Ronald Reagan (in the portrait) has become such a revered figure that almost all the presidential candidates, including Republican John McCain (front), want to be like him.
Photo: AP
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America Remembers Reagan's Speeches
// Politicians celebrate the anniversary of Star Wars and the Evil Empire
Last week was the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's historical speech, in which he called the USSR the “evil empire” and proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, later to be known as Star Wars. Admirers of the late president say that that speech guaranteed the United States victory in the Cold War. Kommersant special correspondent in Washington Mikhail Zygar took a look at how American politicians intend to apply the lessons of those years.
The Evil Empire 25 Years Later
The American Enterprise Institute, one of the think tanks closest to the Bush administration, was among the first to take note of the anniversary. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife works there, as does former president of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz. He held a celebratory conference last week dedicated to the memory of Reagan's speech before fundamentalist Christians in Orlando, Florida, on March 8, 1983, in which he called the USSR the “evil empire” for the first time. On March 23 of that year, Reagan proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative to the U.S. Congress.
Former speaker of the House of Representatives and influential conservative thinker Newt Gingrich delivered a festive report at the American Enterprise Institute evil empire anniversary conference.
What would have happened, if Reagan had not decided to give that speech? What would have happened if he had not called the Soviet Union the evil empire? he asked. And he answered. The Soviet Union would still exist today and the Cold War would still be going on.
Besides politics, Gingrich is active in literature. He has written several “alternative history” novels. One of them describes what might have happened if the U.S. had not entered the Second World War. In the former senator's novel, the Soviet Union loses the war and the Cold War breaks out between the U.S. and the Third Reich. So, when honoring Reagan, Gingrich was indulging in his favorite genre as he outlined how history would have unfolded without that speech by the 40th president of the United States.
As Gingrich sees it, and many American conservatives share his point of view, the Cold War was a clash of opposing ideologies. That was why, he says, it is not possible to talk of a new cold war now. Neither Russia nor China now has an ideology that they can spread in the world with any success. Reagan, appearing before evangelists in Florida, dealt the Soviet ideology its death blow.
You have to call things by their names, opined Gingrich. You have to call right right and wrong wrong. And only Reagan could do that. He understood that they needed to go on the offensive against the USSR to defeat it, not haggle with it.
Gingrich considers today's evil empire Iran. The only ideology that can stand up against American liberal democracy and spread throughout the world is the Islamic ideology, and that makes Iran America's most dangerous opponent.
Wrapping up his impassioned presentation, the former speaker of the House, of course, turned to the current election campaign. He recalled how Reagan's “evil empire” speech was criticized and laughed at by U.S. liberals and the Democratic Party. But now we know who was right and who was wrong, he noted. But the same people who had no understanding of world politics are trying to teach them how to live now. They say that U.S. President George W. Bush's policy was a mistake and they can fix that mistake! It's preposterous!
Moving on to his own candidate, 71-year-old John McCain, Gingrich returned to alternative history. What would have happened, if Reagan had decided in 1980 that he was too old to serve his country? The Cold War would still be going on…
The Return of Star Wars
The anniversary of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative speech to Congress was even more wide noted than his “evil empire” speech. Time magazine, for example, devoted 11 pages to it, and other publications took note of it as well.
On March 23, 1983, Reagan spoke before Congress after it voted to cut his proposed budget. He said that the concept of the mutual destruction of the U.S. and USSR would be a thing of the past and the U.S. would develop a new system of missile defense that would defend Americans against a Soviet nuclear attack. Reagan proposed placing radar and interceptor missiles in space. That was the basis of the joking “star wars” name giving his program. (The George Lucas film series of the same name was very popular at the time.)
Gingrich attributed the shattering of the Soviet Union's power to Reagan's “star wars” initiative and the lowering of oil prices that was also initiated by Reagan: The USSR was pressed into a new arms race, and this time with petrodollars.
Many American conservatives believe that the time has not passed for the stars wars concept. One-time U.S. Defense Department advisor Bob Maginnis, appearing at a congratulatory Heritage Foundation luncheon, stated that the idea of the Strategic Defense Initiative is quite up-to-date and American authorities should follow the path traced for them by Reagan. Cheney was also present at that luncheon and largely agreed with Maginnis. Cheney recalled Hillary Clinton's recent television campaign ad. “It's 3 a.m. There's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something is happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call,” the voice says.
We hope the Supreme Commander will never have to pick up that phone and hear that ballistic missiles are headed for the U.S., Cheney observed. The Republicans consider the current missile defense system a logical continuation of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The only difference is that the interceptor missiles will now be located in Alaska, California and Poland and not in orbit, as Reagan had proposed. Republican congressman Trent Frank thinks that a missile defense system should be set up because the 40th president bequeathed it to the country.
Casper Weinberger, Jr., son of the late Reagan-era defense secretary, wrote an article a jubilee article on the need to create a missile defense system in spite of Russia's objections. He recalled that Reagan proposed to share strategic defense initiative technology with the Soviet Union, if it would eliminate its nuclear arsenal. “But an enslaved, territorial aggrandized nation can't see what it means to be free and they were distrustful then and they still are. Ain't it shame?” he writes.
Reagan Lives
Reverence for Ronald Reagan is reaching new levels in the U.S. A number of conservative activists have already proposed memorializing him by adding his face to the four embossed on Mt. Rushmore (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt). The homepage of the Heritage Foundation website asks its visitors “What would Reagan do?” Reagan is a significant factor in the current presidential race. Republican McCain strives to compare himself with Reagan, calling himself “a simple soldier in the Reagan revolution.” Many conservative Republicans reply that McCain is a far cry from Reagan and cannot so radically change the country as the 40th president did. They also remind him that, in the 1980s, as a new congressman, he frequently criticized the president.
There is an alternative view of Reagan. The Democrats, in an effort to deprive the Republicans of their monopoly on the 40th president, claim that he was not a warmongering hawk at all, but an idealist and a romantic, who was able to change the country so radically and pull it out of the dead end his predecessors had led it into. In that sense, Reagan Today is not McCain, but Barack Obama.
The Illinois senator started that analogy when he stated in an interview that he admired Reagan because “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” Obama supporters picked up on that thesis, saying their candidate has Reagan's charisma.
Even John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline, who is traveling the country campaigning for Obama, shares that view. She says that the Illinois senator reminds her of her father and he will be as great a president as Kennedy and Reagan, because now, as in the 1960s and 1980s, is a critical moment in American history and the country needs radical change.
Although praising Reagan for his principles, Obama does not chare his methods. He is extremely skeptical of the missile defense system that is the continuation of Reagan's star wars. He thinks that the country must not engage in a war against Iran, and so the system is needless.
Only candidate Hillary Clinton does not strive to be like Reagan in this campaign. Her staff also marked the anniversary of Reagan's speech in a way as well. Former secretary of state Madeline Albright, now an advisor to Hillary Clinton, published a book this month, Memo to the President Elect, in which she says that attributing victory in the Cold War to Reagan is like thanking the crowing rooster for the sunrise.
Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 24, 2008
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