Comments on: Risk and Reagan

By: Frank Wilhoit

Frank Wilhoit — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 03:06:34 +0000

“g”, instead of patronizing me after twenty-three solid years of tomorrows, it would be more useful if you would enumerate those things about the status quo that you consider worthy of celebration. You need only hit the high points, if you like, but please be exceedingly specific.

By: roger

roger — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 05:20:30 +0000

Giles, I’ll take what you say seriously. That is, you have a standard of ‘improvement’ that is separate from any personal affection you might feel towards Reagan. Improvement here has to be a positive act. Saddam Hussein can’t be said to have improved Iraq because he was captured. So that if you thought, say, Reagan encouraged, rather than discouraged, mass murders in El Salvador, you would decide that this wasn’t an improvement, especially for the murdered. More generally, you would think that it was bad to abet anything leading to the social trauma of being a part of a race or class that was targeted by a government for unrestrained violence. Similarly, I have a standard of improvement. If Reagan actually operated to improve the lot of the average Filipino between 1981 and 1989, for example, I put away any personal animosity and give him credit. So: the case contra Reagan in the three (not four) instances you and I have mentioned. 1.if you want to know what happened during the Reagan years in El Salvador, go to this link: http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_chron1.html. This is a very cursory summary of a much thicker library of testimonies. Mark Danner, in 1994, I believe, published a pretty sterling account of a series of massacres in El Salvador that link directly to the U.S. directed counter-insurgency campaign there. If life “improved” after Reagan was out of office, this is only because things became so radically dystopian while he was in office. 2.How about South Africa? We have the public record of Reagan’s refusal to punish South African for its internal repression, starting with the jailing of Mandela. Unlike the sympathy that Reagan expressed for jailed Soviet dissidents, there isn’t any record of a speech extolling, say, Steve Biko. If you can find one, I’d love to see it. Secondly, there was the Reagan doctrine that supported incursions into Mozambique and Angola by South Africa, and also supplied arms to UNITA – a “freedom fighting” group which abruptly became a terrorist group, in U.S. eyes, at the end of the cold war, when we decided that the communist head of Angola was indeed going to be amenable to selling as much oil to US companies as they wanted. Recently, the communist head of Angola was greated with subdued rapture on a visit to the Bush white house, which had no comment on the gunning down of the UNITA leader. That’s two. More on the third case later.

By: David Woodruff

David Woodruff — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 05:16:20 +0000

I can’t think of any Sovietologists who would concede even the least plausibility to the “Reagan forced the Soviets to spend themselves into the ground” line. Felixrayman above does a good job of demolishing it. It’s also the case that the ultimate Soviet economic collapse stemmed not from overspending, but from poorly thought out reforms that made the planned economy unworkable without creating a market economy to replace it. Nothing Reagan did forced these poor policy choices on Gorbachev.

By: Giles

Giles — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 00:05:02 +0000

Roger -you cant ahve it both ways, either governments have power or they don’t. Any way I think you’ve brought up some pretty poor counterpoints. things change for the better in all 4 countries during his tenure – if this was due to his hand – point to him. If he was irrelevant no points to you. I’d prefer to discuss whether Reagan’s Middle Eastern foreign policy was successful / wise / well thought out. Now that is debatable.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:25:28 +0000

Giles, wow, conservatives, who claim government can do little, on the one hand, invest it with magic powers to do everything once the right (rightwing) pharaoh is invested, on the other. Consider the possibility that: Marcos was overthrown because of internal Philippine politics, as per the assassination of Aquino, with Reagan acquiescing in the downfall of his old buddy after propping him up for years; South Africa was led to democracy by Mandela, routinely denounced by the Reaganites as a communist. El Salvador was rescued from its civil war by UN mediation in 1991. It was during Reagan’s years that the great massacre went forward, abetted by his open support for the death squads around ARENA. But I don’t want to say Reagan counted for naught. He did rearrange the planets, changed the law of gravitation, and, for a while, helped all mankind understand the language of the birds. Just a magic guy…

By: Giles

Giles — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:04:04 +0000

“Myself, I’d go for the death squads in El Salvador. And How about the support for the Generals in Argentina? The support for South Africa? The support for Marcos? ” When Regan left office Argentina, El Salvador and the Phillipines were democracies – South Africa was on the way. So that a pretty good list of Reagan’s starters. The main course the cold war and the dessert – well watching apparently smart people tying themselves in knots trying to claim his entire foreign policy was a failure.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 22:44:23 +0000

Mr. Johnson, how shall we begin the list of Reagan’s “contribution to making our empire more evil?” Myself, I’d go for the death squads in El Salvador. And How about the support for the Generals in Argentina? The support for South Africa? The support for Marcos? These are the foreign policy contributions. The famous I support states rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi is the beginning of the domestic list. High on that list would be Reagan’s unstinting support for the war on drugs, contributing to making this the incarceration capital of the free world. Then, of course, the tearing of the regulatory controls over the S&Ls, which, in the end, cost the tax payers about half what they spent defeating the evil empire. Those are the hors d’oeuvres, I think. What else is on the menu?

By: giled

giled — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 21:52:55 +0000

Doesn’t this post look strangely like the arguments for Kyoto – and here we have costs that are judged so unquantifiable high, set against benefits that are quantifiable that no matter how we set the discount or probabilities the costs always trumps the benefit. With Kyoto it is the same reasoning – just the other way round – unquantifiable large benefits against quantifiably small costs. This is just apples and oranges economics – you take something you cant measure – your personal feelings and measure it against something you can. Guess which one always wins?

By: Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 20:16:01 +0000

I’ll let you guys hash out the precise contribution Reagan made to ending the other evil empire. I’d give him credit for recognizing that Gorbachev was sincere—some other rightwing nitwit might not have had the sense to realize this. But, my fellow twerps, anyone want to discuss his contribution to making our empire more evil? You know, supporting torturers, death squads, terrorists, mass murderers, that sort of thing? Not all the dissidents under tyranny would sing Reagan’s praises. Some of them were under tyrannies enthusiastically supported by Reagan and ended up in mass graves missing some of their body parts. Note, by the way, that I am tacitly admitting that Reagan was a hero to dissidents in Communist countries and they probably had good reason for feeling some gratitude towards him. He was right in describing the Soviets as an evil empire and I was a little embarrassed at the time by some of my fellow left-of-centerites who thought that phrase was embarrassing. The big thing wrong with it was the lack of recognition that we had a beam in our own eye. Can I expect to see a minimum level of intellectual honesty from the people who praise Reagan’s policies in the communist world? Will they admit their hero whitewashed genocide, embraced torturers, lied about death squads, and did other things that one normally doesn’t mention at state funerals? Nah. Probably not.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 19:35:21 +0000

“If the Right is so proud of its retroactive moral (and economic) clarity in seeing marxism-leninism as an system doomed to failure, then how can Reagan deserve credit for its collapse? It’s like stabbing a tyant on his deathbed, isn’t it?” No it isn’t, and it wasn’t retroactive either. If you read pre-presidency letters you can see his vision years before he was actually able to undermine the Soviet empire. There is a big difference between stating that the USSR would eventually collapse and suggesting that it was on its deathbed in 1981. The USSR conducted itself as an empire in the real sense of the word as opposed to the watered-down version that people try to apply to the US. It was full of contradictions, but that doesn’t mean that the contradictions would have come to light on their own. At nearly every step Reagan challenged the USSR and exposed its lies. This weakened the Communist system because Reagan continually and confrontationally exposed the difference between communism and freedom. “Now I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that Walesa and Havel credited the MX with their salvation.” This kind of thinking reflects a confusion between words and actions which is all to common on this board. Reagan challenged the USSR with hiw rhetoric AND backed it up with actions (in this case military spending). The actions worried the Soviets and heartened their enemies because it suggested that his words were more than rhetoric. It wasn’t JUST that Reagan called the USSR an evil empire, he ACTED as if it were.

By: JRoth

JRoth — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 19:16:25 +0000

If I may, wrt messrs. Walesa, Havel, & Holsclaw: The critical thing for us to be able to learn anything from Reagan is to properly understand what he did and didn’t do, and what effects (intended and otherwise) these actions had. Quiggen is arguing against received wisdom on Reagan’s effects on the USSR, and secondarily Eastern Europe. The objection from felixrayman is odd, since he seems to think that, by agreeing with JQ that the received wisdom is wrong, he has somehow refuted JQ. Odd. Anyway, the relevant question is in 2 parts: did Reagan’s policies meaningfully hasten the demise of the USSR, and which policies did so? I think that Sebastian has incorrectly used an answer to part 1 as a response to part 2. Now I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that Walesa and Havel credited the MX with their salvation. My understanding of their stance has been that they credited Reagan’s tough language, and unwillingness to back down from confrontation with the Kremlin. If so, then their opinions have little bearing on JQ’s thesis, which is that Reagan’s defense buildup was a poor deal. That said, was it not the much-hated-by-Reagan’s-current-hagiographers Helsinki accords that put dissidents and workers’ rights on the international table? I don’t deny that Reagan did talk tough, and it’s certainly imaginable that another president in the same position wouldn’t have been as openly supportive (rhetorically, at least) of Solidarity. The bottom line, imho, is that unless Gorbachev’s installation can be irrefutably linked to Reagan’s policies, then he was at best an abettor to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR (giving him full credit, of course, for reacting appropriately to Gorb, as noted upthread). If the Right is so proud of its retroactive moral (and economic) clarity in seeing marxism-leninism as an system doomed to failure, then how can Reagan deserve credit for its collapse? It’s like stabbing a tyant on his deathbed, isn’t it?

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 16:23:22 +0000

“Walesa, Havel and Holsclaw”, there is the beginning of a sentence I would never have expected. And I wish I deserved it, but I don’t. I’m an American who writes, they were the men on the ground fighting Communism. There isn’t any comparison. Dismiss me all you like, but your curt dismissal of them is just silly. Why do nearly all of the anti-communists in actual communist countries believe that Reagan was absolutely crucial to their fight? If the general thrust of your answer is that they didn’t know shit, I suspect that you are merely revealing a romantic attachment to your theories rather than any useful explanation of reality.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 15:40:51 +0000

It is a mistake to look at the Reagan effect on the Soviet Union from the very short time perspective of the Carter presidency. Essentially, Carter simply continued the policies of Nixon. Here is the argument that Nixon’s détente contributed as much to the end of the Soviet Empire as Reagan’s militarism – or, perhaps more exactly, that the two were connected. In 1970, the Soviets confronted the same problem as the West. The post world war ii boom was grinding to a halt. What this meant, in both cases, was that designing the economy according to the model of large, central planning was returning less and less. Remember, Nixon was not only not averse to wage and price control, but found very little opposition when he implemented it. The Soviet dilemma was harder, since the centralization was much more pervasive, and the bet on the kind of industrial system that was being rendered obsolete was much larger. What were they to do? Nixon offered them the chance to semi-incorporate themselves in the World economy. Through loans, and through opening up the West to Soviet goods – oil and agriculture – the Soviet leadership put off its main problem. The leadership was blind enough to think that it could still continue diverting its surplus capital to the military. It didn’t see what détente really did: made the system peculiarly dependent on Western money. Every country that decides to postpone its economic problems through massive borrowing on the global markets seems to go through the same cycle – first, the borrowing insulates the leadership from the kind of economic changes that will have to be at least considered, second, the borrowing injects a certain false economic buoyancy in the class the ruling elite is most dependent on, and thirdly some jolt in the world economy crashes the system. This happened in Mexico in 94, and in Argentina in 2001. These crashes were prefigured by the downward spiral of the Soviet system. Trying to maintain a foreign policy that they couldn’t afford, the Soviet rulers didn’t realize how vulnerable they were to the West’s political changes. The contrast to the fall of the Soviet system is the endurance, indeed the flourishing, of the Chinese system, which so far has successfully integrated a central function for the party into a seemingly capitalist market system. Could the Soviets have done this? I think this was the way that was blocked, ironically, when the Soviets chose to exploit the advantages of détente. So put one mark on the board for Nixon.

By: Thomas Dent

Thomas Dent — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 13:22:08 +0000

Walesa, Havel and Holsclaw can think what they like: we’re concerned with Reagan’s actual actions (as opposed to rhetoric and beliefs) and their material consequences. Simply having lived in Eastern Europe doesn’t give you a hotline to the Truth About Reagan. Reagan gave some nice speeches, but it was the Berliners who did for the wall and Gorbachev who decided not to stand in their way. (I believe the U.S. did manage to send some funds to the Solidarity movement in Poland, but this hardly explains the collapse of the USSR.) Reagan was very lucky that Gorbachev got the job in ‘85, and not some new Breznev who would cling to Soviet domination regardless of the consequences. Raising the temperature of the Cold War – as Reagan seemed to be doing early in the 80’s – could have had very different results. Gorbachev’s ascendancy and decision to apply “glasnost” certainly wasn’t due to any action of Reagan’s. In ‘86 the right-wingers thought that Reagan had gone soft in the head: cosying up to the Commmies and almost offering to scrap the nuclear deterrent? But Reagan’s main achievement was exactly to react to Gorbachev in a constructive and even supportive way, without the paranoid suspicion that the likes of Richard Perle and Dick Cheney urged on him. Perle’s novel (a thinly-disguised portrait of his time at Defense) shows a President willing to go for the “zero option” and only restrained by his less trusting advisors, who believed that the Soviet Union was stronger and more threatening than ever.

By: Fergal

Fergal — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 10:32:25 +0000

Would not a better characterisation of the military build up be that it made the probable consequences of a war worse, rather than making it more likely? If, so, and if you think that Reagan/the US/world have a decreasing aversion to loss, (i.e. that they’re less bothered about the 10th million person to die than they were about the 9th), it’s not obvious that his calculus was off ex ante…