in particular, through Berlin.”5
It was certainly not Gorbachev’s intent to knock down the Berlin Wall, which is why Ronald Reagan issued that challenge in front of the Brandenburg Gate. In fact, a month after Reagan’s June 1987 challenge, Gorbachev visited with West German President Richard von Weizsacker. Weizsacker asked Gorbachev “just for the record” about his thoughts on the prospect of German unity. Gorbachev’s response was hardly a ringing endorsement: He said that “history would decide what would happen in a hundred years.”6 Even Archie Brown says that when Gorbachev later famously told East German dictator Erich Honecker that “life punishes those who wait,” he was speaking of and looking forward to the kind of liberalization of East German Communism that Gorbachev was pursuing in the USSR—he was not expecting an end to the regime in East Germany.7 Gorbachev had not been helpful in prodding Honecker and unfettering East Germany. Two months after Gorbachev had come to power, when he first met privately with Honecker, Gorbachev told the East German despot: “There is only one model, Marxist-Leninist socialism.”8
This was why Reagan challenged Gorbachev in Berlin in June 1987. The president was convinced that a challenge needed to be made, in spite of his advisers’ protests and insistence that he remove the “provocative” line from the speech.
Despite the massive coverage that his call received, the Brandenburg Gate speech was hardly the first time that Reagan had made a call for the razing of the wall. On the contrary, he had made similar calls many times over the course of his crusade, a few in just the last year. The wall’s removal had been a theme throughout much of his crusade, as the destruction of this symbol would mean the destruction of Communism. On three occasions prior to his presidency, May 1967, May 1968, and November 1978, Reagan called for the removal of the Berlin Wall. In each of these instances, the Crusader displayed his hatred of the symbol, seeking not only to end the division in Germany, but throughout the whole of the Eastern bloc. It was an idea that seemed far-fetched in 1967, and remained so twenty years later.
Equally striking was the fact that Reagan, as president, had called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall several times before his June 1987 speech. In August 1986 alone, he remarked on the destruction of the wall three times—on August 7, 12, and 13.9 Ten days before the Brandenburg Gate address, Reagan reiterated his call in a June 2 interview with a West German newspaper, saying: “In a word, we want the Berlin Wall to come down.” This time, Reagan added that he desired the “elimination of all barriers” between East and West Berlin as well as “the reintegration of all four sectors of the city into one unit again.”10 Significantly, this was an expressed desire for not merely the removal of the wall but for a unified Germany.
On June 12, Reagan made yet another “wall call” in a written response to interview questions submitted by the West German publication, Die Welt, where he said that if the “Soviet leadership” truly understood and acknowledged the “benefits of freedom,” then “there is one step they could take that would be unmistakable: Tear down the wall, open the gates.”11 With that last line, he had now spoken almost the exact same language as he did in his dramatic, televised speech that same day at the Brandenburg Gate.
Not only did this dramatic language convey the gravity and importance of the wall, but it also succeeded in catching the attention of people around the world. With these clear and unmistakable words, Reagan reinforced his goals to the world, eliminating any lingering doubt over what his presidency was seeking to accomplish. To Reagan and to the world, the Berlin Wall represented more than a mere division between East and West; it represented the oppression and control of the Soviet government that had trapped the people of Eastern Europe. It was the embodiment of Yalta’s failure to protect Eastern Europeans from Soviet incursion, and as such it had to go.
REAGAN ON POLAND
While 1987 saw Reagan focusing world attention on the Berlin Wall, he simultaneously returned his attention to Poland, as he continued to stress the plight of the Polish people and their containment inside the Soviet bloc. It was a subject that would remain a fixture for Reagan during his final two years in office, as he continued to use the power of the bully pulpit to show solidarity with the Polish people.12
On February 19, 1987, he claimed that, “the light of freedom continues to shine in Poland. The commitment and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Polish men and women have kept the flame alive, even amid the gloom.” He cited the slogan of the nineteenth-century Polish independence movement: “For Your Freedom And Ours.” “That,” said Reagan, “is our slogan, too. And it is more than a slogan; it is a program of action.” (Emphasis added.) He concluded by telling the Polish people that he continued to believe that Polish freedom and liberty remained a “possible dream.” The “flame of justice and liberty,” represented by those candles he asked Americans to light for Poles during Christmas 1981, would “never be extinguished.”13
Reagan seemed especially inspired—spiritually so—in a memorable May 18, 1987 meeting with his speechwriters, one of which, Josh Gilder, was preparing remarks for the president to deliver at his next visit to the Vatican. The pope would soon thereafter be traveling to Poland again. Gilder asked Reagan if there was something in particular he wanted to say to the pope. Reagan replied with these exact words, recorded verbatim by Gilder:
Our prayers will go with you [to Poland] in the profound hope that soon the hand of God will lighten the terrible burden of brave people everywhere who yearn for freedom, even as all men and women yearn for the freedom that God gave us all when He gave us a free will. We see the power of the spiritual force in that troubled land [Poland], uniting a people in hope…. Perhaps it’s not too much to hope that true change will come to all countries that now deny or hinder the freedom to worship God. And perhaps we’ll see that change come through the reemergence of faith, through the irresistible power of a religious renewal.14
This was not just a powerful spiritual statement aimed solely at Poles but to all believers suffering behind the Iron Curtain.
COMMUNISM AND LATIN AMERICA
As 1987 developed, it became clear that Reagan’s prognostications on behalf of freedom were not limited to Europe. In actuality, his second term was filled with declarations to spread democracy throughout the world, in the Eastern bloc but also in Latin America. Having begun the term by affirming that one of his “consistent goals” in the Western Hemisphere was to “promote the development of democratic institutions,” Reagan continued to voice these ideas throughout 1987 and 1988, saying that “American foreign policy is not simply focused on the prevention of war but the expansion of freedom.”15 It was an important idea for Latin America and one that he conveyed frequently during these last two years in office.16
This in fact was not a new concept for Reagan, who for much of his crusade had been acutely aware of democracy’s absence in Latin America. In the 1970s, he routinely noted that over half of the region did not live under democracy, often promising to do something about it.17 For Reagan, the fight against Communism in Central and South America was consistent with his promotion of freedom worldwide. He warned: “The transition to democracy, especially in Central America, has been accompanied by a concerted and wellfinanced effort by the Soviet bloc and Cuba to undermine democratic institutions and to seize power from those who believe in democracy.” This “subversion” by Communists, said Reagan, had to be stopped by the forces of democracy.18
It was this desire to support the growth of democratic regimes and thwart the expansion of Communist ones which led to Reagan’s aid of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and a blemish on Reagan’s presidency.
In late 1986, reports began circulating that the Reagan administration had secretly sold arms to Iran, a theocratic terror state that America did not publicly recognize, in exchange for hostages that had been held by the Iranians for what seemed liked an eternity to Reagan. While the United States had not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979’s violent revolution, the sale of the weapons was deemed necessary in order to ensure the
