The Crusader

Naturally, drawing respect from Reagan meant drawing ire from the Soviet propaganda machine. Pipes was described in Pravda as “one of the ideological mentors of the U.S. administration,”¹⁶ while The Moscow Domestic Service was more strident, excoriating Pipes as an “odious figure” that had “long plowed the furrow of ardent anti-sovietism and anti-communism.” The Ivy League professor was a “dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, hysterically fighting for nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.”¹⁷

But despite the Communist remonstrance, Pipes found himself at home in the Reagan administration. To Pipes, Reagan possessed “a keen grasp of the vulnerabilities of the Soviet regime,” displayed “great discernment and the instinctive judgment of a true statesman,” and had been inspired by “a strong moral sense and a sound understanding of what it is to live under tyranny.” Reagan, said Pipes, “acted with the conviction that the Soviet Union was not strong but weak, that its power rested on police terror at home and nuclear blackmail abroad, and that, being in the profoundest sense unnatural, it did not have long to live.”¹⁸ Pipes added that Reagan “instinctively understood, as all great statesmen do, what matters and what does not, what is right and what is wrong for his country.” This quality, said Pipes, cannot be taught: “like perfect pitch, one is born with it.”¹⁹

JANUARY TO MARCH 1982: RHETORIC AND ECONOMICS

In early 1982, rhetoric and economics became central to the effort to undermine, and both were put on display by Reagan in those first months of the year. Of the former, it seemed like every couple of days Reagan made a comment about Poland in a speech or interview or press conference. Every few weeks he made a lengthy statement of support, assailing the Communist government or the Kremlin, while continuously issuing memorials and proclamations of support for Solidarity and the Polish people.

The first concrete step came on January 20, 1982, when the president officially designated January 30 as Solidarity Day in the United States, a time for Americans to show “special affinity” with Solidarity. “I urge the people of the United States, and free peoples everywhere,” exhorted Reagan, “to observe this day in meetings, demonstrations, rallies, worship services, and all other appropriate expressions of support. We will show our solidarity with the courageous people of Poland.”²⁰ Though on the surface this seemed to be merely a symbolic gesture, it served the important role of demonstrating to Moscow and the rest of the world that Poland had not been forgotten.

There were many notable Reagan remarks from this period.²¹ Among them, Reagan returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 26, 1982, where, before the faithful, he quoted the writing of Whittaker Chambers, a man he and they admired. Chambers had said thirty years earlier that within the next decades history would decide whether all mankind was to become free or Communist, and that it was their fate to live upon that turning point in history.²² Chambers was pessimistic; he felt that America was on the right side of history in the Cold War struggle, but believed it was on the “losing side.” Despite his utmost respect for Chambers, Reagan told his fellow conservatives that the turning point had arrived and, unlike Chambers, he was an optimist. He told the gathered that he and they had “already come a long way together,” beginning with that speech for Goldwater. Now, he had more to ask: “Join me in a new effort,” he urged, “a new crusade.”²³

These were grand words. Rhetoric, however, could only go so far. If Reagan was truly going to expedite and exploit the fissures in Communism, he knew that he would have to employ economics as part of his campaign against the USSR. It was this thinking that led NSC member Tom Reed to prepare a study on the USSR’s economic crisis.

Reed’s report was discussed at an intriguing March 1982 White House meeting, where Reagan wasted little time: “Why can’t we just lean on the Soviets until they go broke?” the president asked.²⁴ Some of the moderate Cabinet members objected, insisting, among other things, that the USSR was stable. Henry Rowen, the brilliant chair of the National Intelligence Council, voiced disagreement with the pragmatists, saying that, quite the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union to be on the verge of collapse. Reagan thanked Rowen for his input and then, with a simple nod of his head, said to Reed: “That’s the direction we’re going to go.”

THE ECONOMIC WAR

Reagan had long viewed economics as a means to facilitate political change in the Soviet Union. In a speech made in the early 1960s, he averred: “If we truly believe that our way of life is best aren’t the Russians more likely to recognize that fact and modify their stand if we let their economy come unhinged so that the contrast is apparent?”²⁵ To Reagan, Soviet disadvantages were America’s advantage. Lenin’s inferior system ought to be permitted to unhinge by its own inferiority, and it was up to the United States to hurt rather than help the Soviet system.

As president, Reagan’s long-held views were now reinforced by the classified national-security briefings he received each morning. These detailed briefings shed much light on the Soviet situation and buoyed Reagan’s suspicion that the USSR was in trouble. In addition, Bill Clark and CIA director Bill Casey worked intently to provide Reagan with hand-delivered raw intelligence on a regular basis, an unprecedented step for a president. NSC staff member John Poindexter (later a national security adviser) said that Reagan “loved seeing the raw intelligence on the Soviet economy,” a sentiment which Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan echoed: “He just loved reading that stuff. He would take that big stack and read them one by one over the weekend.”²⁶

In these briefings Reagan saw what he called “great opportunities” for Soviet destruction.²⁷ During a March 26, 1982 classified briefing, the president was told that his adversary was hobbling badly. He shared the dire news with his diary: “Briefing on the Soviet economy. They are in very bad shape, and if we can cut off their credit they’ll have to yell ‘Uncle’ or starve.”²⁸ He found the bad news inspiring, as it supported his long-held beliefs about the Communist system and the ways in which he could exploit the ruptures in the system for his own end:

Now, the economic statistics and intelligence reports I was getting during my daily National Security Council briefing were revealing tangible evidence that Communism as we knew it was approaching the brink of collapse, not only in the Soviet Union but throughout the Eastern bloc. The Soviet economy was being held together with baling wire; it was a basket case, partly because of massive spending on armaments. In Poland and other Eastern-bloc countries, the economies were also a mess, and there were rumblings of nationalistic fervor within the captive Soviet empire.

You had to wonder how long the Soviets could keep their empire intact. If they didn’t make some changes, it seemed clear to me that in time Communism would collapse of its own weight, and I wondered how we as a nation could use these cracks in the Soviet system to accelerate the process of collapse.²⁹

Reagan was learning that the Soviet economy “was in even worse shape than I’d realized,” further assuring him that “Communism was doomed.” Not only did the system lack the free market incentives that spawned economic growth, said Reagan, but, also, history was full of examples showing that any totalitarian state that deprived its people of liberty would ultimately fail. The Soviet system, he determined, “could not survive.”³⁰ “The situation was so bad,” concluded Reagan, “that if Western countries got together and cut off credits to it [the USSR], we could bring it to its knees.”³¹

While the USSR might be hampered by its own cracks and economic inconsistencies, Reagan felt that his administration needed to identify the fissures and drive a wedge between them. His team would seek to exploit these internal contradictions unlike any administration since the start of the Cold War.

The next steps were to furnish the sword and summon the will to plunge it deep. For that, he could count on not only Bill Clark and Clark’s team at the NSC but also on the vital assistance of Bill Casey, the highly unorthodox intelligence director. Casey was more the top mole, the operations officer-in-chief, than a bureaucrat