From the American Enterprise Institute:
Justice to Ronald Reagan
By Dinesh D'Souza
Many eminent commentators derided Ronald Reagan's policy toward the Soviet Union during his presidency. But events vindicated President Reagan's confidence that communism was failing, and history will credit him over all others for helping to bring about its demise.
Our current economic boom is in large part a legacy of the end of the Cold War, which confirmed the triumph of capitalism over socialism, opened up world markets for American investment, and enabled the sharp reduction in military allocations that has helped bring the budget virtually into balance.
Yet many historians and pundits refuse to credit Ronald Reagan's policies for helping to bring about the Cold War victory. Rather, they insist that Soviet communism suffered from chronic economic problems and predictably collapsed, as Strobe Talbott, a journalist at Time and now President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, put it, "not because of anything the outside world has done or not done . . . but because of defects and inadequacies at its core."
If so, it is reasonable to expect that the inevitable Soviet collapse would have been foreseen by these experts. Let us see what some of them had to say about the Soviet system during the 1980s.
In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability."
This view was seconded that same year by the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who observed that "those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves."
John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished Harvard economist, wrote in 1984: "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene. . . . One sees it in the appearance of solid well-being of the people on the streets . . . and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops. . . . Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."
Equally imaginative was the assessment of Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the 1985 edition of his widely used textbook: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth. . . . The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth."
Columnist James Reston of the New York Times in June 1985 revealed his capacity for sophisticated even-handedness when he dismissed the possibility of the collapse of communism on the grounds that Soviet problems were not different from those in the U.S. "It is clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism, and capitalism are all in trouble."
But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, another MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote, "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."
Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Mr. Reagan's policies. Mr. Talbott faulted the Reagan administration for espousing "the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic. "Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Mr. Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live."
Foreseeing the End of Communism
Perhaps one should not be too hard on the wise men. After all, explains Arthur Schlesinger in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, "History has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes. No one foresaw these changes."
Wrong again, professor. Ronald Reagan foresaw them. In 1981, Mr. Reagan told the students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame, "The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."
In 1982, Mr. Reagan told the British Parliament in London: "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union." Mr. Reagan added that "it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens," and he predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong it would produce a "march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."
In 1987 Mr. Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. "In the Communist world," he said, "we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards. . . . Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself." Thus the "inescapable conclusion" in his view was that "freedom is the victor." Then Mr. Reagan said, "General Secretary Gorbachev . . . come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Not long after this, the wall did come tumbling down, and Mr. Reagan's prophecies all came true. These were not just results Mr. Reagan predicted. He intended the outcome. He implemented policies that were aimed at producing it. He was denounced for those policies, by Mr. Talbott among many others. Still, in the end his objective was achieved.
Margaret Thatcher remarked a few years ago that Mr. Reagan would go down in history as the man who "won the Cold War without firing a shot." Perhaps it is too much to ask the wise to admit their errors. But it's only right that we who are enjoying the benefits of the post-Cold War boom should give Mr. Reagan due credit during his lifetime for his prescient statesmanship.
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