Reagan Capitalized On Broken System

In his viewpoint on Nov. 5 (“20 Years Later: Debunking Berlin Wall Theory,” The Hoya, A3), Brendan McElroy dismisses the role played by President Reagan in precipitating the fall of the USSR. He argues that domestic dissent was the proximate cause, and proclaims that socialism is not dead.

McElroy first deals with Reagan’s foreign policy, grossly mischaracterizing and oversimplifying it en route to a triumphant one-paragraph dismissal of Reagan’s eight-year effort. Take, for instance, McElroy’s assertion that Reagan reversed détente: In reality, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had undone détente in 1979 — before the Reagan era. Furthermore, Brezhnev had already developed a track record of ruthlessness — most notably for his justification of the brutal suppression of Prague Spring in 1968.

Most inaccurate, however, is the suggestion that Reagan lacked a vision. McElroy is right in stating that the president did not believe the Soviet Union could be reformed or pacified — but ignores the corollary that made Reagan unique. Reagan, unlike the vast majority of the diplomatic, academic and military establishments, believed that it could be defeated. This view was summed up most famously in his declaration that “the West will not contain communism — it will transcend communism.”

Reagan saw the inherent weaknesses of communism, and endeavored to exploit them (indeed, he once joked that while a communist is one who reads Marx and Lenin, an anti-communist is one who understands them). He resolved not to accept the Soviet monolith as a permanent fixture in the international system, but, instead, to challenge it. Under Nixon and Carter, conciliatory policies — such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaties — had seen the USSR expand its sphere of influence, achieve relative strategic parity with the United States and legitimize its occupation of Eastern Europe. Reagan succeeded where they failed — forcing an abrupt internal revision of Soviet policies that, in turn, produced Gorbachev.

By the time of Gorbachev’s election to general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the USSR could no longer compete with America’s military build up. What followed was not the hard-line shift suggested by McElroy, but rather the ascent of a reformer. And, witnessing Gorbachev’s revisionist intentions, Reagan adapted.

This brings us to the idea referenced by McElroy that dissidents, protected by the formidable shield of international human rights law, brought down the USSR from within by forcing discussion of demokratizatsiya — or the effort to introduce multi-candidate elections.

But putting aside the fact that men like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were exiled — or consigned to the penal labor camps of the Gulag — does anyone really believe that human rights law constrained the conduct of the USSR? Gorbachev instituted glasnost in order to rally public support for his economic reforms, and undercut the power of corrupt, hard-line Communist Party leaders, not as a concession to a small group of critical intelligentsia.

Solidarity — the independent, non-Communist Polish trade union — on the other hand, did play a crucial role in weakening communism’s hold on Poland, and throughout the region. Yet it did so with crucial support from the Reagan administration, which imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Polish government in the wake of its crackdown on the movement, and funneled aid to Solidarity’s members through the CIA.

Finally, we come to McElroy’s argument that 1989 is misinterpreted as a victory of capitalism over communism, when it was actually one of human rights. This is, again, naïve and simplistic. The end of the Cold War was a triumph of capitalism over Soviet socialism because it was a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism.

The assertion that the states of Eastern Europe have not become “free-market” nations is a blatant falsehood. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia enjoyed exceptional economic growth as they embraced free trade and flat-tax policies, while Poland today has one of the healthiest economies in Europe. And Freedom House, in its 2009 report, lists the majority of post-communist states in Eastern Europe as free, electoral democracies.

Let me close, then, by saying this: Socialism is, indeed, dead. It is dead in unified Germany; it is dead in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, now members of the E.U. and NATO; it is dead in Estonia, where citizens vote via the Internet. It is dead in Slovakia, dead in Slovenia, dead in Ukraine. It is dead because history has definitively proven what Ronald Reagan knew and what the world realized as the Berlin Wall came down: Freedom is not a condition to be bestowed by government, but rather one on which governance and economy — democracy and capitalism — must be built.

David Coghlan is a junior in the School of Foreign Service.