Will Inboden's blog

By William Inboden

A decade ago I attended a talk that Suzanne Massie gave at Yale, in which she described her curious relationship with President Reagan as a regular informal advisor and back-channel interlocutor on Soviet affairs. At the time of her talk, the conventional academic wisdom on Reagan's presidency mostly ranged from bemused dismissal to scathing derision -- polite scholars did not take him seriously, and impolite scholars vilified his presidency as disastrous. Perhaps revealingly, the most balanced and authoritative book on Reagan's presidency then available was written not by a historian or a political scientist, but by the journalist Lou Cannon, who had covered Reagan since his days as California governor. Academic scholars had not yet been able to overcome their ideologically-charged biases and general disdain to give Reagan a fair treatment.

So Massie's talk was striking and memorable, especially in how she violated two academic taboos. First, she described a Reagan who took ideas seriously and who displayed acute vision in perceiving the moral bankruptcy and fragility of the Soviet system, the genuine potential for change under Gorbachev, and the chance to chart a new course in U.S.-Soviet relations. Second, she spoke candidly about the importance of God and religious faith in the lives of both Reagan and the Russian people, and suggested that religion was an underappreciated factor in Reagan's approach to the Cold War.

Massie was ahead of her time. In the ten years since her talk, numerous respected scholars (not all of whom are politically conservative) have published a refreshing series of reappraisals of Reagan. Books by Sean Wilentz, John Patrick Diggins, Paul Lettow, and John Lewis Gaddis, among others, have in various ways presented Reagan as a consequential president with elements of greatness.

Add to that list James Mann's splendid new book. Mann uses Massie as one of four themes to illustrate what he provocatively calls Reagan's "rebellion." Though he never quite spells out his meaning, by "rebellion" Mann seems to be describing Reagan's rejection of the conventional wisdom on the Soviet Union held by three somewhat disparate camps: the U.S. intelligence community, arch-realists, and Reagan's own conservative political base. Along with an intriguing profile of Massie, the other themes highlighted by Mann include Reagan's complex relationship with fellow Californian Richard Nixon, the bureaucratic bloodbath waged over the "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down this Wall" speech, and Reagan's own series of negotiations with Gorbachev.

Mann makes a persuasive case for Reagan's singular vision and idiosyncratic genius in several ways. First, Reagan conceived of the Cold War as an ideological contest between two worldviews and values systems, one of which was superior and the other of which was destined to fail. The latter point is especially salient, as it rejected the prevailing consensus and put Reagan in an adversarial posture against the prominent "realists" in his own party -- such as Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and even at times his own Vice President George H.W. Bush. All of whom instead saw the Cold War as a static power contest between two rival states that was destined to continue in perpetuity and thus could only be managed, not won. As realism today seems to be enjoying a popular and not entirely unwarranted resurgence, Reagan's Cold War doctrine is also a helpful reminder of realism's limits and past errors. 

Second, Reagan understood not only the need but also the most effective ways to maintain popular domestic support for his national security policies, both in Congress and among the American people. This again led to the use of speech language and symbolic gestures that often put him at odds with the received foreign policy wisdom, including among his own State Department and National Security Council staff. Depending on the course that Reagan was trying to chart, sometimes this meant using more forceful rhetoric (e.g. the "evil empire," "tear down this wall"), while other times it meant conciliatory measures such as the reciprocal Washington and Moscow summit meetings in 1987 and 1988. 

Third, Reagan displayed acute perception in assessing Gorbachev, and embracing him as a genuine reformer much sooner and much more eagerly than either the realist camp or Reagan's own conservative base. This was not just a matter of personal opinion but carried serious policy implications.  Reagan's belief in Gorbachev's sincerity and reformist trajectory led Reagan in turn to support far-reaching proposals -- most substantively the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles -- which outpaced any of the arms control measures from the previous decade of detente. It also led Reagan to forge a peculiar personal bond with Gorbachev, even to the extent of trying earnestly to disabuse Gorbachev of his atheism and persuade him to believe in God.

Fourth, ahead of their time Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz both recognized the emergence of globalization as a seismic new force shaping the international system. They described in detail to an anguished Gorbachev how the already decrepit Soviet economy, seemingly mired twenty years behind the economies of the free world, would soon be an entire century behind if the USSR did not liberalize and enter the looming new era of global information, capital, and trade flows.

This book is not a hagiography. Mann includes an abundance of less flattering facts, such as Reagan's dozing off (twice) during meetings with the Pope, his deference to Nancy Reagan's astrologer for scheduling significant events such as the INF treaty signing ceremony, his general inattention to policy details and government management, and his troubling detachment from presidential duties during his last year in office.

Nor is everything in Mann's book is persuasive. For one, the first section overemphasizes Nixon's role and importance in the 1980s, and has the feel of treating Nixon and Reagan's differences over Soviet policy in that decade more as a contrived literary device than as a consequential driver of history. More significantly (and here I echo some of Grover Norquist's critique below), Mann's conclusion that "Reagan didn't win the Cold War; Gorbachev abandoned it" gives Gorbachev too much credit and depicts Reagan as a mere facilitator. It also belies many of the facts that Mann himself details. Reagan's policies, especially the military build-up, the domestic economic revival, the Strategic Defense Initiative, active support for anticommunist forces such as the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, human rights initiatives, and forceful rhetoric all created the context in which the Soviet system had little chance of succeeding. In short, Reagan created new "facts on the ground" which altered the international reality that Gorbachev inherited.  The Soviet Union, illegitimate and bankrupt at home, and overstretched abroad, could not keep pace. For all of his laudable reforms, Gorbachev could not control the tides he unleashed -- tides which Reagan helped engineer. 

Finally, it is interesting to reflect on the turns of history. Mann reminds readers of how Reagan in his last three years as president faced stiff criticism on Soviet policy from querulous realists and disgruntled conservatives. Even when Reagan left office in January 1989, no one knew that before the year was out the Berlin Wall would indeed be torn down, and just two years later the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist. In that sense Reagan passed history's ultimate tests: he was right, and his policies worked. That may also serve as a caution to not be too hasty in pronouncing categorical verdicts in the immediate aftermath of a presidency, when we do not yet know how the story will end.

William Inboden is senior vice president of the Legatum Institute and a regular contributor to FP's Shadow Government blog. 

The White House/Getty Images

By Will Inboden

Inspired by the recent spate of top 10 reading lists offered by some of my fellow Foreign Policy colleagues, and Peter Feaver's discourse below on the meaning of "Grand Strategy" (not to mention Peter's exposure of me as a "lurking" alum of the Yale Grand Strategy program's inaugural class), I thought I would offer my own list of ten books that are essential reading for anyone interested in grand strategy.

An important disclaimer: there are a few books that are so canonical that they should automatically appear, almost template-like, on any grand strategy syllabus. Such are Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Carl von Clausewitz's On War. Read those before you read any of the others I mention below. And for those of you who are either graduate students or who otherwise have almost limitless time on your hands, an exhaustive reading list can be found here.

For the rest of us who have less time but still an interest in the subject, my ten recommended grand strategy books follow, in no particular order.

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy. Along with George Kennan, Kissinger is the twentieth century's leading American scholar-practitioner of diplomacy. Any of his books are worth reading; this one is his best. A magisterial overview of the global order from Westphalia to the end of the Cold War, Diplomacy also distils Kissinger's own lifetime of learning from his doctoral dissertation to his years as a globetrotting statesman.

Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. "The Romans won their victories slowly, but they were very hard to defeat," observes Luttwak. This is because "the superiority of the empire...derived from the whole complex of ideas and traditions that informed the organization of Roman military force and harnessed the armed power of the empire to political purpose."

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History. The beginning of wisdom in approaching grand strategy is to appreciate the limits of power and human insight. Almost six decades since its writing, Niebuhr still speaks with prescience today:

Modern man's confidence in his power over historical destiny prompted the rejection of every older conception of an overruling providence in history. Modern man's confidence in his virtue caused an equally unequivocal rejection of the Christian idea of the ambiguity of human virtue... We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized."

Perhaps nothing better illustrates Niebuhr's complexity than the fact that (in an irony he would no doubt appreciate) he is today both embraced and argued over by leading voices on the political left, right, and center.

George Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950. While seemingly modest in size and scope, this book best embodies the wisdom and worldview of one of America's foremost strategic thinkers. Though not always correct, Kennan is unfailingly insightful and eloquent.

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000. A bestseller and instant-classic when it was first published in 1987, by a decade later Kennedy's concluding warning of imminent American decline because of "imperial overstretch" seemed dated and unduly alarmist. But now today, just over two decades since publication, the book's lessons from history appear as relevant as ever.

Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation. President Truman's Secretary of State conceived the challenge facing American strategists at the outset of the Cold War thus: "The enormity of the task...began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole thing to pieces in the process." That Acheson and his comrades succeeded is an inheritance we all enjoy; that he left such an elegantly-crafted memoir is an inheritance only his fortunate readers will enjoy.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress. Not only a classic of English literature, it also has all of the elements of grand strategy in narrative form. A clear vision and an ambitious goal, but an uncertain connection between means and ends. The navigation of uncharted and hostile territory, with imperfect information, limited resources, endless diversions, insidious enemies, and inconstant allies. Fortunately, in perhaps the ultimate test of any grand strategy, it has a happy ending.

Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II. Not all grand strategies succeed, but some of the best lessons come from those that fail. In the sixteenth century Philip II of Spain ruled "the first empire in history upon which the sun never set." Yet as Parker authoritatively describes, despite "uniquely favourable international circumstances Philip failed both to preserve what he had inherited and to achieve the dynastic and confessional goals that he had set."

Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. If Philip II's grand strategy foundered most spectacularly with England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Mead's book explores the success of the grand strategy which emerged eventually among the victors. The empire and international system created by England and eventually inherited by the United States (the "Anglo-American maritime order") has, in Mead's telling, displayed remarkable resilience not only in maintaining American power, but in shaping many of the norms of the modern world. Not without considerable handicaps and hubris, of course -- Mead scores the countless follies of the English-speaking peoples as much as he celebrates their success.

Allen Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. Lincoln's challenge was not just to win a war but to preserve the very existence of a nation. Grand strategy involves all elements of national power, and Lincoln had to draw on manifest military, economic, diplomatic, intellectual, rhetorical, and even spiritual resources in the campaign to defeat the Confederacy without extinguishing the very possibility of America. Of the countless biographies of Lincoln, Guelzo's is one of the very few studies of how the ideas and worldview of our greatest president shaped his policies. It is a book worthy of the man.