The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

102 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Revisiting Ronald Reagan’s Cold War Strategy Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War Simon Miles, Cornell University Press, 2020, $34.95/hardcover, e-book available, 248 pages. Reviewed by Edward Salazar Simon Miles is an impressive Canadian scholar who writes with an obvious passion for understanding the com- plexities of superpower relations in the 1980s as well as the minutia of internal White House and Kremlin politics. What he lacks in practitioner credentials, he easily makes up for in the sweat equity he invested in years of archival research across the globe, along with the guidance he received from seasoned profession- als, including former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock. The result is a rich cascade of facts, quotes and back stories highlighting the power politics and diplomacy that played out on the U.S.-Soviet strategic chessboard between 1980 and 1985—the period Miles calls the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the author’s notes, bibliog- raphy and index are so extensive that they take up nearly half of the book’s pages. Miles does a masterful job unfolding the making of Ronald Reagan’s approach to Moscow. The author documents that by 1980 both Washington and Moscow perceived that the balance of power (both in armaments and political will) had shifted in favor of the Soviets—and that time was critical to both govern- ments in dealing with each other. The United States needed to buy time to restore economic health and to rearm; the USSR initially sought to act quickly to make good use of its position of undisputed strength. But the realities of economic decline forced Moscow to give higher priority to buying time to rescue its own economy. Miles reconstructs the dual strategy crafted by the Reagan campaign in 1980 that aimed at cooperation and confronta- tion on the one hand, and negotiation and rearming on the other. He reminds us that Reagan’s advisers believed that the even- tual devolution of the USSR would take at least 60 years; thus, the demise of the USSR was not an objective. Meanwhile, Miles argues, barely two months into the new administration, the assassination attempt against him in March 1981 imbued Reagan with a sense of urgency to act on his belief that he had to engage the Soviets to reduce tensions. This “epiphany,” the author points out, strengthened the White House’s need to make the economy and arms build- up a high priority as a prerequisite for improved East-West relations. Indeed, in the months that followed, Reagan’s strong anti-Soviet statements (which the Kremlin called “vulgar”) were indispensable in the White House’s view to diplomatic engagement with Moscow, putting the USSR on the defensive and elevating the U.S. to a position of strength. Meanwhile, like Moscow’s room for maneuver, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s health continued its steady decline as Soviet control in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan deteriorated, and the price of oil dropped 40 percent. At the same time, as Miles docu- ments, the back-channel approaches were being tested through quieter diplo- macy, including via Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, as well as between the U.S. and Soviet ambassa- dors in West and East Germany. By the time George Shultz became Secretary of State in 1982, the path of negotiating with Moscow from a posi- tion of strength had become clearer, but Brezhnev’s death in November intro- duced some uncertainty regarding how to use that strength with his successor, Yuri Andropov. Without a doubt, inMiles’ words, 1983 was a year of extremes—and some misfires. Although both Andropov and Reagan had openly committed themselves to dialogue, developments on both sides in 1983—KAL 007, Grenada, the Strategic Defense Initiative, Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces—created near insurmount- able obstacles to any direct dialogue. Publicly, however, Secretary Shultz promoted four areas in which the U.S. was ready to engage (human rights, regional issues, arms control and bilateral coopera- tion), and these defined the engagement agenda going forward. Miles’ research concludes that Andropov believed there to be an oppor- tunity with Reagan to halt the arms race in Europe. However, Reagan’s surprise SDI announcement caught the Kremlin off guard. Andropov saw it as a U.S. attempt to “check” the USSR, then declare “check- mate” without starting a war. By the end of 1983, in the wake of Reagan’s October “evil empire” speech, it seemed that the Shultz- Dobrynin channel was the only one that remained active. Following Andropov’s death in Feb- ruary 1984, Miles notes, his successor Konstantin Chernenko had reaffirmed commitments to détente, but the Krem- lin remained in a reactive mode only, subject to the continued intransigence of Gromyko, who seemed “preoccupied with litigating the decline of détente.” Nevertheless, Reagan’s meeting with Gromyko on the margins of the U.N. Gen- eral Assembly that year marked the begin- BOOKS