THE ECONOMIST PICKS SIDES:

The man who beat communism: Ronald Reagan was fond of a nap and no intellectual. Oddly enough, he had what it took (The Economist, Jun 10th 2004)

The late 1960s and the 1970s had seen a powerful counter-attack by communism against its semi-defeat in the Cuba crisis of 1962. The Soviet Union had squashed Czechoslovakia's attempt to win a little freedom for central Europe, and had set about disconnecting western Europe from America's nuclear protection by building a nuclear missile force of its own that could hit America. The North Vietnamese army had helped its local friends to impose a one-party communist dictatorship on a South Vietnam most of whose people did not want it. The Russians were busily constructing a network of alliances in the Middle East and Africa. The cold war, it seemed, might roll on forever.

Reagan would have none of this. From the moment he took office, he made it clear what he believed: that America stood for a good idea, the Soviet Union for a bad one; that the notion of a balance of power between them—“mutually assured destruction”—was thus morally wrong; and that the Russians' bulging military muscle had no real economic power behind it. Therefore he decided to pour money into America's armed forces, and (pace the Greenham Common ladies) put medium-range nuclear missiles into Europe; that way, Europe's defence would not need an American intercontinental strike. If a rearmed America stood nose-to-nose with its adversary, and firmly but politely refused to budge, he reckoned it would win the day. He was right. By the year Reagan left the White House, the Russians had lost eastern Europe; by the next year, they had abandoned communism. [...]

Nor should Reagan's admirers claim that without him the collapse of communism would never have happened. It would have collapsed anyway, in the end. A system which believes that a small group of self-selected possessors of the truth knows how to run everything is sooner or later going to run into the wall. But Reagan brought the wall closer. He got the American economy growing again (admittedly at a price), which made more Russians realise their own system's incompetence; he could therefore spend far more money on America's military power; and he put those new missiles into Europe. The result: maybe 20 years less of Marxist-Leninist ideological arrogance, and of the cold war's dangers.

How did he do it, those puzzled intellectuals still ask? By being primally American: nonchalant, ever-hopeful, tough as an old boot when necessary. By plucking the hearer's heart, in speeches written for him by speech-writers who knew what phrases—“the surly bonds of earth”, “the boys of Pointe du Hoc”—would flow naturally from his lips. But above all by knowing that mere reason, essential though it is, is only half of the business of reaching momentous decisions. You also need solid-based instincts, feelings, whatever the word is for the other part of the mind. “I have a gut feeling,” Reagan said over and over again, when he was working out what to do and say.

It will be interesting to see if the US newsweeklies are that unambiguous.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2004 10:39 PM