I stumbled across a no-nukes website and read an essay lamenting the “lost opportunity” of the 1986 Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik. Such wrong-headed or blind-spot interpretations of Reagan’s actions must be corrected, and so I commented as shown below.
Your analysis erroneously and dangerously compartmentalizes the proceedings in Rehkjavik as though an agreement of bilateral disarmament was the only thing in play.
The patterns of force that were being exerted in Reykjavik went far beyond the question of what to do with nuclear missiles, and contrary to your characterization, Reagan’s pushing away from the table at Reykjavik was perhaps his most powerful, non-violent, and devastatingly effective shot at the heart of the evil empire, then still intact as the USSR.
Disarmament was not a reasonable goal in 1986, and so the summit was used to achieve a more achievable one: the declaration, face to face, that the USA would not yield and would not stop being an unrelenting counter-balance to the dark designs of the totalitarian state known as the USSR.
By showing an unyielding stance on what Reagan bluffed as a technology-based super weapon (SDI), he showed the power structure within the USSR, via Gorbachev, that continuing to oppose the United States militarily and otherwise was a hopeless cause: we would outspend them, and outgun them. Reagan’s energy and countenance — call it a performance, it doesn’t matter — was essential in pressing the winning hand, again, without firing a shot.
Thus did Reagan bring about the demise of a regime that cruelly deprived and tortured hundreds of millions of people in Russia, its subject states, and all of Eastern Europe, for decades.
Reykjavik was no failure. It was one of the great victories for freedom loving peoples the world over.
I await the author’s reply, which I suspect will include — if not an outright defense of the Soviet Union — a litany of crimes committed by the United States. The no-nukes crowd has always distinguished itself by its insistence that the USA and USSR were moral equivalents. Such malignant ideas are slow to die, and I have a feeling that my comments will spur the author to thaw this one in the microwave of his mind as he prepares to serve it up again, one more time.
Very good, the reply may come and be as you said, or the author may take the liberal route and simply refuse to reply as it removes the outcome of having to admit they were wrong.
I had a bit of an interesting conversation with someone yesterday at a help desk I was calling into. In our conversation I questioned why they were charging me a equipment care charge but also trying to charge me for sending someone to my house to repair their equipment. He told me I was talking apples and oranges. I chuckled and said he sounded like Herman Cain at the debate. (No disrespect to Mr. Cain) The guy got mad and said he did not like that man and not to compare him to him. I made it clear it was only due to the apples and oranges comment he made and he went off, telling me I don’t want to go there with him because he is a well studied democrat. At this I told him I am a well studied Conservative but that did not matter because my call was to get my equipment fixed. I asked to speak to a manager and he hung up on me.
I called back told them about it and they asked was I being overly aggressive about nothing really? Hell of a way to treat a customer
It has become and an angry and scary world. The Impostor’s notoriously thin skin must be rubbing off on people like that — so easily offended over nothing.
The PC crap is just getting out of control. Tip your hat to a lady and you offend somebody…The impostor’s thin skin must be rubbing off. I would also cast some of the blame on the countless lawsuits filed by groups like the ACLU. All in some way eating away at reality and truth.