A Thaw Built on Something for Everyone

George Bush has become President of the United States and leader of the Western world at a time of peace and promise unprecedented in the postwar era. Ronald Reagan’s presidency provided a solid basis on which to build in key areas of national security. But the choices that Bush makes must be grounded in part on an accurate understanding of what Reagan did and did not do.

There can be no doubt that his optimism was far more consistent with the American national character than was Jimmy Carter’s “malaise,” and national self-assurance is a valuable asset in diplomacy. Through the occasional exercise of military power--with Libya’s Col. Moammar Kadafi as his favorite villain--Reagan provided catharsis for collective anger over assaults on American dignity, even if he rarely produced concrete results. And in his support--even if with words more than deeds--of democracy elsewhere on the globe, Reagan gave a sense of purpose to U.S. policy that was rooted in American values. It was only in piling up mammoth budget and trade deficits while neglecting a wide range of global economic and environmental concerns that Reagan passed to his successor a set of challenges worse than what he inherited eight years ago, along with a weaker hand to play.

Overshadowing all else during the Reagan years was the passing of the Cold War. U.S.-Soviet competition continues, even the risk of war, but rigidities have softened and East-West tensions have been reduced almost everywhere. Equally important, Reagan acknowledged that U.S.-Soviet relations have changed significantly, thereby disarming the right wing and giving the new era a political legitimacy that perhaps no other President could have conferred. Bush can now proceed in dealing with the Soviet Union by wrapping himself in the flag woven by Reagan. It is thus possible that wild swings in U.S. attitudes toward Moscow will be damped down, leading to more sustainable and productive policies toward the Soviet Union than proved possible during detente’s false dawn in the 1970s.

But, beyond the politics, it is important to analyze how the thaw occurred in superpower relations. Obviously, the Soviet Union has done most of the compromising. It is removing its troops from Afghanistan, reducing its military forces by about 10%, smiling warmly on a host of its neighbors, helping to broker reduced tensions and even settlements in places like Cambodia, Korea and Angola, supporting the United Nations, and accepting on-site inspection as a condition of arms-control agreements.

Some observers, including Reagan himself, attribute these shifts in Soviet behavior largely to the U.S. defense buildup and years of firmness in resisting Soviet military encroachment (Afghanistan) or divisive diplomacy (medium-range missiles in Europe). Only in places where the President has not had his way--notably Nicaragua--has Soviet power resisted retreat.

According to this view, the Soviets could not compete, and they are wisely drawing in their horns. The lesson for George Bush is clear: Be resolute and militarily powerful, and bargain only from strength.

By contrast, many critics of the Reagan hard line regard as self-deluding the vision that effects must necessarily have causes that are Made in America. By this account, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has changed his tune and his tactics in order to gain a breathing space in which to restructure the Soviet economy, supported by Western credits and technology. He has played relatively poor cards with consummate skill, thereby gaining relative advantages in many parts of the world. Unable to provide his people with bread, he has given them circuses, while the U.S. government has lacked the imagination to match his diplomacy. The lesson for the next President: Be wary of Gorbachev and learn to compete with him, but also do not undermine the best Soviet leader that the West can hope for.

Yet another view gives President Reagan significant credit for helping to produce changes in Kremlin policy, but holds that he began to succeed only when he radically altered his own approach. That change can be dated from early 1984, when he began embracing the goals and rhetoric of arms control in order to counter the nuclear freeze movement and to co-opt the Democrats’ one selling-point in the presidential election. Reagan continued by making major--indeed, bizarre--concessions at the 1986 Reykjavik superpower summit, by concluding a Euromissile agreement that provided relative advantages to the Soviet Union, by inviting it to join Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and finally by supporting a human-rights conference in Moscow in 1991. Thus only by becoming more accommodating himself did Reagan evoke a similar response from Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. The lesson: Resist a return to the confrontation policies of the early 1980s, pursue arms control and work to reduce regional tensions.

Each of these visions has its strengths and weaknesses. But most remarkable, both for assessing the record of the Reagan years and for guiding the policy of the Bush Administration--the lessons that they embody are all essentially correct. Taken together, they provide a reasonable basis for U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future. Indeed, by acting in ways that provided arguments for almost everybody, Reagan permitted a bipartisanship that Bush would be wise to emulate.