The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink
William Inboden
Dutton, £31.99, 622 pages
On a visit years back to the Ronald Reagan Library in California, thanks to the entrée of a friend who worked there, I had access to some of the archives usually closed to visitors. He showed me the goals Ronald Reagan had listed on 20 January 1981, his inauguration day. Written by hand on yellow legal paper, I was surprised that there were only half a dozen. Among them? The end of the communist empire and the Cold War, and a dramatic reduction in nuclear weapons.
According to this splendid work by Professor William lnboden, Reagan achieved that goal. And he colourfully assembles the exhibits for his verdict. If there’s one kind of history scholars especially relish, it’s the revisionist version. Usually researched and compiled three to four decades after the subject of the book, the author discovers that the reputation of the person or event, after fresh analysis, was actually a caricature, not the reality.
Inboden certainly shows that the image of Reagan often presented when he was in the White House – lazy, detached, uninterested in details – was dead wrong. Instead, Reagan was energetic, involved, and almost obsessed with certain key issues. The author gives ample evidence that Reagan was not only successful in domestic issues such as the American economy, but, contrary to the inaccurate perception, was passionately concerned about foreign affairs.
Here, again at odds with the portrait often given, Reagan was hardly a fanatical Cold War warrior, but actually, as the title shows, a “peacemaker” and almost at times a dove. He was also shrewd enough to realise that, actor as he was, his image as an ardent Cold War warrior driven to rebuild the military and confront communism could work in his favour.
A “resolute ideologue”, as even his friend George Will described him, Reagan embraced certain core principles. When asked about his strategy on the Cold War, for instance, he shrugged and replied: “We win, they lose.” Or, as Gorbachev would always roll his eyes when he heard it, Reagan would repeat his approach to tough negotiations: “Trust, but verify.”
A perception of Reagan that was indeed accurate, Inboden says – and one that became an essential aspect of his foreign policy – was an intense personal loyalty to allies. He treasured his friendship with world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, as well as American partnership with Japan and Canada. He would never want to let them down. They responded with a trust in him, which helped bring progress in peace.
Yet Inboden is not shy about documenting when such strategies were strained, as they were with the UK during the Falklands crisis. And, loyal though he was to allies, he could make tough decisions which disturbed erstwhile friends, such as convincing Ferdinand Marcos that it was time for him to step down as president of the Philippines.
Inboden offers proof that the president was inspired by and close to Pope St John Paul II. To be sure, he was moved by the pontiff’s stalwart resistance to communist tyranny, so crushing in his homeland of Poland. Yet, Reagan did not just use the pope to help him decimate Marxism; he was genuinely touched by the pope’s faith and spiritual focus.
This bond was deepened in that both leaders barely escaped death by assassins. Inboden describes how Reagan would share with John Paul his vision that he was spared by the Lord from an early bloody death because God had a task for him to complete: to further world harmony and lessen the fear of nuclear annihilation. The president was encouraged when the pope would smile in agreement.
Frank Shakespeare, a friend of Reagan who served as an ambassador to Portugal, and then to the Holy See, recalled a dismal conversation with the president about the evil of communist hegemony. At the end, Reagan observed, “But Frank, we know how this will all end. Good will triumph.”
A constant theme in Inboden’s masterful text is the deeply spiritual makings of Ronald Reagan. Like Lincoln, Reagan was hardly an “observant Christian”, in that he rarely attended Sunday worship. Yet his worldview was biblical: an omnipotent, provident God had a purpose and a design which prayer, virtuous living, a defence of good and a fight with obvious evil would, with God’s grace and in His good time, prevail.
Readers discover that, along with a strong military, loyalty to allies, uncompromising resistance to tyranny, a drive to end the Cold War and nuclear lunacy, Reagan placed the defence of religious freedom as a priority. In his meetings with world leaders at odds with America, he would usually bring with him a list of those in chains, in dungeons, because of religious convictions, urging their release. At times it worked.
Don’t expect a hagiography in this fine study. Perhaps Reagan’s major weakness, an unintended consequence of his fidelity to his friends, was his slowness to confront staff – Alexander Haig comes to mind – whose own stubbornness and egos were impeding progress. His own lack of success in Lebanon was an added frustration.
Henry Kissinger observed that successful diplomacy required two talents: a grasp of detail, and an engaging personality which could move other leaders. According to Kissinger, Richard Nixon had the first, yet did not sparkle at the second; Reagan shined at the second, yet was not lax in the first.
Inboden relates how, on 20 January 1989, as Reagan was leaving office, Colin Powell showed up the Oval Office, as the national security adviser did every morning. “The world is at peace this morning, Mr President,” he said. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan is Archbishop of New York.
This article first appeared in the April 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, and receive our limited-time Easter offer, go here.
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