Chapter 16: Reagan’s Resolute Anti-Communism and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1980–1988 (Part I)

As early as 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, the United States and the USSR entered the space race. In 1969, the United States landed on the Moon, and during the 1970s and 1980s the two superpowers engaged in an intense nuclear arms race. During the Cold War, in addition to the United States and the Soviet Union, other countries also developed nuclear weapons, but none possessed arsenals comparable in scale to those of the two superpowers. Together, Russia and the United States accounted for about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Both developed second-strike capabilities, meaning that even if one side were attacked first, it could still launch a devastating retaliatory strike. This nuclear posture became known as “mutually assured destruction.” Both sides understood that any nuclear attack on the other would also result in their own destruction. The risks of using nuclear weapons were therefore enormous, and in principle this mutual awareness was meant to deter direct attacks.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; in office 1981–1989), amid the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, forcefully denounced the USSR as an “Evil Empire.” He pointed out that for many years the Soviet regime had deliberately murdered and brutalized its own people, slaughtering millions, and he bluntly stated that communism represented a tragic and grotesque chapter in human history. Reagan rejected the view of diplomat George F. Kennan, who had described communism as “just another form of government,” insisting instead that it was an absurd and pathological aberration. Never before had an American leader described the Soviet Union so candidly as an evil empire. Reagan further declared that this chapter was approaching its end and predicted that the Soviet communist regime would inevitably collapse.

On March 14, 1986, Reagan delivered his State of the Union–related address titled Freedom, Regional Security, and Global Peace, in which he formally articulated the Reagan Doctrine for the first time. This doctrine opposed the expansion of Soviet communism and sought to contest Soviet influence in the Third World. Reagan believed that during the 1970s the Soviet Union had overextended itself, leaving it beset by internal and external difficulties and unable to consolidate its gains. The United States, he argued, should be prepared to use “low-intensity warfare” to block and roll back Soviet threats to American interests in the Third World, to contain communist expansion, and to reverse the political and military advances communism had made. The Reagan Doctrine became a central component of the overall U.S. strategy for winning the Cold War.

To safeguard American security, Reagan increased military spending to unprecedented levels. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union’s massive military burden had become unsustainable, and its economy slid into decline. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev (born 1931; in power 1985–1991) assumed leadership of the Soviet Union. Reagan and Gorbachev subsequently held four summit meetings, during which Reagan repeatedly urged Gorbachev to promote democratic reforms.

On June 12, 1987, Reagan visited West Germany and stood before the Brandenburg Gate at the boundary between East and West Berlin, delivering his famous “Evil Empire”–era speech. He declared that as long as this gate remained closed and people were forced to endure the existence of this scar, what remained unresolved was not merely the German question but the question of freedom for all humanity. He said he had not come to express sorrow or sympathy, because in Berlin he sensed a message of hope: even the vast shadow of this wall could not obscure the dawn of victory. “The West will not tolerate communism; we will defeat communism,” he proclaimed. “We will not shrink from naming it, and we will consign it to history as a sad and bizarre chapter in the human story, even as the final pages of that chapter are still being written.” He then issued his historic appeal to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: “If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek freedom, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Reagan’s speech portrayed the Berlin Wall as a malignant tumor in human civilization that must be eliminated without delay. At the time, however, his remarks attracted little media attention. Few people believed that the Berlin Wall—symbol of the communist iron curtain—could simply fall. Yet history proved ironic and unpredictable: on the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall began to collapse. In June 1990, the East German government formally decided to dismantle it.

Under Gorbachev’s leadership, a wave of openness swept across the Soviet Union. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and the USSR signed agreements with the United States to eliminate large numbers of intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles. By early 2013, of Russia’s approximately 8,500 nuclear warheads, about 4,500 remained in military storage, while the remaining roughly 4,000 had been decommissioned, kept intact, and were awaiting dismantlement. Worldwide, there were nearly 17,000 nuclear warheads: about 7,000 in the United States, 300 in France, 250 in China, and 225 in the United Kingdom.

In 1989, Eastern Europe was shaken by massive upheavals. One country after another severed its ties with the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev chose not to intervene. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall—symbol of communist oppression—collapsed, and less than a year later East and West Germany were reunified. A few months after that, the member states of the Warsaw Pact formally dissolved the alliance, marking the end of the Cold War. Some observers have argued that the changes brought about by Reagan were symbolic, profound, and far-reaching, that he led the United States back onto a hardline path aimed at global dominance. Others contend that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was largely a matter of luck: in Reagan’s first four years, the USSR went through four leaders and suffered paralysis at the top; in Reagan’s final four years, Gorbachev presided over a system already in a state of breakdown, culminating in collapse. Historians continue to offer many interpretations of the Soviet Union’s demise. When reflecting on the lessons of the Soviet collapse, Xi Jinping once remarked with lament that “not a single man stood up to resist.” This, as the saying goes, is the exhaustion of national destiny—once it sets in, no one can stop it.