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Essay on Ronald Regan
America's 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan, died on June 5, at the age of 93. In the many commentaries that followed on Reagan's accomplishments and legacy, most gave a prominent place to some variant of the claim that Reagan "won the Cold War." A piece of the Berlin Wall on display at the Reagan Presidential Library symbolizes this historical interpretation.
The wording that the West "won" the Cold War accurately conveys the important fact that democracy was preserved while communism was discredited. If the Cold War had become a hot war, however, even if the West had still won it, such a war would have been indescribably destructive. In addition to the democracies being the winners, therefore, the fact the Cold War ended peacefully was also a major accomplishment.
The Western democracies really sought two overriding objectives in the Cold War: preserving their freedom and avoiding World War III. The achievement of both objectives is what made the end of the Cold War such a cause for celebration.
Reagan was the first major world leader to declare that Communism would soon collapse. In March 3, 1983 he was blunt: "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last — last pages even now are being written."
This summation also implies a view about how Reagan won the Cold War. It suggests Reagan's military buildup and moral frankness enabled the United States and its allies to defeat Soviet communism.
Reagan contributed positively to the end of the Cold War, but his role was just one of several essential factors and his positive contributions were not always the result of taking a hard-line stance.
President Reagan's policies and pronouncements may have contributed indirectly to the evolution in Soviet thinking, but this was not a case of the United States....
