Ronald Reagan’s saber rattling was gratifying to some Americans and alarming to others, who were distressed by the stalemate of U.S.-Soviet arms-control talks as a fresh deployment of American nuclear missiles began in Europe during November 1983. Reagan protested to his critics that the build-up was needed to counter Soviet advances, yet the strategy produced no tangible positive diplomatic results.
Star Wars Arm Wrestle
During 1983, President Reagan announced the most spectacular, ambitious, elaborate, and expensive military project in world history. It was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but the popular press dubbed the system “Star Wars,” after the popular George Lucas science-fiction movie of 1977. Using an orbiting weapons system, the idea was to create a shield against intercontinental ballistic missile attack by destroying incoming ICBMs before they began their descent. The weaponry was so far beyond even the foreseeable cutting edge as to be fanciful: X-ray and particle-beam devices (as yet theoretical) operated by supercomputers that had to be programmed by other computers. Critics pointed out that Star Wars was not only a violation of the 1972 ABM (antiballistic missile) treaty, but a temptation to thermonuclear war because it promised to make such a war survivable. Others suggested that the system could never be made to work, and still others protested that the staggering cost of the program—$100 to $200 billion—would permanently cripple the nation.
Yet Presidents Reagan and George Bush pursued Star Wars to the tune of $30 billion, even though. the program produced few demonstrable results. Finally, in 1993, anonymous SDI researchers revealed that at least one major space test had been “fixed” to yield successful results. Caspar Weinberger, who had served as President Reagan’s secretary of defense, initially denied these charges, but subsequently claimed that the test in question— and perhaps the entire Star Wars program—had been an elaborate decoy. The program (Weinberger said) had been designed solely to dupe the Soviet Union into spending a huge proportion of its resources on a Star Wars program of its own—a program that U.S. scientists already knew was unworkable.
The Wall Falls
Whether one views Star Wars—and the rest of the gargantuan Reagan defense budget—as a vast misjudgment, which quadrupled the national debt from one to four trillion dollars, or as a costly but brilliant strategy to win the Cold War, the fact is that the Cold War did end. The government of the Soviet Union was first liberalized and then fell apart, the nation’s economy in tatters and the people clamoring for democratic capitalist reforms. Even though Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), general secretary of the Soviet Communist party (1985-91) and president of the U.S.S.R. (1988-91), introduced unheard of liberal reforms, President Reagan prodded him to go even further. In 1987, standing near the Berlin Wall, brick, stone, and razor-wire symbol of a half-century of communist oppression, the president made a stirring speech calling out to the Soviet leader: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, Berliners began chipping away at the wall, tearing it down piece by piece, as a liberalized Soviet Union merely looked on.
Although communist hardliners staged a revolt against Gorbachev in 1991, progressive junior army officers refused to follow KGB (Soviet secret police) directives, and the attempted coup failed. Gorbachev then disbanded the Communist party and stepped down as leader of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin (b. 1931), radical reformist president of the Russian Republic, assumed leadership not of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics— which ceased to exist—but of a loose commonwealth of former Soviet states.
Ollie, Iran, and the Contras
The debate still rages over whether the policies of Ronald Reagan won the Cold War or whether the Soviet Union, shackled to a financially, intellectually, and morally bankrupt system of government, simply lost the half-century contest. Another episode of unorthodox world diplomacy continues to provoke controversy as well.
In November 1986, President Ronald Reagan confirmed reports that the U.S. had secretly sold arms to its implacable enemy, Iran. The president at first denied, however, that the purpose of the sale was to obtain the release of U.S. hostages held by terrorists in perpetually war-torn Lebanon, but he later admitted an arms-for- hostages swap. Then the plot thickened—shockingly—when Attorney General Edwin Meese learned that a portion of the arms profits had been diverted to finance so-called Contra rebels fighting against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. As part of the ongoing U.S. policy of containing communism, the Reagan administration supported right-wing rebellion in Nicaragua, but Congress specifically prohibited aid to the Contras. The secret diversion of the secret arms profits was blatantly unconstitutional and illegal.
A lengthy investigation gradually revealed that, in 1985, a cabal of Israelis had approached National Security Advisor Robert MacFarlane with a scheme in which Iran would use its influence to free the U.S. hostages held in Lebanon in exchange for arms. Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger objected to the plan, but (MacFarlane testified) President Reagan agreed to it. In a bizarre twist, U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver (Ollie) North then modified the scheme in order to funnel profits from the arms sales to the Contras.
As was the case with Watergate during the 1970s, investigation and testimony implicated officials on successively lofty rungs of the White House ladder—through national security advisors John Poindexter and MacFarlane, through CIA director William J. Casey (who died in May 1987), and through Defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. Few people believed that President Reagan had been ignorant of the scheme, but even if he had been the unwitting dupe of zealots in his administration, the implications were bad enough, painting a picture of a passive chief executive blindly delegating authority to his staff.
In the end, Ollie North was convicted on three of 12 criminal counts against him, but the convictions were subsequently set aside on appeal; Poindexter was convicted on five counts of deceiving Congress, but his convictions were also set aside; CIA administrator Clair E. George was indicted for perjury, but his trial ended in mistrial; and Caspar Weinberger was indicted on five counts of lying to Congress. All of those charged were ultimately pardoned by President Reagan’s successor, George Bush. Although the 1994 report of special prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh scathingly criticized both Reagan and Bush, neither was charged with criminal wrongdoing.
Desert Shield and Desert Storm
President Reagan’s second term, marred by the Iran-Contra affair, a bumbling performance at the 1986 summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the 1987 stock market crash, nevertheless saw the “Teflon president” emerge personally unscathed. Vice President George Bush sailed to easy victory in the presidential race of 1988. Where the “Great Communicator” Reagan had been charismatic, however, Bush was perceived as testy, and, with the economy faltering (the principal issue was high unemployment), his popularity rapidly slipped in the polls. Bush seemed doomed to a one-term presidency.
Then, on August 2, 1990, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a dictator whose florid mustache recalled Josef Stalin and whose ruthless actions summoned to mind Adolf Hitler, ordered an invasion of the small, oil-rich Arab state of Kuwait. It was the beginning of a tense and dramatic crisis, but it was also President Bush’s finest hour. His administration brilliantly used the United Nations to sanction action against Iraq, and with masterful diplomacy, the president assembled an unprecedented coalition of 31 nations to oppose the invasion. Particularly delicate was acquiring the support of the Arab countries while keeping Israel, which was even subject to attack by Iraqi SCUD missiles, out of the fray. As to the U.S. commitment, it was the largest since Vietnam: more than a half
