communist system would not be possible without a nuclear war.
Reagan stood strongly, and very publicly, with Poland against the Soviets. This was not an appeasing President. The Soviet Union was wrong and evil, and Reagan was not afraid to call it that, to the consternation of so many American liberals. (Just ask if, after Reagan walked out of the Reykjavik summit, if they thought nuclear war was a distinct possibility.) Lech Walesa agreed, and understood that history could just as easily played out very differently, if Reagan had not believed that victory was possible.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Poland certainly is.
Filed under: Doug • Politics • Republicans • Russia • War
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Reagan was there, and on watch, for part of the time. He should get credit for that.
Let’s not stretch the point too far. Others hoped to defeat communism, but didn’t see it as a possibility in their term because it wasn’t a possibility.
It was Truman who first drew a line in the sand, in Turkey and Greece, saying “no communism here.” It was Truman, encouraged by Churchill and supported completely by Atlee, who made sure Berlin would not fall completely to communism. It was Eisenhower who agreed to sell wheat to the Soviet Union in 1954, and agreed to loan them the money to make the purchase — thereby setting in motion the economic cascade that ultimately brought the Soviet Union down (they never could repay those loans, and each wheat sale pushed them further in debt while exposing the utter failure of Soviet/Creationist agriculture). Kennedy’s facing down of Khruschev in the Cuban Missile Crisis helped. Nixon’s overtures to China pushed the Soviets to stand even more alone, and increased the cost of the USSR’s commitment to defending its very long border with China. Carter’s fight against inflation gave Reagan the economy necessary to bluster militarily — and the weapons systems Carter ordered, coming on line in the Reagan years and actually working, put the Soviet Union in an untenable position to pay for their own defense. Reagan left office in 1989. The Soviet Union didn’t cease to exist for another two years, on George Bush’s watch.
Give credit to Reagan for what Reagan did. He acted the crazy man enough to concern the Soviets, but he was able to act sane enough, long enough in a one-on-one with Gorbachev, to convince Gorbachev that Reagan wouldn’t really initiate a first strike (in calmer times we might discuss whether the collapse of the Soviet Union couldn’t have been speeded a year or two had Reagan not convinced the Soviets he was bent on launching missiles at them with ill-timed jokes and badly-planned military maneuvers).
Reagan deserves credit for what he did. He doesn’t deserve credit for what others did before him, nor for his near-scuttling of the end of communism.
Certainly previous Presidents contributed to the effort, but that it happened on Reagan’s watch is, I believe, no accident. Isolating the Soviet Union was one thing, but while isolated, they still created havoc all around the world. It was necessary to, not just contain, but defeat the largest force for Communism to keep it from spreading so much, and to really liberate the countries who were under the USSR.
Reagan called an evil empire what it was. He was firm with them, more so than others before him, and the Left just freaked out over it, because *everyone* thought that, short of a nuclear war, the USSR was here for the long term. Yeah, communism might someday, eventually, burn itself out, but no one, least of all those on the Left, thought it would happen as soon as it did. The jokers who kept that clock that supposedly showed how close we were to nuclear war got it closer to midnight during the Reagan administration than it ever was. That was the conventional wisdom. So much for that.
(And please, you seek to give (due) credit to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon, who acted 20-40 years earlier, but then feel compelled to note that the USSR didn’t officially die until a mere 2 years after Reagan left office. Really? I’d still say a very close cause & effect.)
And so I note that in Poland, there is a statue, not to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon or Carter. There is one for Ronald Reagan, who Poland’s former President credits with, not just contributing to, but playing a very significant role in causing, the downfall of the Soviet Union. Walesa was born in 1943, so he knew firsthand how strong the long arm of the USSR was during the presidencies you mentioned. And he was there when it fell. Of all people, he would know.