Bombs Away

...He does this all in the hope that our children can live in a safer world, and that the children of our erstwhile enemy can—one day, sooner rather than later—enjoy the fruits of liberty that he feels compelled, destined, to sow in seemingly inhospitable lands...

...But now, with history having once again reared its nondialectical head, and with President Reagan's poignant decline and demise, we increasingly recognize his wisdom and foresight...

...it would be fascinating to learn the Politburo's precise reaction to Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech, for example, or to his unflinching stance on SDI...

...It is to the reader's great benefit that Lettow's advisers were similarly open-minded, and that Paul Lettow makes no such mistake...

...The president perseveres, and Ilya Shapiro, a Washington lawyer, writes the "Dispatches from Purple America" column for TechCentralStation.com...

...The mainstream media criticize him for being naive and simple-minded, while Democratic leaders scoff at the appalling lack of nuance in his policies...

...Moreover, Lettow marshals considerable evidence to show that Reagan was the driving force behind every major angle of superpower politics, from the decision to resist Soviet expansion in Central America and the Middle East to the stubborn insistence on developing SDI as a way both to protect America and force internal Soviet reform...

...As it happens, this book is a timely outgrowth of Lettow's Oxford dissertation, which caused me to recall a general placement exam I took when starting graduate school, also in England...

...Yet from his earliest entry into politics as an FDR Democrat, Reagan dreamed of eliminating nuclear weapons...

...Reagan was committed to accelerating the arms race because he was convinced that the Soviet command economy could not sustain such production or keep pace with American technological innovation...

...Lettow makes clear that successful leadership often involves defying conventional wisdom, and having the courage to follow one's instincts in the face of uncertain policy analysis and advice...

...But this is a complaint about the book that should have been written rather than about the one that was...

...One of the questions asked for nothing less than an explanation for the fall of communism, and I wrote a cheeky answer focusing on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, expecting to draw a rebuke from my tutor for being excessively reactionary...

...We would not have seen this 15 or even 5 years ago, when "the end of history" brought on a sort of foreign policy fatigue that awarded gold watches to the cold warriors while retiring them to their memoirs and think tanks...

...It is quite striking, actually, how important a role SDI played in the American diplomatic and political considerations depicted here...

...Lettow does not stop his provocative argument at the ostensible subject of his book, President Reagan's nuclear weapons policy...

...My adviser did fault my analysis in several places—for not giving Reagan enough credit...

...It is a lesson that George W. Bush no doubt took to heart, even as critics are being proven wrong on an issue of historical importance for the second time in two decades...

...The resulting tale is not so much one-sided as incomplete...

...And the centerpiece of Reagan's antinuclear policy, and of his success in dealing with the Soviets, was the Strategic Defense Initiative...

...If there is one general criticism to make, it is that so few Soviet/Russian sources were consulted...

...In other words, this remarkably counterintuitive book shows that, even as Reagan championed historic increases in defense spending and weaponry, he was hoping to make all his weapons programs redundant...

...today there are elections where once there were slave labor camps, as other countries in the region rush to democratize their suppressed polities...

...Bombs Away Reagan 'felt that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was just that.' BY ILYA SHAPIRO A conservative president uses stark language to describe America's foes, and goes against the wishes of our allies and the counsel of moderate advisers to confront this "evil" directly...

...And Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons adds an important chapter to our understanding of the 40th president's great contribution to international affairs and, yes, world peace...

...Full disclosure: Paul Lettow was a college classmate of mine, although he was a history major and I studied international relations...

...Not only did he firmly believe that America had to remove the scourge of Soviet oppression at a time when détente was the order of the day and communism at its zenith, Lettow argues, but he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons because he felt that mutual assured destruction (MAD) was just that...

...Instead, he probes further, using newly declassified documents and interviews with high-ranking officials to develop a full picture of Reagan's coherent and compelling vision for his presidency, and his strategy for dealing with the Soviet threat...

...Or on September 10, 2001...

...And from his first exposure to missile defense, at a meeting with Edward Teller in 1967 (shortly after assuming the California governorship), Reagan saw the potential for such technology to contribute to grander arms control initiatives...

...Though it is still a tad early to pronounce definitively on George W. Bush's decision to embark on an ambitious plan to reorder the Middle East, Ronald Reagan's place in history as the man who won the Cold War, despite opposition and underestimation from every corner, is secure...

...We should not draw the parallel too closely— much can go wrong on the way to Damascus, as it were—but it bears contemplation that a Soviet collapse was just as unthinkable in 1980 as a Middle Eastern liberalization was in 2000...