Will Inboden is a man of many talents: author, academic, and national policy maker, holding positions within the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia. He currently serves as executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and as associate professor of public policy and history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas–Austin.
In this wide-ranging two-part interview, Inboden discusses in great detail Reagan’s strategy and tactics in bringing the Cold War to a successful and peaceful conclusion through negotiation and, yes, some artful bluffing.
In this second installment, we cover Reagan’s second term, including his quest to negotiate and sign a nuclear arms treaty with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev; the now iconic “tear down this wall” speech (a topic our host has some familiarity with); and finally, the lasting legacy of Ronald Reagan and his place in history.
To view the full transcript of this episode, read below:
Peter Robinson: Mikhail Gorbachev speaking here at Stanford in June 1990, quote, "The Cold War is now behind us. Let's not wrangle over who won it." Let's wrangle. Historian William Inboden on "Uncommon Knowledge," now. Welcome to "Uncommon Knowledge." I'm Peter Robinson. A Stanford alum, William Inboden, earned his doctorate in history from Yale, then worked for 15 years with the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia. Dr. Inboden now serves as executive director of the Clement Center for National Security, and as associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas in Austin. Will Inboden's new book, "The Peacemaker, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink." Dr. Inboden and I have already discussed Ronald Reagan's first term, you'll find that conversation on YouTube. Today, President Reagan's second term and the Cold War end game. Will, welcome.
Will Inboden: Thank you, Peter. Great to be back with you.
Peter Robinson: Gorbachev emerges, on January 20th, 1985, Ronald Reagan takes the oath of office for his second term. And then on March 11th, less than two months later, Mikhail Gorbachev is named General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev Succeeds Konstantin Chernenko, who had died in 1985, and Chernenko had succeeded Yuri Andropov who had died in 1984, and then Andropov has exceeded Brezhnev who had died in 1982. Reagan joked during the first term that he'd be happy to meet a Soviet leader, but they kept dying on him. But now there's Gorbachev and he's just 54 years old. In "The Peacemaker," you cite the impressions of Margaret Thatcher, quoting her, "He talks readily." This is Thatcher talking about Gorbachev whom she had met the year before, "He talks readily and in contrast to the stultified manner of Soviet leaders, does not just stick to prepared statements. He picks up points made in discussion and responds to them. I certainly found him a man one could do business with." Close quote. Just how much of a contrast is Gorbachev to the leaders of the Soviet Union who came before him?
Will Inboden: So, in many ways, he's a dramatic contrast in style, right? I mean, he's, he's younger, he's energetic, he's charismatic, you know, as opposed to these, you know, dower, drab, you know, chogladites that he had succeeded.
Peter Robinson: Sick old men, right?
Will Inboden: Yeah, yeah, sick old men. And he is genuinely committed to reforming the Soviet communism in ways that his predecessors weren't, you know, glasnost and perestroika bringing, you know, more openness, hoping to restart the economy. But it should be remembered that Gorbachev's goal was not to end Soviet communism, it was to preserve Soviet communism. So in that sense, there still is a continuity between him and the others who also had wanted to preserve Soviet communism, you know, preserve one-party rule, preserve this system. And so Gorbachev is a very notable, and, you know, in a lot of ways, admirable figure, and I know we'll be talking about him a lot here, but I think from the outset, we need to keep in mind some of those continuities he has with his predecessors as well as some of the radical discontinuities that he marks.
Peter Robinson: All right, in one of the puzzles about Gorbachev is where did he come from. He's a protege of Yuri Andropov. Yuri Andropov was one of the most vicious of the Soviet old men. In 1956, he's on the ground in Budapest, and he's responsible for the conduct of the Red Army in crushing the Hungarian Revolution.
Will Inboden: Oh, yeah. Massacring so many Hungarians. Yes.
Peter Robinson: And we now know, as you note, I now know it because you said it, that the man who put Gorbachev's name to contention as general secretary was Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, another man notable for his hostility to the West and his sort of old-fashioned wooden communism.
Will Inboden: Yeah, a real hardliner.
Peter Robinson: So, how does Gorbachev win the support of these hardliners?
Will Inboden: Yeah.
Peter Robinson: Or how do the hardliners make a mistake? Why this young man? Why this vigorous man? And why a reformer when the people who selected him were none of that?
Will Inboden: Yes. And there still is something of a puzzle to this, but I think we can certainly see that Gorbachev was very shrewd, very wily at maneuvering within the Soviet system. That's why from, you know, pretty, humble background in the Hinterlands, he'd been able to rise up through the ranks of the party and eventually ascend to membership, and then positioned himself to, you know, be tapped as the supreme leader, if you will. But I think there was a growing sense among a lot of the Politburo, that they were starting to see some of the weaknesses and fragility of their own system, and none of them wanted to give it up.
Peter Robinson: Right.
Will Inboden: I mean, none of 'em want the system to collapse, but they thought, you know, we do need to turn to a new type of leader, maybe it is time for a new generation. I think they were embarrassed that in three years, three of their leaders had died, right? I mean, you know, those grim facts speak for themselves. And there weren't any other obvious heirs apparent.
Peter Robinson: So, "The Peacemaker," "While Gorbachev's accession stemmed primarily from larger dynamics within the Soviet system, Reagan's policies also played a role. Even one of Gorbachev's own advisors admitted his selection resulted in part from," and you're quoting the advisor, "internal domestic pressures and Reagan's rigid position, leading to Kremlin fears of 'falling behind the United States.'" Close quote. So how strong an argument do you wanna make here, Will? Reagan is responsible for dealing with Gorbachev in Reagan's second term, but it looks as though you want to say Reagan himself may have played some role in calling Gorbachev into being.
Will Inboden: Hmm, that's an eloquent way to put it. And short answer is yes. And here's where, again, one of the revelations from my research, and I know we're primarily talking about Reagan's second term right now, but just a quick nod back to his first term-
Peter Robinson: Go right ahead, go ahead.
Will Inboden: If we can. So as early as, you know, the spring of 1981, when Reagan is working with some of his NSC staff, primarily Richard Pipes, the eminent, you know, Sovietologists and Harvard professor who was working for Reagan on the NSC, when Reagan is working with them to start drafting what becomes his Cold War strategy, his anti-Soviet strategy, he's very clear that one prong of that strategy is pressuring the Soviet system to strengthen reformist voices and even to produce a reformist leader. And this is really important because it's not just that Reagan wants to, you know, collapse that system, although he does, we'll talk about that, it's not just that he wants to deter Soviet aggression, although he certainly does, because his goal is a negotiated surrender because he wants to keep the Cold War cold and avoid a nuclear apocalypse, he is looking for a Soviet leader that he can negotiate with. He does some outreach, he writes letters to Brezhnev, and Andropov, and Chernenko in the first term, you know, largely unrequited, or when they respond, it's, you know, more of a, you know, with a snarl rather than with an outstretched hand. But all along, what he wants to do is so weaken and stress the Soviet system that the Politburo feels like they have nowhere else to turn, but to a reformist leader. And well-
Peter Robinson: Squeeze that system.
Will Inboden: Yeah, squeeze it, yeah.
Peter Robinson: Squeeze it until produces-
Will Inboden: Back them into a corner.
Peter Robinson: Somebody I can work with.
Will Inboden: Yeah, yeah, somebody that he can negotiate with. And so this is not overly simplistic. I'm not saying that Reagan dictates thou shalt select Gorbachev. No, no. Gorbachev is, you know, very much a product of a lot of these internal Soviet forces, but the Soviet Union is not existing in a vacuum. The Soviet Union for the previous four and a half years has been in a world where their nemesis, their arch-rival of the United States has pressed them into an arms race so that they can't win, is de-legitimizing them ideologically, is putting pressure on them economically, you know, the full spectrum there. And that is certainly a accelerated, and I think the internal rot and sclerosis of the Soviet Union. And so that's why I titled that chapter where Gorbachev was selected, "Waiting for Gorbachev," because Reagan had been waiting for, and looking for, and trying to pressure that system to produce a Gorbachev.
Peter Robinson: All right, Gorbachev's first moves. Again, we tend to think of Gorbachev as the popular figure. Gorbimania, the man who stops the limousine when he's visiting Washington, and gets out of the limousine and shakes hands-
Will Inboden: On Connecticut Avenue.
Peter Robinson: On Connecticut Avenue, exactly.
Will Inboden: Yes.
Peter Robinson: "The Peacemaker" "On foreign policy, Gorbachev started off with a hard line. Explain.
Will Inboden: Yes. So partly because Gorbachev was worried about the Soviet Union's, you know, deteriorating stance in the Cold War, the correlation of forces he felt like was moving against them. He doesn't wanna come in conceding, he wants to, you know, turn things around. And so even though he sees that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has turned into a quagmire, he often calls it our bleeding wound. His first moves are not to start withdrawing from Afghanistan, it's to double down. So he actually increases the number of Soviet forces in Afghanistan and gives them more advanced weapon systems, and you know, he tries to go for a win in Afghanistan, right? That this is not a peace-minded conciliatory move. When he's meeting with the first trench of Western-allied leaders, his first few days in office, especially with the Japanese and with Chancellor Cole from West Germany, he's trying to split them from the United States, right? He's trying to lure them away from the United States, he sees America's allies as a source of America's strength, and he wants to weaken the United States from that. So he's much more aggressive there as well. He's doing nothing to, you know, reduce the SS20 deployment or anything. So his first few months, even if he may be more charming, more charismatic, easier to talk to, he is not taking any conciliatory policy moves.
Peter Robinson: The first game he plays is the old one. Is that right?
Will Inboden: Yes, yeah.
Peter Robinson: Okay, so you touched on this, Will, but I wanna draw it out a little bit more. We spoke in our first conversation about Reagan's, the strategic defense initiative, the military buildup, the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Western Europe and so forth. But we haven't talked about the Reagan doctrine. And the argument you lay out here is that Gorbachev wasn't such a nice guy until he ran into the brick wall of Ronald Reagan. And part of that brick wall is that, just tell us, take us through the Reagan doctrine, which doesn't become formalized, that name Reagan doctrine. I forgot when you say it emerges.
Will Inboden: I think it's the State of Union speech in 1985. Yeah, yeah.
Peter Robinson: So it's second term.
Will Inboden: Yeah, second term.
Peter Robinson: So go ahead and take us.
Will Inboden: But the policies had been there earlier. Yes.
Peter Robinson: Take us through that.
Will Inboden: Yeah. So, in a nutshell, the Reagan doctrine is the United States supporting anti-communist forces in their fights around the world. It is in some ways a hard lesson learned from the Vietnam War, right? So the United States, you know, does not want communism advancing around the world, in the developing world. We had certainly made a horrible mistake in how we tried to respond to that in Vietnam, right? With, you know, 59,000 dead American soldiers and a lost war there. And the American public has no more appetite to send hundreds of thousands of American ground troops fighting in distant far away wars, even if it's to stop communism. So Reagan doesn't want to get into any of those hot wars, he's very careful about where he actually deploys American troops, but he also doesn't want communism to advance anymore. And he is meanwhile hearing plea appeals from anti-communist forces, you know, in Nicaragua, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, in Angola, saying, "We will do our own fighting. We don't need American troops here, but just give us the tools." And in some ways, resident of Churchill in 1940.
Peter Robinson: Give us the tools and we'll finish the job.
Will Inboden: Give us the tools and we'll finish the job. Yes. And Reagan also sees these anti-communist insurgencies as key ways to put more pressure on the Soviet Union. He knows that part of the Soviet Union's economic fragility is coming not just from, they can't feed their own people, but they're spending billions of dollars a year, however that contributes converts to in rubles, trying to prop up these communist governments, you know, the Sandinistas and in Nicaragua, the communist government in Angola, so and so forth. And so Reagan thinks all right, if for a fraction of that cost, and it's usually, you know, maybe about, you know, the United States is providing maybe 10% of the aid to these anti-communist forces that the Soviets and other communists are providing to the governments. For a fraction of that cost we can support these people fighting for their freedom against you know, the communists, and impose more costs on the Soviet Union itself. And this is especially exemplified in Afghanistan where we're not just imposing financial costs, but this is, you know, the only part of the theater where it's Soviet forces themselves, right?
Peter Robinson: Yeah.
Will Inboden: And Reagan, as amiable and kind as he could be in many ways, is absolutely ruthless when it comes to fighting communism. And he is very deliberate about, part of our strategy in Afghanistan is we wanna send as many Soviet soldiers home in body bags as we can. And he particularly ramps it up in 1985, so he sees Gorbachev increasing, doubling down in Afghanistan, and Reagan says, "We will meet you there as well." And he knows that that will also put more pressure on the Kremlin.
Peter Robinson: All right.
Will Inboden: So there's the Reagan doctrine, yes.
Peter Robinson: Right.
Peter Robinson: Gorbachev and Reagan meet, Geneva. In Geneva, 1985. Reagan and Gorbachev meet for the first time. "Reagan and Gorbachev sparred in 10 exhaustive and exhausting sessions. Yet the summit produced no significant deals." But there was a striking moment that you write about, it took place when Gorbachev's car pulls up to the chateau in which Reagan is staying. "Reagan came bounding toward him exuding vitality, despite being two decades older. It produced an iconic image contrasting the hail American with the drab Soviet. At once Gorbachev knew he had met his match." Close quote. All right. Nothing much happened except that these two men got together. I asked you to do this a couple of times during our first conversation. As briefly as you can reestablish the Cold War frame of mind in which the whole world felt relieved just to see these two shaking hands. Why did it seem significant just that these two men met?
Will Inboden: Yes. Well, and I'll start that with quoting Reagan himself in his very first meeting with Gorbachev, their first private session, this first hour together in Geneva, after they meet out on the steps like that, Reagan tells Gorbachev, and he doesn't mean this in a grandiose way, but it's actually a more solemn way, "You and I together hold the fate of the world in our hands." And again, this is not in the sense of dominion imperialism, but rather United States and Soviet Union, you know, had the two largest nuclear arsenal-
Peter Robinson: State military folks.
Will Inboden: Yeah, it's just the same as Military.
Peter Robinson: They set up a top command structures that could have destroyed the world.
Will Inboden: Yeah. And were targeted at each other. And if there had been a launch, they would've destroyed not only our two countries, but the entire world. And so Reagan felt that as a, you know, awesome as in-
Peter Robinson: A burden.
Will Inboden: Terrifying. Yeah, a burdened some responsibility. He knew that Gorbachev had that sense, but he wanted to connect with Gorbachev on that way. You know, we have fundamental differences, we are adversaries, our systems are adversaries, we're not gonna gloss over that at all. But we also have a shared responsibility here, which is we've got to somehow find a way to preserve life on earth, preserve human existence as we know it. And so that is why the entire rest of the world throughout the Cold War would watch American Soviet superpower summits with fraught anxiety and some hope, because no one in the world wanted to be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.
Peter Robinson: Reykjavik, October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev meet again, this time in Reykjavik, Iceland. And this is a momentous event, and it takes some telling, but I'm going to compress it.
Will Inboden: Yes.
Peter Robinson: Gorbachev offers to Reagan's surprise massive reductions in nuclear weapons. And Reagan says, good idea. And then Gorbachev says, okay, there's just one condition: the United States would have to confine the Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory, foregoing any actual testing or deployment. As you write, the whole summit came down to one word, laboratory. Now, this country's union of concerned scientists had already denounced SDI is unworkable, a fantasy. So we've got Reagan and Gorbachev, we'll freeze that frame for a moment, Gorbachev says, "There's just one condition." And Reagan looks troubled. Why did it matter to Gorbachev? I can remember the Union of Concerned Scientists took out a full-page ad saying this Strategic Defense Initiative will never work, it's a fantasy.
Will Inboden: So, well, even though most American scientists didn't think it would work, Gorbachev thought it would work. And Gorbachev was terrified that it actually would work. And, you know, as Gorbachev had come into office, even though he saw the United States as his adversary, he also was fascinated and quite jealous of American technology. And he really, you know, saw rightly think that a lot of the keys of America's economic prosperity are driven by our innovation and our entrepreneurship. And, you know, in cooperative's mind, anything the United States decides it wants to develop or invent it probably can. So he doesn't know the technical aspects of SDI either, but just that he was pretty convinced, and it's very clear, if you read all the, you know, summit transcripts, he was obsessed with SDI. Gorbachev, also another reason why he's so concerned.
Peter Robinson: Can I just pause for a moment?
Will Inboden: Okay, yes.
Peter Robinson: So, I just wanna make sure he's obsessed with SDI, not because he's a fool, and he's not looking at it the way, this is all in the form of a question, he's not looking at it the way the union of concerned scientists in the United, well, the velocity, very hard to do this, we don't have the computer part. It won't work. He looks at the United States from a distance and says, "I don't know what technology they're going to develop, but if they spend money on this research project they'll come up with something and we won't be able." What he's responding to is American dynamism.
Will Inboden: Yes, yes.
Peter Robinson: And he wants to rule that out. Let's just go back to the old game of matching each other tank for tank and nuke for nuke. That's a game we can continue to play. Is that right?
Will Inboden: That's it. And there's one other key dimension here is by October of 1986, when they meet in Reykjavik, Gorbachev has been in office, for what? Year and a half roughly there. And he has now realized just how decrepit the Soviet economy is, just how weakened the Soviet system is. And he knows that pretty much at that point, the only area that the Soviet Union has an edge over the United States is in ICBMs. Soviets, especially with their SS-18s still have, you know, a stronger and larger ICBM arsenals than the United States. So Gorbachev sees that as his ace in the hole, if you will. Like this is the one source of leverage he still really has of the United States, as they have, you know, more and bigger ICBMs than we do. SDI threatens that. And so he now realizes-
Peter Robinson: So even as in SDI that doesn't work very well can throw off all the Soviet calculations.
Will Inboden: Yes, exactly. Yeah, prime game changer. And so on the very possibility that SDI might actually become operational, he realized it would then eclipse the one final source of strength or advantage the Soviets still have. But there's another point here between the two systems and Reagan and Gorbachev, they have, by this point, built some levels of trust and affection between each other. There's this grudging, you know, mutual regard being developed, but it's at Reykjavik that Reagan first brings out the old Soviet proverb, drives Gorbachev crazy trust, but verify, he gets that from his sometime advisor, Suzanne Massey. And Gorbachev is very annoyed at this, but Gorbachev doesn't fully trust Reagan yet either. And when Reagan, in all sincerity, I think he absolutely means it, says, "We do not intend SDI to give us an offensive advantage. We don't want to use it so we can then do a unilateral first strike and destroy the Soviet Union. We just wanna do it to protect ourselves. And if we develop it, we'll even share it with you." He repeatedly tells Gorbachev, "We will share this technology with you so that your people can be protected." And his worry is that, you know, maybe some rogue state, he even says, you know, "Libya under Gaddafi might develop a nuke." Gorbachev won't trust Reagan on that. He doesn't believe Reagan on that. And so that's why Gorbachev is so desperate to stop any further development of SDI. And he thinks the only way I can do that is if they, you know, can find the testing to the laboratory, which really means, you know, computer screens, right? And Reagan though, not a scientist himself knows it.
Peter Robinson: You get SDI in theory, but not in practice.
Will Inboden: Yeah, exactly. He knows, look, if we're gonna develop this thing, we gotta be able to test it in real-time. And so it's that one word, laboratory, that the whole deal falls apart to abolish all nuclear weapons. But that symbolizes still, ultimately, a failure of trust.
Peter Robinson: So Gorbachev presses and Reagan stands up and walks out.
Will Inboden: Yeah.
Peter Robinson: And there are photographs of the two of them saying farewell to each other, getting into their cars, their motorcades in front of the, they both look angry and exhausted. "The Peacemaker," "Though, the initial consensus dismissed Reykjavik as a failure," and they seem at the moment to have felt it was a failure themselves, "what few saw in the summit aftermath, including Reagan's critics, staff, and allies, is that on the island nation of Iceland, somewhere between the outer periphery of Europe and the nowhere of the North Atlantic," that won't appear in any travel brochures for Iceland but it's a good description, "the Cold War began to end. the Reagan and Gorbachev parted with acrimony and without a deal, both saw that they had created a new realm of possibilities." Explain.
Will Inboden: Yes. This is where even though they don't come up with a deal, even though they both walk away angry, ash and faced, you know, Gorbachev's final words to Reagan were, "I don't know what else I could have done." And Reagan says, "You could have said yes." Meaning, you know, we did have this deal on the table to abolish all nuclear weapons. But what they both saw with each other is this guy, the one across the table from me, is willing to take some radical, bold steps to reduce the risk, the threat of nuclear war, way more than any of his predecessors has done, way more than any previous Soviet leader; way more than any previous American president. And even though they didn't have enough trust at that moment to conclude the deal, seeing the risks that the other was willing to take, seeing how far he was willing to go, creates in both of their minds tense, you know, maybe when the time is right, we can take this a lot further.
Peter Robinson: Okay. So it's after Reykjavik, correct my chronology, I really and truly, now I'm freelancing, I'm departing from my notes and from of your book. I'm trying to remember this. It's after Reykjavik that Gorbachev seems, to my memory, to become serious about glasnost and perestroika, the reforming elements. Is it possible that he goes home? That part of what happened at Reykjavik is that he now can go home to the Kremlin, and say to all the hardliners in the politburo I tried, the game is over. I tried to put them back in a box that we could live with, where it's tank versus tank and nuke versus nuke. And Reagan wouldn't have it. He wants to bring to bear on us their economic and technical dynamism, and we can't match it, and, you know, we can't match it. And this creates the moment when he is both forced to, but permitted by, now, of course, there's a coup attempt later, but is it possible that the internal politics of the politburo shift as a result of Reykjavik?
Will Inboden: Yes, that's certainly part of the story. And a couple of other factors I wanna say to reinforce that. And here I should distress, you know, I'm not a Sovietologists, I don't read Russian, I drew heavily on the work of, you know, the great Gorbachev biography by Bill Taubman, our mutual friend Stephen Kotkin’s, very good work on the end of in the Soviet Union here. So some of this, I'm getting from them. But a few months before Reykjavik another key moment for Gorbachev was April 1986, the Chernobyl disaster, and that's when, you know, for our viewers who may not be familiar, just very briefly, it's a Soviet nuclear reactor in what's now Ukraine has an awful meltdown due to some, you know, technical mistakes, releases, obscene amounts of radiation to the atmosphere, you know, lots of people die, the radiation spreads across the globe. But for Gorbachev, he is deeply embarrassed and frustrated by this because he can't even find out what happened, the whole system is lying to him. You know, it's lies all the way up, right? You know, the field officers are lying to their superiors, who are lying to their superiors, who are lying to their superiors in the Kremlin. And for him, that just exemplifies the deceit and the decay of his own system. So a few months later, when he's at Reykjavik, he's still trying to hold the line with Reagan. But this is a Gorbachev who's losing faith in his own system and just realizing he just feels embattled from without and within, he can't trust the people around him, he can't trust the people under him, his own system's not working. And meanwhile, he's getting tremendous outside pressure from this American president, denouncing the oppression, you know, so all these different pressures are coming in. So that's when Gorbachev gets, I think, more serious about pushing the internal reforms. But also, you know, he goes back to Moscow and a few months later, he decides, again, going back to a phrase we mentioned in our first episode, those American intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, he still is calling them a pistol pointed at his head, so it's that combination of feeling backed into a corner of the pressure he's feeling. And also coming to terms with just how rotten and corroded his own system is. He thinks, "I've gotta go back to the table. I've gotta cut a deal with the American president."
Peter Robinson: Okay. We spoke in our first conversation episode one about Reagan's rhetoric during his first term. And it remains important during the second term as well. Berlin, June 12th, 1987.
Ronald Reagan Speech: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Peter Robinson: "The Peacemaker," "The four most famous words of the Cold War," tear down this wall, "almost went unsaid." Do you wanna explain that?
Will Inboden: Well, I will, although it's rather daunting to be talking about the tear-down-this-wall speech with the speechwriter who had quite a bit to do with it himself. But you know, it's a real privilege to be able to, and of course, you shared some through there.
Peter Robinson: Okay, I don't wanna object to all this, but we're gonna cut it out.
Will Inboden: All right, all right.
Peter Robinson: Just get right to the, get right to the.
Will Inboden: But I went on record, right, everyone? I'm doing it anyway. So Peter, I'm the first one who discovered that no one wanted him to say those words, right? Okay, all right. So a few things to talk about, just how important that speech was. And this goes back to a theme we discussed in our first episode about Reagan being the commander-in-chief, Reagan being the diplomat in chief, Reagan being the chief executive. He is not just a creature of his advisors, you know, doing whatever they may say or reading cue cards in front of him. And he had long detested the Berlin Wall. His first time seeing it, I wanna say was 1978.
Peter Robinson: I think that's right.
Will Inboden: Yeah. When he visited, you know, while, out of office post governorship and had just been appalled at it. He had gone back and beheld it again in 1982. He was asked about it in 1982 by a reporter, "What do you think of this?" And he said, "It's as ugly as the idea behind it." Again, epiphany comment, but very important concept there as the idea behind it. So for Reagan, the Berlin Wall itself as an edifice is a monstrosity, but even worse is what it represents, soviet imperialism, communism imprisoning its own people, right? You know, that wall was not built to keep, you know, the freedom-loving people of West Berlin out of East Berlin and East Germany, is built to imprison the people of East Berlin and East Germany, and prevent them from escaping the tyranny that they lived under. And Reagan found that just appalling, but also very revealing about the nature of Soviet communism, that when people are allowed to freely choose to determine their own futures, they will choose to escape a place like that into a free world, and that's why you need to build that wall. So, you know, returning to where we are now, talking about June of 1987, his second term, the aftermath of the failures, if you will, at Reykjavik to come up with a big, big nuclear deal, Reagan is resolved to keep up the pressure on Gorbachev, right? And this is very important, there's a misnomer out there among some schools of scholarship that there are two Reagans, there's the hard-line Reagan in his first term, and then the softer, more conciliatory Reagan in the second term. Not true. Reagan in the first term, does have some outreach to the Soviets, we talked about that. Reagan in the second term keeps up the pressure on the Soviet Union while still extending the hand of friendship and outreach. He does both. And again, it's a very deft example of statecraft. And so he decides when he is invited back to Berlin to give, you know, a speech there on the 600th, 800th anniversary of the city.
Peter Robinson: 800th
Will Inboden: Something like that. Yeah, very notable anniversary in the life of the city. And Reagan has much more of a historical consciousness than is often appreciated. He knows that one of his predecessors, JFK, had given a very notable speech in Berlin. Some, you know, I guess, what? 25 years earlier.
Ronald Reagan: I take pride in the words.
Will Inboden: Right after the wall had been built, during his solidarity with the people of Berlin. And so Reagan sees himself in that continuity of Cold War history. But he wants to take it a step further, he doesn't just want to acknowledge or even denounce the wall, he wants it to come down. But as you well know, even though many of his foreign policy advisors were quite fractious and divided amongst each other, you had differences from the, you know, state department, and NSC, and defense department. Pretty much all of them agree on one thing: Mr. President, don't say those words. It is too provocative. Gorbachev is already feeling a little bit embattled. It will put him on the spot.
Peter Robinson: They wanted to take the pressure off.
Will Inboden: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Let's take the pressure off. It'll upset our allies. But Reagan often saw himself rightly, part of the awesome privilege of being president of the United States is you have a platform, a megaphone, to give voice to the aspirations of other people around the world who can't speak for themselves. And he knew that certainly the people of Berlin on either side don't like that wall, they don't like their city being artificially divided, and they really don't be like it being artificially divided by an outside imperial power, the Soviet Union. And so this is where Reagan's instincts, his political courage, his convictions, his understanding, the Cold War's of battle of ideas, all come into play where he is very insistent. No, we are going to keep that phrase in, tear down this wall. And while those four words, tear down this wall, I do think are the most important four words of the Cold War, the words that occur right before it are almost just as important. Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall, General Secretary Gorbachev, because he is not addressing his words just to, you know, the East German government. He knows that the Soviets put up that wall and the Soviets can tear it down if they wanted to. And he knows that Gorbachev is now starting to push some more genuine reforms within the Soviet system. But he's saying, "If you really mean that, if you're really committed to that, then the most, you know, meaningful symbolic reform you could take would be tearing down this wall that your system has put up, that your system is maintaining to imprison the peoples of East Germany and to divide them from the free world." So it's a remarkable moment.
Peter Robinson: Can I ask a question, Will? A little bit, we talked about his rhetoric in our first episode, we're doing it so again now. It's hard to demonstrate that it made any difference in the way that it's hard to demonstrate the words of any kind make any difference. Well, let's put it this way, I met Gorbachev must be 10 or 15 years after this speech, and his translator explained that I was the speech writer assigned to it, as you know. And Gorbachev laughed and he said, . Playwright. And he said that speech made no difference to us in Moscow. We knew Ronald Reagan was an actor, he had to have his good lines. And it was of no importance to us. Over the years, I've heard people who were, particularly, I pay attention when they tell me that they or their parents were in East Germany and could hear that speech on radio or, and it seems to have had more of an effect on, but how do you as a professional historian demonstrate that the words mattered?
Will Inboden: Mm-hmm, yeah. Well, you know, we need to acknowledge that causality from a speech to actions later is always gonna be somewhat elusive, right? But let me-
Peter Robinson: So history, I mean, part of what you were saying here is that the work of a historian is judgment, and closer to art than science.
Will Inboden: Yeah.
Peter Robinson: All right, sorry.
Will Inboden: But that said, no, I do think there's some important takeaways we can highlight here. First of all, in highlighting Gorbachev and the Soviet system's responsibility for the wall in the first place, it is part of Reagan's further effort to show just how illegitimate this system is and to communicate to the people living behind the iron curtain, living behind the Berlin Wall, living inside the Soviet Union who do aspire to a better life, letting them know that you have an ally and a friend, and the American president in the United States. Can we quantify how much that that emboldens those people or inspires them? Not really. I can't give a statistical regression on that. But my goodness, we've heard overwhelming accounts from so many of them. You know, Natan Sharansky is a great one. Just, you know, one of many of the great, you know, famous Soviet dissidents saying that, "Yes, the American president, he gave voice to our aspirations and he spoke the truth about the system oppressing us." So that right itself there is significant. But as we now know, two and a half years after Reagan gave that speech in November of 1989, the wall does come down. Now notice I just use passive voice there because I wanna make an important point. The one thing Reagan gets wrong, if you will, is it's not Gorbachev who comes and tears down the wall, it's the people of Berlin who take it down themselves. Absolutely. I will give Gorbachev a measure of credit on one thing. Gorbachev had been signaling that he was no longer going to follow the Brezhnev doctrine, which had previously been, anytime the peoples of central in Eastern Europe get restive and wanna throw off the yolk of Soviet depression, we'll send in the tanks to crush them.
Peter Robinson: He keeps the Red Army in the barracks.
Will Inboden: Exactly. He keeps the Red Army in the barracks. And so Gorbachev, well, let's give him some credit for what he doesn't do. He doesn't send in the tanks to crush the people of East and West Berlin as they want to tear down the wall. But ultimately, it is them who tear down the wall. But I've got to think that at least some of them perhaps had Reagan's words echoing in their ears and knew that they have a friend in the United States.
Peter Robinson: One more summit, December 1987, Gorbachev visits Washington. And this time Reagan and Gorbachev sign a treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces. The treaty requires both nations to eliminate their INFs. And this is the first time the superpowers have ever agreed to reduce nuclear weapons, let alone to eliminate an entire class. "The conservative National Review, founded and run by Reagan's longtime friend William F. Buckley, lambasted the INF treat as 'Reagan's suicide pact.' And in a private letter to Reagan, Buckley further remonstrated against the treaty. Reagan's conservative critics missed the point. The Kremlin had just blinked."
Will Inboden: So, yes, this is where Reagan as a master negotiator, as a, you know, visionary in wanting to transform the Cold War. He knows how to take yes for an answer, even if it may be, you know, 80% of what the ideal solution would've been. And he knew that he had gotten to Gorbachev pretty well by this point, that he knew that Gorbachev and being willing to take the step of eliminating all those weapons, which he'd resisted for so long was, you know, potentially the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire, 'cause no previous Soviet leader would've agreed to take any sort of step like that. And something else I wanna highlight is earlier, a few months earlier, and the Pacific, the exact chronology is escaping me for now, Gorbachev have had made an initial overture through Secretary of State George Schultz saying, "Okay, Reagan, I'd be willing to eliminate all of our SS-20s deployed against Europe." And those were the main ones, right? But Gorbachev also had a good number of SS-20s deployed in the far East, targeted at America's allies such as Japan and South Korea, and also against our, at the time, you know, sometime partner communist China and Beijing. And because these missiles are mobile and can be moved, you know, Reagan knew that, look, the Soviets may, if they get rid of them target to Eastern Europe, it would just be, you know, a couple of weeks of redeploying them from the far East over here. And also Reagan had made a commitment to our Japanese allies, "We will not sign a treaty that leaves you vulnerable to those missiles too." And so, because Reagan saw the Gold War as truly global, because he saw our posture in Asia as especially important, he had held the line, and Gorbachev had further conceded, Gorbachev came back and said, "All right, you know, all right, Ronnie, you win. We're gonna eliminate all of 'em." And so it's a remarkable moment in its own right, but also what it symbolizes about the possibilities of the future.
Peter Robinson: Now, you mentioned a moment ago this argument, and we both live in an academic environment, it seems to be a standard argument now, almost the default argument, almost the received wisdom that there are two Ronald Reagans, there's the Bella Coast Ronald Reagan of the first term, who accomplishes nothing, and then there's the conciliatory soft Ronald Reagan of the second term, and that's when the Cold War ends. So two Reagans: the first hard one fails; the second soft one creates space for Gorbachev to maneuver. But doesn't the INF treaty that they sign in December of 1987? Well, let me just put this to you. Reagan proposes that the both sides eliminate their INFs in 1981. Yeah, yeah, gotcha.
Will Inboden: The so-called zero-zero option. And the Soviets march away from the negotiating table. And Reagan is derided in the media and the liberal portions of a political system for being too hard. And now in 1987, big ceremony in the White House, Gorbachev all smiles, they shake hands, and Gorbachev signs the elimination of both sides nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan's position remained consistent.
Peter Robinson: Absolutely.
Will Inboden: It was the Soviets that changed. I mean, isn't that obvious?
Will Inboden: Yes. Well, it certainly is to you and me. Yeah, and again, I know we hadn't gotten into this as much in our earlier episode, but yeah, in 1981, I think it's November of 1981, where he gives that famous speech, you know, calling for the zero option.
Peter Robinson: Yes.
Will Inboden: Saying, you know, we want the Soviets to eliminate all of those intermediate-range nuclear missiles. And if they do, we won't deploy ours and eliminate ours. Again, he has derided and lambasted that's an extreme position, it's so unreasonable, a lot of his own advisors, you know, including Paul Nitze said, you know, are very skeptical of this, you know, "That's not how you do diplomacy, we gotta meet him halfway." And Reagan holds the line. And, you know, six years later, almost to the day, the Soviets move all the way over-
Peter Robinson: All the way!
Will Inboden: To Reagan's position, right?
Peter Robinson: Yes.
Will Inboden: And he knew that which is, and appreciated the significance of that, which is another reason why he was willing to endure some of the criticism from the likes of Bill Buckley and National Review, and a few of the Senate Republicans who were opposed to the treaty too.
Peter Robinson: All right, the end. Reagan leaves office on January 20th, 1989. As 1989 continues, you have a series of revolutions that sweeps across Eastern Europe, toppling one communist regime after another, as you mentioned on November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall falls, and on December 25th, 1991, the Soviet Union itself goes officially out of existence. Two quotations, Mikhail Gorbachev speaking here at Stanford in June 1990, just months before the country of which he was then president would cease to exist. Quote, "The Cold War is now behind us. Let's not wrangle over who won it." In other words, who won? Who lost? Not a useful question. Margaret Thatcher in her eulogy for President Reagan in June 2004, quote, "Others hoped at best for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends." Close quote. Now, who has it right? Those aren't exactly contradictory statements, but Gorbachev is saying, let's not even address this question.
Will Inboden: Yeah
Peter Robinson: And Thatcher is saying, "No, no, no. It's important to know who won and how it happened."
Will Inboden: Yeah. I think Thatcher has it much more right. And again, this is with all due regard to Gorbachev, who as you know from the book, I, you know, give a pretty favorable assessment too overall. And Reagan himself would say, "Gorbachev was an essential partner of mine in all this, right?
Peter Robinson: Yes.
Will Inboden: I mean, so this is, even though I'm trying to highlight the role of individual leadership in history, this is not an oversimplified take that only Reagan by himself unilaterally dictates these outcomes. No, not at all. But I hope I've shown that he played a key role in creating the conditions for Gorbachev to come to power, and then had the courage to embrace Gorbachev as someone he could work with. But back to the specifics of your question, in some ways the timing matters. So when Gorbachev is here at Stanford in June of 1990, he is still committed to trying to preserve Soviet communism, he still hopes to.
Peter Robinson: Trying to hold it together.
Will Inboden: Yeah. He's still trying to hold it together.
Peter Robinson: Yes.
Will Inboden: So, of course, he can't get up there, and say that we are, you know, about to collapse and surrender. And then, you know, a year and a half later, and some change when he's being ousted in a coup, you know, that's not the outcome that he had necessarily wanted. So while I can certainly empathize with his viewpoint, look by any rational objective terms, if there is a, you know, mortal conflict between two foes, in this case the United States and the Soviet Union, you know, a battle of ideas, a battle for geopolitical control. And then when that conflict ends, one of those adversaries ceases to exist and collapses.
Peter Robinson: They weren't the winner.
Will Inboden: Yeah, you certainly can't say they were the winner. And the other side meanwhile is thriving and going from strength to strength. I don't see how you can say anything else but that is a victory. It's a peaceful victory. It's very notable. You know, Gorbachev certainly plays an indispensable role in all that. I hope, you know, readers who have a chance to read the book we'll see that I give credit where credit is due there, But yes, I think we absolutely should say it's a victory.
Peter Robinson: All right. From one of the blurbs or endorsements for "The Peacemaker," this is historian Fredrik Logevall, quote, "A luminous examination of one of the most consequential yet elusive figures in modern world history." And you yourself called him inscrutable. And then there's this.
Tom Wolfe Interview: There's some people who are unfathomable, like Ronald Reagan, all these books about Ronald Reagan and nobody knows who he was. I consider that a great accomplishment on his part.
Peter Robinson: Nobody knows who he was. Why? Why is this man so elusive? Did you feel that? You did call him inscrutable yourself.
Will Inboden: Yeah, yeah
Peter Robinson: Did you feel that as you were working on this book?
Will Inboden: At times I did. And you know, as readers will see, this is not a conventional biography of Ronald Reagan. you know, it doesn't go, you know, birth to death or anything like that, of course, he's a central figure. That's why the title is the way it is, but it's just a study of his presidency and then a foreign policy in his presidency. But that said, even, you know, the beginnings of an undertaking like this, I certainly was trying to get my mind around or, you know, understand him. I think in some ways I was able to, readers can judge, of course, start to see the world through his eyes. You know, I wanted to show what does the world look like when you're, you know, taking the first oath of office when you're facing this radical uncertainty and this terrible threat from abroad, and this divided nation of home. You know, how do you go about devising your strategy, and implementing it? But I will admit, because he is not what I would describe as a deeply introspective person or someone who leaves an extensive catalog of his interior life and thoughts, and he doesn't owe that to us, this is not a criticism, it's more just an observation. There are certainly limits to what any scholar working on him, a biographer or, you know, this type of book can fully understand. I love his diaries, those give you some glimpses, but still, those again, are not, you know, deeply personal revelations necessarily. So I don't fault him for some of this inscrutability in certain ways.
Peter Robinson: I'm trying to think of a contrast here. John Adams never had a thought that he didn't put down in paper from the age of 15, as far as I can tell. You got him, you got Theodore Roosevelt, who's all exterior surfaces. You can see him in action. And then, or is there a certain elusiveness about FDR?
Will Inboden: He's the other one I was thinking of. Yes, yeah.
Peter Robinson: There's something about these two. Maybe others, but those two.
Will Inboden: Yeah. And in some ways, maybe some of it stems from being, you know, Reagan and FDR are both visionaries, both trying to envision a better world and bring it about, but in some ways, both operating on a much different level than a lot of conventional wisdom. Even a lot of their advisors both also having to hold a number of, you know, seemingly incommensurate goals in their head at the same time. And you can't always necessarily articulate word for word or point by point how these fit together. You just have these values and these principles, and these instincts that you were acting on.
Peter Robinson: Also a sense of total self, not self-confidence to the point of arrogance. But neither FDR nor Ronald Reagan ever feels he has much to explain to other people. Or to defend other, well defending the ideas, all right.
Will Inboden: Yeah. But no, there's something to that but it's this combination, I think of confidence and poise, and their values, and their ideas, but also the loneliness of office. Right, I mean, the loneliness of the position, and again, I'm not trying to second line as human, but it is just a statement of fact that when Reagan takes the oath of office on January of 1981, I know our talking second term here, but this relates to all that. There are only three other human beings on the planet who know what it means at the time to be president of the United States, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon. Yes. And neither Ford nor Carter have much to do with Reagan during his presidency. Nixon as, you know, you've seen in the book, he has interesting court correspondence with, but it is a unfathomably lonely job. And you know, because Reagan is not prone to self-pity or, woe is me, or, you know, wearing his heart on his sleeve, like, say, Bill Clinton later did, he's not gonna be emoting a lot with the American people. He's not gonna be engaging in anguish or hand ringing. There's something kind of old-school about him as far as like this is the task he's been given. These are the duties he's signed up for, and you need a certain stoicism and resolve, and you just go do it. And you don't leave, you know, volumes, and volumes of your interior thoughts on how hard and lonely it is.
Peter Robinson: Right. Another endorsement for the book, this one from your old teacher and my friend Stanford historian David Kennedy.
Will Inboden: A wonderful scholar.
Peter Robinson: A wonderful scholar. Well, that comes into this. Here's what David writes about this book, "'The Peacemaker' paints a compelling portrait of a president with surprisingly deft diplomatic skills. Inboden's account has persuaded even this initially skeptical reader to rethink Reagan's record and give him his due as a visionary." Close quote. High praise for you for this book and for Ronald Reagan. But David Kennedy is a major historian who knows American history inside out and upside down, he's a man of judicious temperament. He has his own political views, which are not those of Ronald Reagan, but he's eminently fair.
Will Inboden: Oh, yes. Wonderful man.
Peter Robinson: How can it be that even after all these years, even David Kennedy says, "Surprisingly deft?" Why should anything about this come as a surprise after all these years? Initially skeptical, after all these years? Why should anyone remain skeptical about Ronald Reagan?
Will Inboden: Well, again, I don't wanna at all presume to speak for David there in terms why his previous beliefs may have come from. And again, I would commend any of his works, especially as-
Peter Robinson: Of course.
Will Inboden: The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II to our viewers here. But a couple observations, one to highlight for potential readers, some new things in this book, even though President Reagan left office now, what? you know, 34 years ago. Because of how slow the US government is in declassifying, you know, documents. It's only been in the last 10 years or so that quite a few of the, you know, previously top secret classified National Security Council documents, transcripts of Reagan's meetings with heads of state, and so on and so forth, have been declassified. Some of them still have not been, but I was one of the first scholars who, you know, as the timing works, was able to review a lot of these documents, and they show there's so much more evidence in those now than had previously been there-
Peter Robinson: I see.
Will Inboden: Just how active Reagan was in devising his strategy, especially some of these principles that I've talked about of, you know, pressuring the Soviets for a negotiated surrender. And so that's where I think, you know, David Kennedy is just being an honest historian of saying, "No, the previous evidence that had been available had not necessarily shown." You know, Reagan's singular role here and now we see it. So I suspect that may be part of it.
Peter Robinson: Okay. Will, your own story, grad school in history at Yale to 15 years in the State Department of the National Security Council.
Will Inboden: That 15 years included some time on Capitol Hill, thanks, Yale.
Peter Robinson: Oh, okay. So it's a little broader.
Will Inboden: 15 years in policymaking. Yes.
Peter Robinson: I always have an effort to compress, but I compressed too much there. And then to the University of Texas, why did you return to academia?
Will Inboden: So it seemed like the right time. I had, you know, earlier in my policy career, you know, forsworn any notions of returning to academia, I felt like I was more of a doer than a thinker, or I wanted to be, you know, producing policies and producing history rather than necessarily studying, and writing about it. But after, you know, 15 some years of that, it's a combination of, I decided, I felt a strong sense of calling to the classroom. You know, I'd learned a lot as a policymaker and as a graduate student, and wanted to pay it forward or share it with my students. But also decided there's some historical research from a scholarship I wanted to take up. Especially a, you know, deep study of the Reagan presidency and the end of the Cold War.
Peter Robinson: Why Reagan? What attracted you to Reagan?
Will Inboden: Yeah. Some of it.
Peter Robinson: Was it professional? The time, you saw a professional opportunity to go into documents that were just being released.
Will Inboden: Yeah. Oh, it's a whole number of things. One, so, you know, I came of age in the Reagan administration, right? So I was in, you know, mostly in junior high and high school during these years. And so, I'd never met him personally, but he'd been this, you know, interesting figure that would, you know, show up on the, you know, front page of the morning paper or on the evening news. So there's a certain personal aspect to it of wanting to go back and study about things that I had lived through. But, you know, just as a teenager, some of it was just the practicality of the new archives being open, the sources being available. Some of it was, even though there's been many very good books written on Reagan as I looked into it, a book like this had not yet been written as far as a comprehensive assessment of his foreign policy. And so, I saw an opportunity there as well.
Peter Robinson: You were right about that.
Will Inboden: I hope so.
Peter Robinson: Two last questions. And I wouldn't want readers to think that this is a hagiography. I've taken that single through line that runs through the book of the Cold War, and he looks pretty good in the Cold War. Give us one sentence on the worst, you talk about as many faults and his failings, and the marine barracks-
Will Inboden: In Beirut.
Peter Robinson: In Beirut, Iran Contra, you devote plenty of time to Iran. What's the worst? What's the worst thing about Ronald Reagan that we all ought to know about him?
Will Inboden: So I do think it comes back to this inattention to management, sometimes that was more just an annoyance for his team. But if you wanna look at some of his policy failings, the Lebanon policy and the dust of marines, I think is a policy failing. Iran Contra is certainly a policy failing. A number of these policy failings stem from the management challenges of not enforcing more order, not ensuring that his team was all on the same page, you know, being willing to entertain different views. But at some point, the commander chief needs to say, "Okay, enough, now, we're doing this." Sometimes he absolutely would, tear down this wall, right? SDI, things like that. But in those other cases, he had allowed some of these differences to fester. But I will say too, again, because it's not a hagiography, you know, I'll speak as a Christian here, there's only been one perfect flawless person in history. You know, Jesus Christ himself, even our other great leaders, you know, Churchill had Gallipoli, right? I mean, we could go through any inner failings, and in Reagan's case, the failings, which are real, and I count them in here, also, help us appreciate the greatness, the great moments more, you know, great leaders are not ones who don't make mistakes. They're ones who recover from their mistakes, right? Going back to the tear-down-this-wall speech in June of '87, as you remember from having been a key part of that, that's coming out of the demoralization of Iran Contra, you know, his approval ratings are low, the American people have lost trust in him. It's a notable speech in its own right as a Cold War speech, but also as a presidential moment of still having the courage and the fortitude of having been knocked down, or let's say having slipped and fallen, 'cause you made some of these own mistakes to dig yourself out of that hole, and to go there to Berlin and regain the initiative of your presidency.
Peter Robinson: All right, one last glimpse. This is Ronald Reagan, the fourth and final summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev. This time Reagan is in Moscow, and here he is speaking to the children of the Soviet parade at Moscow State University.
Will Inboden: Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to stick, to dream, to follow your dream, or stick to your conscience, even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth. But that every individual life is infinitely precious that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.
Peter Robinson: I'll come to my last question, but I've just thought of that gives us, it was a remarkable thing to be saying after 70 years of Soviet communism in Moscow. But there's this, there's no space between his faith, that wasn't doctrine or Christianity, but his insistence on human liberty. There's no space between liberty and the sacredness of human life. Is that right?
Will Inboden: Absolutely, yeah. So Reagan is not some radical materialist libertarian here, right? I mean, he very much believes in ordered liberty. So he believes that free societies are predicated on individual human dignity, but also on robust social capital, on family, on church, on community. And that's where, even though the Cold War's not over yet, then, the Soviet Union hasn't collapsed yet, he's seen the seeds of that; he's seen the beginnings of that. And that speech is so remarkable because I see it as his declaration of victory in the battle of ideas. And yet it's a very gracious declaration,
Peter Robinson: There's no gloating in that speech.
Will Inboden: No gloating at all. No, no, no. And it's a reminder that he detested Soviet communism as a system, but he never saw the Soviet people as the enemy. And it's almost his appeal or his treaty or his, you know, friendly advice to them of, you're gonna face some challenges on what comes next, what comes next after this, you know, this awful rapacious system that has oppressed you for seven decades is gone. Well, let me share with you what has worked for us, let me share with you my own convictions as a fellow human being, let me share with you what has worked for us as Americans in the free world. And it's this, you know, this combination of free markets and free peoples, and free societies undergirded by a bedrock of values of religious faith.
Peter Robinson: It's a speech from a friend.
Will Inboden: Yes, exactly. It's a speech from a friend to what he hopes will be his new friends, yeah.
Peter Robinson: Last question, and I return now to students on this campus here at Stanford, of which you are a graduate yourself and students at UT where you teach now, and students at the University of Florida where your friend Ben Sasse is now becoming president. Kids, they don't know anything about Ronald Reagan, they have no memory of him. Give them a sentence. What do they most need to hang on to about the 40th chief executive?
Will Inboden: Boy, just a sentence. I think it's a sentence that would have two words in it: courage and convictions, right? There is a real dearth of leadership in, you know, for the current generation, you know, without commenting on any of our, you know, current political class. I think wherever you fall in the political spectrum, left, right, center up or down for that matter, there are very few inspiring figures in public life today, there's very few, certainly strong leaders. And I think the younger generation they feel that gap and they're yearning for something like that. And I hope for those who watch this episode or read the book, they will see a picture of what a courageous political leader looks like and what a leader with a strong set of convictions grounded in principles and ideas looks like. They may not agree with all the particulars of that, but they can see it as a case study of what it looks like when you have that and just how transformative it can be.
Peter Robinson: Courage and conviction.
Will Inboden: Yes.
Peter Robinson: William Inboden, author of "The Peacemaker, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink." Thank you.
Will Inboden: Thank you very much.
Peter Robinson: For "Uncommon Knowledge," the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation. I'm Peter Robinson.
