Vermont Public Radio comment for Thursday October 30th,
2014
VPR249 INTRO: Sunday November 9th, marks the 25th anniversary of
the fall of the Berlin Wall. This morning, commentator and veteran ABC News
foreign correspondent Barrie Dunsmore, who reported from Berlin that night,
offers some thoughts.
TEXT: The fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago signaled the end of
the Cold War, although it didn’t end officially for more than another year. But
as I stood next to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate that night, I told ABC’s Ted
Koppel and Nightline viewers that with this massive breach of the
once-invulnerable wall, the Cold War was effectively over.
This was a monumental event, given that for most of the previous
five decades, the world had been perched on the precipice of nuclear
annihilation. Yet it would not be too long before American triumphalists would
be claiming full credit for winning the Cold War - usually citing the
confrontational policies of President Ronald Reagan. In my view, suggesting that
when President Reagan said, “Tear down this Wall, Mr. Gorbachev” that the
Berlin Wall began to tremble, is like the rooster thinking that it’s his
crowing that makes the sun come up.
The Wall eventually came down for many reasons. Yet American neo-conservatives told us
repeatedly that it was Reagan’s hard line toward the Soviet Union
- calling it the “Evil Empire” and significantly increasing U.S. defense
spending -that forced the collapse of Soviet Communism.
Reagan was a factor. But
the Cold War would never have ended peacefully, had it not been for Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev. In fact, by the 1980s the Soviet Union was already
on the verge of collapse after seven decades of political repression and
economic stagnation. As one who spent a much of my time in Russia in the 1980s,
I watched Gorbachev struggle mightily to change his country by owning up to its
repressive past while trying to create a democratic future. He was a Soviet
leader like no other.
But there was another rarely noted force that may have helped to
end the Cold War: that other great power in the Reagan White House. I have
sound reasons to believe that it was Nancy Reagan who brought her husband
around to accepting the nuclear deal that made it possible for Gorbachev to
expand his domestic political reforms which ultimately ended Soviet Communist
rule.
Nancy’s motives were not necessarily altruistic. I was told at the
time by two different White House insiders that Nancy was furious that
Gorbachev had become the darling of the international news media as the man of
peace, while her husband was portrayed as the cold warrior. Nancy was very
concerned that should it continue, this negative impression would shape her
husband’s place in history. That much is fact. We can only speculate on what
Nancy’s powers of persuasion may have led to. What we do know is that Reagan
did soften his position on limiting medium range nuclear missiles- and with
that treaty, U.S.-Soviet relations became better than they had ever been.
Reagan even went to Moscow and declared in Red Square that he no longer saw the
Soviet Union, as an Evil Empire. And that was even before the Berlin Wall came
down.
I welcome your comments. To post your thoughts, click the word "comments" below.
No comments:
Post a Comment