24. GLORY: THE REAGAN-BUSH (I) ERA

FOREIGN POLICY DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY

A similar social-economic crisis had hit Soviet Russia during the 1970s, but unlike China, it continued into the 1980s.  And also unlike China, Soviet Russia would not find a successful path out of this crisis.

Soviet farming had never done well since the days of Stalin's forced collectivization, and Russia, once a major exporter of grain, long had to import grain to feed its people, a great burden on its foreign currency reserves.  Also the high cost of Soviet armaments had long cut into the ability of the state to offer its people a level of civilian material housing and comforts that a "workers' paradise" should have had.  Most Soviet workers knew well that their worker counterparts in the capitalist West lived much better off than they did.  In the Soviet Union, the workers' paradise had the feel of a Third World country.  This in turn was creating a decided drop in "working class patriotism" which was taking the form of a large amount of worker absenteeism at the job site, and even when workers did show up, it was not unusual for them to be drunk.  The Soviet economy was in trouble, big trouble.

The one thing Russia had in ample supply that was greatly needed abroad and could bring in hard currency to finance Soviet economic shortcomings was oil (and eventually also natural gas).  Thus the Soviet Union's decision in 1981 to break from the oil pricing of the OPEC oil cartel and sell oil, lots of oil, for whatever price it could get.  And with the underbidding of oil pricing by the Soviets, the price of oil came tumbling down.

Thus the Soviets would not reap the windfall profits from oil that they had been hoping for.  Indeed, many of the oil exporting nations now also found themselves in difficulty as their expected revenue from oil dropped away and they had to cut back drastically on investment plans for growth.

In Soviet Russia things continued to go from bad to worse.  The Muslim revolution in Iran had quickly spilled over into neighboring Afghanistan in the early 1980s as Afghani Muslims answered the call to jihad (the struggle against Evil) against the Soviets and their puppet Communist regime in Kabul.  At the same time, America did not want the Soviets occupying Afghanistan, a point from which they could put pressure on the Persian Gulf region (the major source of the West's oil). Consequently, America undertook to supply the Afghan rebels (the mujahedin) with advanced missiles that could easily kill Soviet tanks and jets.  The Soviets were finding themselves bogged down in a war that, even with a massive military presence in the country, they could not bring to a favorable close. It was as if Afghanistan were the Soviets' "Vietnam."  Soon anti-war feelings began to grow within Russian society, and even within the military itself. Russia was in deep trouble in Afghanistan.

Thus by the early 1980s Soviet morale was sagging terribly, at a time when America's was picking up.  Finally in 1988 the decision was made to withdraw from Afghanistan, the task completed by early 1989.

When Brezhnev died in late 1982, he was replaced as head of the regime by a KGB (Soviet secret police and intelligence operations) hardliner, Yuri Andropov. Andropov tried to tighten party discipline and clamp down on the political dissent that was spreading rapidly around the country.  But his health was failing and only a little over a year later he died.  He was replaced by another equally sick official, Konstantin Chernenko, who served as Soviet leader no more than a year before he too died.  But this time Soviet leadership was taken over by a younger and strongly reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev, who knew that something dramatic was going to have to take place to save the Soviet Union from simply collapsing.

Reagan meanwhile had been stiffening his position against the Russians, announcing back in 1982 in a speech before the British Parliament how he intended to push the Russian "Evil Empire" to the point of collapse.  He put the B1-Bomber program back in place (which Carter had canceled), armed NATO with America's Pershing II missiles, and in 1983 announced a plan (the Strategic Defense Initiative)² to develop a laser-guided anti-missile defense system that would block incoming nuclear missiles, thus undercutting the Soviet nuclear deterrent.  It would be expensive, at least expensive enough that the Soviets, whose economy was stumbling at this point, would be unable to answer the challenge with a countering program of their own.  But in general, the American population was quite approving of Reagan's new "Star Wars" program.  But in the end, the program would not really be needed, for the Soviet Empire crumbled before the decade was out.

But mostly this challenged Russia in a way that the new Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev knew that his country could not effectively answer. Gorbachev responded instead by offers of a new look to the Soviet Union and a new attitude toward the West.

Reagan, while carrying Teddy Roosevelt's "Big Stick" (his ramping up of America's defense posture) was also ready to follow Roosevelt's policy of "walking softly" with respect to the Soviet Union's new leader Gorbachev.  Reagan began to meet with Gorbachev to see what possibilities existed to develop a new thaw in East-West relations (similar to what was happening in U.S.-Chinese relations at that point).

In 1986, Gorbachev began to put into operation a number of social reforms for Russia, the most important of which were glasnost (a new openness in the society), perestroika (a restructuring of the economic system) and demokratizatsiya (democratization of the political system).  This was designed to put a new lease on life in Communist culture.

Gorbachev's reforms were greeted with great enthusiasm everywhere – in Russia, in Eastern Europe and even in America.

But for Reagan, this was not yet enough.  In June of 1987, as he stood before the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, Reagan uttered a challenge which would have a dramatic impact on everyone:

. . . if you truly want peace and liberalization, Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The gate did not open right away.  The wall was not torn down right away. But things were now headed that way.  In the last years of his administration, Reagan had become a fond friend of Gorbachev, visiting back and forth between America and Russia.  Reagan truly wanted to support Gorbachev in his effort to reform Russia.

But in the process Gorbachev had set loose in the Soviet Union a small opportunity for the revolution of rising expectations to take root.  Could he reform Russia without having it break down in revolutionary chaos in the process?

The answer to that question would reveal itself soon after the new American presidential administration under Reagan's Vice President, George H.W. Bush, got underway in 1989.

²Termed derisorily by Kennedy as Reagan's "reckless Star Wars schemes."