The Turn-From a Cold War to a New Era
Callahan, David
RONALD REAGAN'S CONVERSION THE TURN: FROM A COLD WAR TO A NEW ERA The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1990 Don Oberdorfer Poseidon Press, $25, 514 pp. David Callahan s the former...
...Of course, the cold war did not cease once the balance of economic power had shifted...
...every diplomatic breakthrough bore his imprint...
...official to ever seriously imagine a world without nuclear weapons...
...But ultimately, the cold war ended as a consequence of trends far beyond the control of individual actors...
...Instead, a fierce military and ideological competition continued into the late 1980s...
...The personal dynamics of U.S.-Soviet relations were a crucial factor in ending the cold war...
...The main objective of Soviet foreign policy, Gorbachev said, should be to "create the best possible external conditions" for internal progress...
...In a historic address to Soviet foreign policy officials in May 1986, Gorbachev articulated the logic which would guide U.S.-Soviet relations through the rest of the decade...
...Through the rest of his presidency, Reagan would seek to forge a new understanding with the Soviet leadership...
...In an April 1987 meeting with Gorbachev, Secretary Shultz—a former economics professor— lectured the Soviet leader on the economic changes which were reshaping the world...
...In time, this vision would prod him to abandon his harsh rhetoric toward Moscow and back efforts to better relations...
...In the conclusion of his book, Oberdorfer raises a question that implicitly frames his inquiry from its first pages: Is history shaped by the human will of extraordinary people or by external forces more powerful than individual actors...
...Shultz used four-color charts to show Gorbachev how the Soviet Union was increasingly locked out of an integrated technology, and how the Soviet Union was lagging far behind...
...Commonweal 28 February 1992: 25...
...From this basic prescription flowed a "new thinking" across the entire gamut of national security issues...
...Although Reagan entered office determined to wage a holy crusade against Moscow's "evil empire," he also had a visceral revulsion to nuclear weapons that could have made Helen Caldicott proud...
...Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevamadze, a visionary figure, is also a central player in the narrative...
...More than any other U.S...
...In Washington, the Reagan administration's intense anticommunism prevented the cold war from winding down as quickly as it might have...
...By 1987, for example, it was estimated that the Soviet Union had only two hundred thousand microcomputers, most of them unsophisticated...
...Another factor which changed Reagan's views, he would later write in his memoirs, was his realization in 1983 that "many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans...
...official, Shultz deserves credit for the remarkable turnaround in U.S.-Soviet relations which occurred during the 1980s...
...Specifically, should the cold war's end be attributed mainly to diplomatic efforts or did it stem ineluctably from geopolitical and geo-economic trends...
...On the Soviet side, we learn much about the beliefs and motivations of Soviet lead24: 28 February 1992 Commonweal ers Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and especially Mikhail Gorbachev...
...Secretary of State George Shultz was a moderate Republican by temperament and training...
...Oberdorfer has extensively interviewed Soviet officials and citizens, enabling him to tell his story from the Soviet perspective...
...Japan and Western Europe alone had nearly twice the population and four times the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union...
...the United States had over 25 million...
...Yet even as he illuminates these dynamics in great depth, Oberdorfer strongly suggests that much more powerful historical forces were at work...
...How this competition finally came to an end is the subject of The Turn, Don Oberdorfer's important narrative account of U.S.-Soviet relations from 1983 to 1990...
...The end of the cold war was probably accelerated by the diplomatic efforts chronicled by Oberdorfer in such minute detail...
...In retrospect, one cannot help but be amazed that the cold war dragged on for so long...
...During the entire history of the cold war, Reagan was probably the only high level U.S...
...By quoting from Reagan's private correspondence to Soviet leaders, almost gushy in its conciliatory language, Oberdorfer leaves no question about the president's sincerity as a peacemaker...
...Oberdorfer's portrait of Reagan will surprise many who still think of the former president as a knee-jerk cold warrior...
...David Callahan s the former Soviet Union slides deeper into possible anarchy, it is difficult to recall that such a fragile and flawed empire was once considered a global menace...
...Beginning with a private dinner at the White House on a snowy night in February 1983, Shultz waged what can only be described as a heroic crusade to push President Ronald Reagan toward a more accommodating position on U.S.Soviet relations...
...Basic economic realities dictated that the Soviet Union change course...
...Over the next five years, Shultz would be the administration's point man in dealing with Moscow...
...As a long-time diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Post, it is not surprising that Oberdorfer focuses mainly on the people who helped de-escalate the cold war...
...Once this elemental reality had dawned on the president, he lost much of his anti-Soviet zeal...
...Two decades after Nikita Khrushschev vowed to bury the West, the final shovelfuls of dirt were instead being piled on the Soviet Union's grave...
...By 1981, for example, the Soviet Union had already been eclipsed by the West in most of the standard measurements of power...
...Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost reflected this calculation, as did his decision to better relations with the West...
...This is not to ignore the role of Ronald Reagan himself...
...He said that "without an acceleration of the country's economic and social development, it will be impossible to maintain our positions on the international scene...
...The key shifts in Soviet foreign policy are explained here in some detail and Oberdorfer presents a clear history of why Moscow decided to abandon its competition with the West...
...Domestic problems were a principal factor in this decision...
...However, as Oberdorfer shows, the administration was not entirely inhabited by obstructionist hardliners...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 4
