History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (42 page)

Contrary to conservative belief, Ronald Reagan did not defeat the Soviet Union. As his former Secretary of State Alexander Haig noted, “For us to consider that standing tall in Granada, or building Star Wars, brought the Russians to their knees is a distortion of historic reality.” Credit instead goes to resistance movements in Eastern Europe, the dual tragedies of the Afghan War and Chernobyl, and what Haig called “the internal contradictions of Marxism.”
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What Reagan achieved instead, with the help of Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, was a monumental reversal in the nuclear arms race. It started at a meeting that was not supposed to take place, through an agreement that was initially perceived as a great failure by both sides.

Reagan and Gorbachev held their first summit in Geneva in 1985. To the surprise of their advisers, the two Cold Warriors got along relatively well. The Gipper liked this new type of Soviet leader, more open to dialogue than the traditional Politburo cronies. The Soviet leader was initially taken aback by Reagan’s old-fashioned patriotism, but he quickly appreciated the president’s sincere nature. A Soviet official observed, “Gorbachev respected Reagan, although he had some misgivings about Reagan’s intellectual capacities.”
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Based on their amicable encounter, another summit was scheduled for Washington. In light of what was destined to be a more substantive exchange, Gorbachev suggested a preparatory meeting to set the agenda. Reagan agreed. In October 1986, the leaders met in Reykjavík, Iceland. Reagan pushed for discussions on a wide range of topics. The Russian wanted to focus purely on arms control, as both nations were spending inordinate billions on nuclear weapons. Gorbachev was also concerned about Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, a spaced-based missile-killing system dubbed “Star Wars,” which threatened to create an arms race on earth and in space.

The two bickered back and forth, and it looked as if the Washington summit was never going to happen. In a moment of exasperation, Gorbachev offered to do away with all ballistic missiles. To the Russian’s amazement, Reagan readily agreed. The only roadblock was SDI. Reagan refused to surrender what he believed was the ultimate missile shield. Gorbachev viewed the system as a surefire way for one country to win a nuclear war. Regrettably, both sides were unaware that the program was financially infeasible and technologically impossible. The two left Iceland despondent, lamenting to their constituents “what might have been” had the other side relinquished.
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Tense body language between Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan at Reykjavík reflected their nervousness as they changed history.

They did not yet realize the monumental turning point they had reached. Previous arms-control agreements only slowed the progression of nuclear arsenals. This impromptu meeting revealed that both sides had lost their faith in the security of weapons of mass destruction. Reykjavík led directly to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, the first agreement of its kind, eliminating an entire class of weapons. The treaty also allowed each side to monitor the destruction of existing missiles on site, a major concession unthinkable in earlier years.

Numerically, the INF Treaty itself involved less than 5 percent of total stockpiles, but it did herald a string of unilateral reductions and program cancellations from then on. Looking back, State Department veteran Rozanne Ridgeway acknowledged what had been attained in a small and initially disappointing encounter: “Reykjavik, in nuclear history, must be seen as the two days in which the world stopped building up nuclear weapons…that was the mountain we were climbing. At Reykjavik, we got to the top and started down. To this day, that is not well appreciated.”
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At their peak during the 1980s, the Unites States and the Soviet Union owned approximately eighty thousand nuclear weapons altogether, ranging from artillery shells to missile warheads. In 2008, the combined total was closer to twenty-five thousand.

10
. GEORGE H. W. BUSH ENDS THE COLD WAR

THE FOUR-POWER TREATY ON GERMANY (SEPTEMBER 12, 1990)

The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, and a divided Germany openly professed a desire for reunification. For older generations, a resurgent Fatherland did not exactly invoke the warmest memories. Several prominent leaders—including Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and French president François Mitterrand—were hesitant to help Berlin regain its prominence. More important, countless Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, and not a small number of Jews were adamantly opposed to a reunified Germany, a nation that had cost them millions of lives barely a lifetime ago. But the chance of anything happening soon was remote. The Soviet Union still possessed twelve thousand nuclear warheads and posted nearly four hundred thousand troops in East Germany, and the Berlin Wall still stood firmly in place.
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During a European tour in 1989 commemorating the fortieth anniversary of NATO, George H. W. Bush departed from his normally cautious way of doing business and announced to Europe that it was time to grow up. Before a large crowd in Mainz, West Germany, the hometown of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the president told his audience and the world: “The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only end when Europe is whole.” The United States was going to spearhead an immediate reunification, not only of Germany, but of the entire continent. To the worried populations east and west, Bush simply concluded, “The world has waited long enough.”
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Under the advice of his brilliant secretary of state, James Baker III, Bush proposed “Two Plus Four” negotiations, bringing together East and West Germany plus Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States to determine how to finally bury the fears of the past. Under the forceful direction of the U.S. State Department, and Bush’s demand for measurable progress, age-old rivals soon established a common understanding.

The parties agreed that if a unified Germany were to exist, it must vow never to expand beyond its existing borders, its armed forces were to be downsized, and the country was never to possess weapons of mass destruction. In turn, Britain, France, and the United States were to reduce their troops in the country by no less than 20 percent, and the Soviet Union was to remove all of its occupational army by 1994.

On September 12, 1990, barely sixteen months after Bush initiated the idea, foreign ministers from each of the six countries signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, effectively ending both World War II and the Cold War. As Helmut Kohl celebrated the reunification of a sovereign and peaceful Germany and the first steps toward true reconciliation among the major powers, he showered praise foremost upon the United States “and above all President Bush.”
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Upon George H. W. Bush’s insistence, the former East Germany was removed from the Warsaw Pact and incorporated into NATO. Four months later, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland announced they were leaving the pact as well, and the once-feared communist alliance folded within a year.

As far as fighting goes, Uncle Sam is proficient. In his first bout, he beat an empire, and he went undefeated in the next twenty major contests to follow. When he experienced defeat in Southeast Asia, by decision, his supporters feared that it would force his retirement. Yet fifteen years after that particular setback, the United States became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Today he’s a bit tired, a little pudgy, and worn from sparring, but he is still the champ.

Well-beaten metaphors aside, there are certain elements that make the United States an ideal fighting force. Geographically, the nation is in an ideal location, bordered by two relatively benevolent neighbors and buffered by two immense oceans. A multitude of natural ports lace both coasts, and its interior holds enormous mineral deposits. It has self-sustaining food production and self-replicating cheap labor. And all of it stands under a highly centralized popular government.

Armed with these riches, the country has fared well in war, and nearly every chief executive has presided over a military operation at home or abroad. In total, American forces have participated in more than two hundred military operations, from modest flotillas pressuring isolationist Japan during Millard Fillmore’s presidency to massive armies, armadas, and bombers crushing Imperial Japan during Franklin Roosevelt’s time.

Worried that the nation would become fond of fighting, James Madison cautiously observed, “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow that they are to encircle.” As both a veteran and a politician, Madison knew that it was terribly easy, and incorrect, to credit the president alone for any military outcome. But the title of commander in chief does entail final responsibility for actions taken by the armed forces. Following are the most accomplished among them, ranked by the relative strength of their opponents, the scope of war aims achieved, and the extent to which they were able to limit losses. They are listed with their most successful military endeavor.
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1
. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

SECOND WORLD WAR (1941–45)

In accepting his party’s nomination for the 1936 presidential race, Franklin Roosevelt offered an unintentional vision of things to come. “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny,” he said. A standard platitude, but on this occasion, neither the incumbent nor his listeners had any idea how correct he would be. The following year, a virus of wars began to germinate in Manchuria, as the ravenous Empire of Japan began to feed on the limbs of a dying China. Two years later, an undereducated painter from Austria led a revived Germany into the west plains of Poland. Weeks later, eastern Poland fell to invasion from the Soviet Union.
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Per American tradition, so long as each menace did not soil the M
ONROE
D
OCTRINE
, the Roosevelt administration made no promise to become directly involved. One of the great myths of history contends that Roosevelt purposely allowed the Pacific fleet to be martyred at Pearl Harbor so that he might drag his isolationist country into the global fight. No such idiocy occurred. If he was guilty of anything, it was the failure to temper the traditional rivalry between his army and navy, a divisiveness that severely compromised readiness in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and other areas Japan hit on that “day of infamy.”

However unprepared the United States was on December 7, it soon became a model of forged coordination. Within weeks of entering the conflagration, FDR established a Combined Chiefs of Staff with Great Britain, far outweighing any cooperative effort ever attempted in the First World War. By the summer of 1942, a well-oiled Joint Chiefs of Staff was up and running. An army ranked seventeenth in the world in 1939 was nearing parity with Nazi Germany by 1942, and in that same year, the U.S. armaments industry was out-producing the entire Axis combined.
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Throughout the war, Roosevelt developed a talent for spotting military talent, the prime examples being Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Dwight Eisenhower, and Commander in Chief of the Pacific Forces Chester Nimitz. While he promoted prima donnas of questionable skills (namely Douglas MacArthur), he entrusted and empowered only the best. It is fair to say that Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Winston Churchill did not display the same overall wisdom or luck in choosing senior military leaders.