Farewell to Reagan: New Beginnings Are Not Needed

FAREWELL TO REAGAN: NEW BEGINNINGS ARE NOT NEEDED Simon Serfaty«very new president comes to office determined to provide the nation with a foreign policy that he can legitimately call his own. This temptation has been all the more irresistible since 1948, as most election years have coincided with international crises that left the country with a sense of danger or a taste of failure: Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia in March 1948 and Hungary in October 1956, the aborted Paris summit in May 1960, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in September 1964; wars in Korea and Vietnam in 1952 and 1972, the Tet Offensive in January 1968, and hostilities in Afghanistan and Iran in 1980. Accordingly, every four to eight years, presidential campaigns bring to the foreign policy agenda promises of "new beginnings" designed to escape present dangers or reverse past failures. In 1980 Ronald Reagan's call for a new beginning readily captured the attention (and votes) of the nation. His eloquent evocation of America 's economic recovery and political unity— at no explicit, or explicitly defined, cost—served to resurrect the once traditionally held images of national prosperity and confidence. His vigorous campaign against detente and arms control— both denounced as fatally flawed—helped display an assertiveness and a pride that the country had apparently found lacking in prior years. These, remember, were to be the years of renewal. Reagan's immoderate optimism about U.S. potential and values, and his blunt pessimism about Soviet realities and ideology, aimed at ending a Simon Serfaty is the executive director of The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. His many books include American Foreign Policy in a Hostile World: Dangerous Years (1984). 21 22 SAIS REVIEW protracted decline that had begun in Vietnam, continued with the rise of OPEC during the Watergate scandal, and bottomed out in Iran. As Reagan's first term was coming to an end, such renewal indeed seemed well under way, though at a price that included a brutal recession in 1981-82 and the tragedy of Lebanon in 1983-84. At home, a period ofsustained and robust expansion opened in the autumn of 1982, without the inflation that had plagued every president since Lyndon Johnson: employment levels increased, interest rates fell, and with tax rates sharply reduced, disposable personal income also rose. The nation was on a high, as it readily adopted the president's buoyant confidence about the future, notwithstanding the emerging apprehensions about the size of unprecedented budget and trade deficits. Abroad, the vigor of the economy, together with the revitalization of the country's institutions and spirit, restored a dynamic, vibrant, and coherent U.S. model in sharp contrast with the inert, stagnant, and fractured Soviet system. Congressional support for real increases in military spending of 8 percent a year provided for a military buildup that, together with the Strategic Defense Initiative and the deployment of Pershing ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe, boldly challenged the Soviet ability to compete and eventually prompted Moscow's ill-advised walkout from Geneva arms control negotiations in November 1983. A few months earlier, at the Williamsburg summit, the heads of the seven leading Western democracies displayed a consensus that had not been seen for many years. Also that year the application in Grenada of a new doctrine bearing the president's name demonstrated a renewed willingness to rely on force if necessary to resume the United States' battle for democracy and against communism. Late in 1984 Reagan's boast— "America is back" —was credible enough to earn the president an overwhelming victory at the polls. Ironically , the most partisan president since the end of World War II had gained a nonpartisan image that placed him above the political parties and beyond the reach of his Democratic opponent, Walter Móndale. Centered on the U.S.-Soviet relationship, the "new beginning" that followed Reagan's reelection was all too predictable, marked by a shift from the initial confrontational tone to a new, accommodating mode. The clarity of purpose that Reagan had advocated throughout the 1980 campaign and during most of his first term at the White House could not...