Ronald Reagan, an actor whose stage makeup got thicker as his gig wore on, enthralled his fans with an impeccable delivery. If Groucho Marx had ever secured the presidency on the Democrats’ dime I might take a swipe at his overall performance but there isn’t another politician in the arena that can challenge his top billing. As a stand-up Mr. Reagan continues to stand alone. But Reagan, the icon of conservatism, rendered punchlines only fantastical hardliners could applaud.
I am a babe in the woods when it comes to political mishmash and would need a year, at least, in a secluded enclave with nothing but books and records at my disposal to fully comprehend the emergence and embracing of such a dichotomy. But it only took a day of reading the readied stream of expert opinions on the subject to learn that the final analyses flow in as many directions as there are writers to pen them and in the absence of consensus his legacy is in limbo.
On Reagan the cold warrior and the Soviet Union’s demise. According to Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire:
pp. 17-18: Among Gorbachev’s scientific advisers, none was more important than Andrei Sakharov, who participated in the creation of the Soviet Union’s hydrogen bomb and later became a brave critic of his country’s human rights record and the winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.
On December 23, 1986, Gorbachev ordered Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, released from internal exile in the city of Gorsky, where they had been sent by the Politburo for criticising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The freeing of Sakharov was one of Gorbachev’s earliest and most important acts of glasnost, or “openness,” which ultimately led to the unraveling of the Soviet system, but he also wanted Sakharov’s advice on SDI. Given in secret meetings in Moscow in February 1987, Sakharov’s analysis was unequivocal: “An SDI system would never be militarily effective against a well-armed opponent; rather, it would be a kind of ‘Maginot line in space’–expensive and vulnerable to counter-measures. It would not serve as a population defense, or as a shield behind which a first strike could be launched, because it could easily be defeated. Possibly SDI proponents in the United States were counting on an accelerated arms race to ruin the Soviet economy, but if so they were mistaken, for the development of counter-measures would not be expensive.”
Rather than hiking investments in new weaponry, the Soviets actually were in the process of cutting back. In the mid-1980’s, revised CIA estimates of Soviet spending on weapons procurement indicated that the actual rate of increase had been a measly 1.3 percent a year, not the 4 to 5 percent the CIA had previously reported to the president, and that Russian appropriations for offensive strategic weapons had actually declined by 40 percent. Such estimates were ideologically unacceptable to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who sent them back to the CIA. There Director Gates “ordered SOVA [the CIA’s Office of Secret Analysis] to send Weinberger a memo focusing on Soviet economic strengths.”
Gates, mentor to Douglas Feith? The Office of Soviet Analysis (SOVA) was created in 1981 when “functional offices of the CIA’s DI (political, economic, military affairs) were dissolved and replaced by geographic offices.” It seems that since 1973 the estimators spent most of their time either in a state of reorganisation or in defence mode against hardliners who deemed their results unsatisfactory. That dissatisfaction led George H.W. Bush in 1976 to approve a proposal made by the Committee on the Present Danger to collect and disseminate Soviet intelligence via an outside group more “skeptical and critical” than the CIA. The idea had previously been rejected by DCI William Colby.
In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B’s criticisms of the NIE proved to be wrong. On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and “corrected” the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat.
The revitalization of the CPD grew out of an independent group called Team B. Team B was authorized in 1976 by President Gerald Ford and organized by then-CIA chief, George Bush. The purpose of Team B was to develop an independent judgment of Soviet capabilities and intentions. Team B was headed by Richard Pipes and included Paul Nitze, Foy Kohler, William Van Cleave, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham (ret. ), Thomas Wolf of RAND Corp and Gen. John Vogt, Jr. (ret. ). Also a part of Team B were five officials still active in government: Maj. Gen. George Keegan, Brig. Gen. Jasper Welch, Paul D. Wolfowitz of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Seymour Weiss of the State Department. (2,6) Team B was housed in the offices of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. (6)
The political base for CPD II was in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group formed in 1972 by the hard-line, anti-Soviet wing of the Senate, led by Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson. (6) These conservative Democrats contended that communism was a great evil and that the U.S. had a moral obligation to eradicate it and foster democracy throughout the world. (2) The 193 individual members of the revitalized CPD comprise a who’s who of the Democratic Party establishment and a cross-section of Republican leadership. (1,2) Eventually, 13 of the 18 members of the Foreign Policy Task Force of the CDM, lead by Eugene V. Rostow, joined the CPD. Notable among them were Jeane Kirkpatrick, Leon Keyserling, Max Kampelman, Richard Shifter, and John P. Roche. (6)
CPD II is a nonprofit organization established to “facilitate a national discussion of the foreign and national security policies of the U.S. directed towards a secure peace and freedom.”(1) CPD II broadened its base considerably from the original group by including in its ranks top labor officials, Jewish liberals and neoconservative intellectuals. (6) It managed this feat by including in its ideology not only a strong antiSoviet policy, but also one which promoted growth and expansion. (6) These members donate their time to the organization. (1) The CPD presented an alternative to the cooperative vision of empire put forth by the Trilateralists with an imperial, unilateral philosophy of power retention through military strength. President Carter chose to follow the philosophy of the Trilaterals, but the CPD and its cohorts became dominant with the election of Ronald Reagan. (2)
Other proponents of the CPD position are the American Security Council (ASC), the ASC’s Congressional lobby group–the Coalition for Peace Through Strength–and the conservative think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), home base for such notables as Henry Kissinger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, David Abshire and Ray Cline. (2)
Advocate of nuclear superiority, the CPD helped to create the myth of U.S. nuclear inferiority and the concept of “windows of vulnerability.”(2) CPD has expressed longstanding opposition to all types of arms control. Founding member William R. Van Cleave said,”Arms control has had a depressant effect not only on our military programs but also on our ability to deal with the Soviets. It has thoroughly muddled our thinking.”(2)
Hans-Hermann Hertle wrote the following in 1989: GDR – The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Self-Dissolution of East Germany’s Ruling Regime:
Political events of this magnitude have always been the preferred stuff of which legends and myths are made of. The fall of the Berlin Wall quickly developed into “one of the biggest paternity disputes ever”4 among the political actors of that time, and it is not surprising that the course of and background to the events during the night of 9 November 1989 still continue to produce legends.
As facts and figures continue to emerge and the extent of Mr. Reagan’s ‘world changing’ powers are placed in their proper perspective I don’t doubt his legend will live on but it’ll be Hollywood king makers who keep it alive.