The specters of both Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley have been summoned over the past week to offer two examples for Republicans facing the distresses of minority status. In actuality, the models contradict, not compliment, one another. But there is a unifying lesson to be learned.
In last week’s Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery presented Reagan the Republican who used his “unfailingly gracious tone” to bring the right, the middle, and remnants of the old left into what he saw as a must-be big tent Republican Party. In the June 1 Wall Street Journal, Richard Brookhiser reminded us of Buckley the Conservative who employed the same weapon to do just the opposite. Instead of party recruitment, Buckley used his brainpower as a battery to energize the magnetic pull of conservatism so that more Americans were attracted to the movement, regardless of which party they belonged to.
Ronald Reagan, “unlike William F. Buckley, who urged his followers to shout ‘stop!’ to the onrushing currents of history,” Emery reminds us, “thought history would be on his side.” Buckley, whom Brookhiser says “helped create the climate of opinion in which Ronald Reagan was elected president,” was unsure of such inevitability. Thus, both men’s immediate priorities were demonstrably different.
Whereas Reagan yearned for a robust and powerful Republican Party, Buckley was interested in nurturing a sacred and safely fortressed conservative movement. Emery’s Reagan wished to use a strongly populated GOP to torpedo his conservative message into the halls of the federal government. Brookhiser’s Buckley focused on keeping an increasingly popular American conservatism alive and pure by staying on the lookout for imposters or moderates, and thereby preventing its host party from fatal infection.
Both Reagan and Buckley were conservatives. Both were Republicans who had at least the general wellbeing of their party in mind. And they each shared the common goal of deterring and defeating what had come to be known as modern liberalism. But, according to Emery and Brookhiser, their ways of going about doing so (and thus the models they’re asking us to emulate) were quite different.
In Emery’s piece, “Reagan in Opposition,” she details how Reagan refused to campaign for Jeffery Bell, his former aide “who mounted a conservative primary challenge in the 1978 midterms to Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey.” Reagan’s reasoning was similar to that of President Bush when he supported Sen. Lincoln Chafee over his far more conservative primary opponent in 2006: Party first. (Sen. Case lost to Bell, but Reagan was somewhat vindicated when Bell eventually lost to former Sen. Bill Bradley.)
In his column, “Bill Buckley and the Future of Conservatism,” Brookhiser recalls how Buckley “was married to the GOP, but … never expected it to be faithful to his ideas, and … fought it when it strayed.” Such was the case when he challenged Republican John Lindsay for Mayor of New York in 1965 as a candidate for the state’s independent Conservative Party. Buckley “went even further in party disloyalty” when he backed a liberal Democrat named Joe Lieberman in a 1988 Connecticut Senate race over the even more liberal Lowell Weicker, the Republican incumbent, helping cost Lowell the seat.
Clearly, we’re told, Reagan and Buckley viewed the relationship between the GOP and the conservative movement in different lights. Reagan “was a conservative and a Republican,” writes Emery, “who understood the two roles of a movement and party, and how the two roles can converge.” However, she also claims that Reagan “understood that the Republican Party has no obligation to present the conservative movement with a nominee to its liking.” This starkly contrasts Buckley’s position, which Brookhiser summed in no uncertain terms: “The party should, as much as possible, support the movement, not the other way around.”
Two conservative icons, two different arguments to contemplate.
Assuming these recent analyses of Reagan and Buckley are faithful to the men’s actual political outlooks, the conflict of which example to follow back to prominence can appear daunting. Nevertheless, middle ground can be found.
Emery’s piece (subtitled, “The Lessons of 1977”) brings us back to times like today, after the 1976 election when, as Robert Novak put it, the “long descent of the Republican Party into irrelevance, defeat, and perhaps eventual disappearance” was becoming a (foolishly) accepted reality. In the face of a liberal Democratic majority in Washington and a country swollen with malaise, there stood Reagan—sunny, bright, and ardently right—using his words and wit to tug the American center towards his side of the yard.
Through his lecture circuit, columns, and radio broadcasts, Reagan sought to “reframe conservatism in his own image” and make the Republican Party its home. In order to do so he needed to shake the dead skin of Nixon and Ford off the GOP and cloak it the antique armor of happier warriors like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. A former FDR/Truman Democrat himself, Reagan believed a party that reflected his view of America and his ideology could and would become a national party.
Buckley’s belief was equally confident and ambitious. Brookhiser describes his early postwar political vision:
The new president, Dwight Eisenhower, despite his conservative instincts, was unwilling to pick ideological fights. … Germany, Japan and (it seemed) the Depression had been beaten by great collective efforts. The world had moved into a new era, and conservatives should recognize the fact.
Buckley would have none of it. He wanted a conservatism that stood for capitalism and freedom. The Cold War required another great mobilization, which Buckley supported wholeheartedly, but he would not lose sight of his individualistic goals.
Both Reagan and Buckley eventually got what they wanted: a national conservative Republican Party. Thanks to that entity, the Cold War ended in America’s favor and a new conservative consensus was solidified at home. Ultimately, their different approaches to their party and their movement did not matter as much as their similar tactics in winning over the hearts and minds they needed to turn their dream into a reality. It was the common method with which they fought for their common cause as political minorities that eventually lifted them atop the tidal wave that hurled them into majority rule.
According to Emery, Reagan “was optimistic, inclusive, positive, disciplined, and focused on large issues.” So was Buckley. According to Brookhiser, “Buckley thought it was possible to change climates of opinion, he knew it was futile to try to change certain facts about human nature… He was always trying to apply those great principles [first articulated by Burke] to the problems of the day.” So did Reagan.
Thus, it was Reagan’s willingness to allow anyone—ex-Democrats, moderates, single issue voters—into the Republican fold that made the party grow. But these new voters had to be at least comfortable with the GOP’s foundational philosophy if they were going to be pulling its lever in the voting booth. Thus, it was Buckley’s tolerance for an evolving conservatism that enabled the Republican Party to wrap itself around the conservative movement and remain palatable to voters for a generation.
Neither man ever “opposed for the sake of opposing.” They always maintained a certain “tone of voice” with which they offered their alternatives, often “bringing in large blocs of ex-Democrats” in the process. Reagan, like Buckley, “understood that his role was less to attack than to persuade,” especially as a candidate for higher office. Thanks to the maturity and civility of both men, the GOP and the conservative movement benefited exponentially.
But Reagan’s unique “tone of voice” and Buckley’s “hyperarticulate defense of ideas” were not entirely what gave conservatives their time in the sun. Ultimately, the right came to respect and appreciate the need for the Republican Party as the only real means to advance their goals. Despite Buckley’s “turbulent relationship” with the GOP, Brookhiser argues, he still “never believed in trying to replace it with a new national party.” Wisely, Emery says, Reagan “rebuilt the Republican Party around [the conservative movement], as a large and a national force.” Overall, the movement and the party, with full focus on their common adversary, more or less told one another, “I’ll have your back if you got mine.” Majority status awaited them.
Those days are now over. Reagan and Buckley are gone and the Republican Party hasn’t had the uncomfortable relationship it now seems to have with the conservative movement since long before 1980. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Now back in minority status, many conservative activists are antsy and distrustful. Yes, much of their anxiety is understandable. But there lays a risk that their angst will only damage the GOP and prolong its time in the political wilderness. Such will be the case if certain conservatives (and you know which ones) keep telling themselves that party purity is more important than a party victory.
The time to be frank is now. A selfish “take it or leave it” attitude by the base of the conservative movement towards the Republican Party is nothing less than a gift to the Democratic Party. Conservatives should not tell themselves, “Well, as long as it’s Republicans the voters hate, we’re fine!” Nor should they believe for one minute that “protest-voting” (which I witnessed far too much of here in DC last fall) is noble or commendable. All those who voted for Bob Barr to “stick it to the Republicans” because “John McCain wasn’t a real conservative” didn’t “teach the party a lesson.” They simply voted for a lunatic and helped Barack Obama.
All successful relationships require commitment and effort from both sides. Emery is right when she says that “the conservative movement has the obligation to lay out its case in so convincing a manner that it persuades most Republicans, most independents, and even some Democrats to follow its banner.” Living in a happy bubble is unacceptable. Meanwhile, Brookhiser reminds us that Buckley was in fact not a “complete ideologue” and ultimately understood that “the political vehicle of a late 20th century conservative movement was bound to be the Republican Party.”
The same goes for the 21st century. The days of disgruntled conservatives treating the GOP as little more than a quaint political organism to be considered for electoral use each November but free to threaten afterwards must end now. The purity tests and RINO hunting should cease and desist; the name of the game should be convincing others, not convicting our own. The common legacy of Reagan and Buckley would be honored, and those Americans wishing for a Washington without Obama would be grateful.
19 responses so far
1 Bulldoglover100 // Jun 3, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Both of those guys are dead and gone and the way they governed and lead, each in their own way, would not work in todays world. They had some great ideas for their times but those times will never come again. Thats the problem. The GOP is like a small child looking to Daddy for all the answers but it’s not 1970.80 anymore and the answers they had won’t work in this day and age.
2 RightNow09 // Jun 3, 2009 at 6:16 pm
To “bulldoglover100:”
I believe your point was actually a central theme in Qualtere’s article. You should re-read it.
Both Reagan and Buckley always adapted to whatever the world threw at them. If Reagan were alive today he would in the GOP’s face: Check your calendars and get with the times…it ain’t 1979 anymore! As for WFB, even when he was ruffling Republican feathers he still knew what year it was and had a good grasp of what his country looked like (even if he didn’t like what he saw) and therefore needed.
They were both principled and forward-looking. And they proved, in their own ways, that it is possible to be both.
Today’s GOP is split: about half are rightfully following Reagan/WFB’s example while the rest are busy worshipping the two things that Reagan and WFB would consider fanaticism-feeding distractions– themselves.
3 mlindroo // Jun 4, 2009 at 1:33 am
> Both Reagan and Buckley eventually got what they
> wanted:
> a national conservative Republican Party.
> Thanks to that entity, the Cold War ended in Americas favor
Seems like quite a bold assertion to me considering the outcome of the Cold War involved multiple decisions by about ten other Soviet and American leaders over 40+ years.
Reagan and his party clearly were influential, but I think it would be insulting to say that it was thanks to only one President and one reformed political party that the USSR crumbled.
MARCU$
4 ottovbvs // Jun 4, 2009 at 6:01 am
mlindroo
1:33 AM
“Seems like quite a bold assertion to me considering the outcome of the Cold War involved multiple decisions by about ten other Soviet and American leaders over 40+ years.”
…..The cold war was won by a set of strategies and institutions created during the Truman administration and followed by every subsequent president from Eisenhower to Bush one on whose watch communism collapsed.
5 sinz54 // Jun 4, 2009 at 6:52 am
ottovbvs:
Do you REALLY think the U.S. would have been better off if Carter had won a second term???
The one thing Reagan did, that none of his predecessors did, was call for the USSR’s collapse.
He demanded that the USSR tear down the Berlin Wall.
He said that the USSR was run by liars and cheats who would end up on the ashheap of history.
He put the USSR on the moral defensive, something they had not been by any liberals in the U.S.
For this, Reagan was pilloried by liberals like you, for “risking nuclear war” and other assorted blah-blah-blah.
And all you liberals were flat wrong about that.
The other thing Reagan did, was reverse the shift in the balance of power that the USSR had enjoyed under Carter.
On just about every periphery, the USSR fell under pressure.
Reagan and Pope John Paul II gave covert aid to Solidarity in Poland.
Reagan vastly expanded aid to the rebels fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
And Reagan invented the Strategic Defense Initiative, which the Soviets later admitted scared the hell out of them.
As an engineer, I worked on that program. We all knew it was going to be a diplomatic bargaining chip in the end. But we did our best to make it look real.
6 mlindroo // Jun 4, 2009 at 7:19 am
ottovbvs wrote:
> The cold war was won by a set of strategies and
> institutions created during the Truman administration and
> followed by every subsequent president from
> Eisenhower to Bush one on whose watch communism
> collapsed.
To this, I would also add that the Soviets also were fairly good at beating themselves by setting up a rather cumbersome and inefficient system.
In retrospect, most Cold War estimates of the Soviet military and economic threat turned out to be vastly exaggerated. If Jimmy Carters I-VIII had been in charge, the Soviets would still have lost although it would have taken a bit longer. So I am always a bit annoyed whenever conservative Cold Warriors congratulate themselves for “winning” the war as if there were some ideological silver bullet or philosophy which did not exist before Reagan. Obviously, Reagan did his part but so did every other POTUS before him.
MARCU$
7 midcon // Jun 4, 2009 at 7:45 am
sinz, I also worked on SDI back in its heyday and currently do work for its successor MDA (with a bit more realistic objectives).
My assessment was and is similar to yours. To put it in more blunt terms, the space, arms, and other areas of competition between between the USSR and the US had the effect of spending the USSR into oblivion trying to keep up. Blue Jeans and Bibles (aka the cultural war for hearts and minds) was a significant contributing factor in sowing dissatisfaction. This two prong effort effectively resulted in insurrmountable internal and external pressure on the USSR leading to its collapse.
Now, I am not all that positive that this was a deliberate strategy on the part of the government. Maybe there were fortutitous, conincident events and efforts. However, deliberate or not, it worked.
I do wonder if Tom Q is correct in his assessment of Reagan or Buckley. Both took different approaches, but I wonder if the GOP was the preservation priority Tom asserts. My understanding of Buckley is that he was more interested in conservatism than the GOP. Where the two interests were coincident fine. Where they diverged, he stayed true to his conservaive principles.
Reagan on the other hand, was effective in appealing to the public in a convincing manner. Hearts and minds so to speak. They may not have liked all he did, but they liked and trusted him. The value of trust cannot be overstated. It seems to me that the basic difference is that the Buckley message was – principles were everything. Reagan’s message (again my impression), principles are fine, but the people are more important.
8 RightNow09 // Jun 4, 2009 at 9:09 am
“midcon” wrote:
“I do wonder if Tom Q is correct in his assessment of Reagan or Buckley. Both took different approaches, but I wonder if the GOP was the preservation priority Tom asserts. My understanding of Buckley is that he was more interested in conservatism than the GOP.”
That’s exactly what he’s saying. Reagan was “party (victory) first,” Buckley was not.
What I am left wondering is which side can claim the “principles first” mantle. The obvious answer is WFB but then again it was Reagan who was so committed to his principles that he had to switch parties.
9 mlindroo // Jun 4, 2009 at 9:51 am
Sinz54 and midcon, I don’t think anybody here disputes the fact that Reagan piled on the straws that broke the back of the USSR. And it was a fairly substantial pile of straws too. But the point made by ottovbvs and myself still stands: the main reasons for the USSR’s collapse were
a) decades of stagnation due to the inefficiencies of their political system,
b) a fairly constant US foreign policy that *always* forced the Soviets to devote a disproportionate part of their relatively meager GNP to military spending.
> Do you REALLY think the U.S. would have been better off if Carter had won a second term???
Let’s ask further questions: would the USSR have crumbled in the 1960s just as effortlessly if only Reagan had entered politics twenty years earlier? Or would the USSR have gone from one glorious triumph to another during the 1980s, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, eventually winning the Cold War if Carter had won? I think both scenarios are absurd…. Like I said, Reagan’s policies most likely hastened the demise. But he merely accelerated something that already was in place. I don’t think pleading “Mr.Khrushchev, please tear down this wall!” in the early 1960s would have had the same impact.
—
What I find interesting is the myth or caricature of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the beginning we supposedly have Western civilization in decay and capitalism itself on retreat everywhere as liberal weak-kneed appeasers, quislings and peacenik lefties are running the show. Meanwhile the menacing and dynamic Soviets are more powerful in every way than ever before and just one step away from conquering West Germany etc.. Then the jovial knight in shining conservative armor finally marches in, makes big speeches about putting the USSR “on the moral defensive”, on the ashheap of history, about tearing down walls while spending a bit more on SDI & aiding insurgents in Afghanistan … and the formidably strong adversary immediately collapses like the walls of Jericho!
Three decades later, we are seeing a bit of the same with the almost universally derided G.W.Bush Administration too. In both cases (=Carter and Bush) I think much of the criticism is justified but any Administration also deals with events outside its control and with inherited problems. For example, there seems to be a general assumption that only U.S. policies and politics will have an impact on the “global war on terror”. But there are internal developments in the Islamic world too, and not all of them are driven by the ideologically motivated actions of the current U.S. president.
MARCU$
10 sinz54 // Jun 4, 2009 at 10:01 am
mlindroo: The Soviet goal was world conquest. They knew their system had serious structural problems, but they figured that by raping the world’s industrial and agricultural might, they could keep themselves in power indefinitely.
Remember, they started their industrial and space programs in the 1950s by the rape of conquered Germany’s technology and factories (as well as the wholesale kidnapping of some German scientists).
So the USSR, had it won the Cold War and taken over the entire Third World, would have been able to keep itself in power for a very long time.
Under Carter, the USSR seemed to be on a real roll. They had marched into Afghanistan. They took over Angola and were taking over Central America. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army had less than a 30 day supply of ammunition on the day Carter left office. The Navy had to cannibalize parts from one plane to keep another flying. And so on.
Most importantly, the Carterite inflation and so-called “energy crisis” had given nations with natural resources, like Russia and the Arab oil states, a real boost. Russia was prospering selling its coal abroad.
Inflation works against America geopolitically, since we’re a net importer of so many natural resources these days.
11 sinz54 // Jun 4, 2009 at 10:03 am
mlindroo: Reagan and the conservatives who backed him were aware of the USSR’s troubles, and they believed (correctly) that if we pushed them hard enough, we could push them into an irreversible downward spiral. They were correct.
“The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and for the spread of civilization. The West won’t contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we’ll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.” (Ronald Reagan, Commencement Address at University of Notre Dame, May 1981)
But this was at a time when liberals not only believed the USSR was here to stay, but that it was doing well:
“It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable.” (Paul Samuelson, Professor of Economics, MIT, Nobel Laureate, Economics, 1981)
“The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systematic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability that suffice to endure the deepest difficulties.” (Seweryn Bialer, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 1982/3)
“I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street … those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves.” (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1982)
“That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene…One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets…and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops… Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.” (John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1984)
12 Brutus1776 // Jun 4, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Oh wow, well I see the topic has digressed significantly from Toms main point Ill proceed anyway. Good Tom, you never fail to impress as our friend Bulldoglover100 never fails to disappoint.
The relationship between both William Buckley and Ronald Reagan was extraordinary, and the best elucidation of this is in Buckleys The Reagan I Knew. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at one of the Grove retreats. There were three pillars of the Conservative movement: Goldwater, Reagan and Buckley (of the movement politically, not intellectually for the most part). Reagan was the Corinthian pillar, maintaining strength to hold the movement while ornately decorated and aesthetically pleasing. He articulated our values beautifully, to persuade the people to come hither. Buckley was much like an Ionic pillar, not extraordinarily decorated (with his bad tie knots, and his slouching posture), but he was solid and wise. He brought the intellectual movement from hiding, and into the spotlight. (Any fellow travelers will appreciate the metaphors
At any rate, I wonder, dear Tom, how you would have taken to your Teddy? Upon his return from Africa and Rhino hunting ironically enough, he found a Republican party that didnt suit him, and he started the Bull Moose Party to set them straight. I of course am not advocating this, but as Teddy is a favorite among many Republicans, I find it an interesting parallel to our times today.
I owe this analyses to my esteemed professor, Dr. Hartlaub: imagine the impact of factions on our republic (or in this case, our movement) as you would the shattering of a car window. Car windows are designed to shatter into minute fragments so as to leave the driver with minor scratches in the case of an accident. A thousand small cuts hurts, but if the windshield were to break into large shards, you would find yourself in the same predicament as the bad guy in the movie Ghost (Ok, so I added that last part). Either way, Buckley and Reagan acted as two poles that kept the factions of the party numerous and no one larger (significantly) than the other. Think about it, the fights that occurred within the pages of National Review or Modern Age: Rand v. Chambers, Bradford and Kendall v. Jaffa, libertarians v. conservatives, ideologues v. pragmatists, neocons v. paleocons, southern agrarians v. northeast establishment. Wow what diversity! Now, we are hurting ourselves because lets face it, we governed poorly. It speaks against those who vociferously denounce government yet ask you to elect them to rule using government. At the same time, those who were pretty content with government rule, became a bit overzealous and over-expanded well, a lot of the government.
Still, in the end, ours is the movement that dominates the intellectual field these days. Anyone who believes I hold this view solely by listening to Rush or Beck will embarrass themselves by stating show; because they will show their own lack of knowledge on the topic of Conservatism and then well have to ask, why the hell are you here? Im talking about the pages of Modern Age, Commentary, National Interest, American Spectator, et cetera.
As for the debate raging about the Cold War, I think history speaks for itself. Was the Soviet Union decaying before Reagan got into office? Sure, funny enough, because of many of the same institutions and beliefs that some (not all) liberals want in our country today. But did Reagan not confront the beast face to face, which was what President Obama said to do this morning (can one look face to face while bowing?). Let me phrase it differently would the Soviet Union have lived longer had it not been for Reagans policies? Therefore, he helped the USSR on its precipitous decline, and into the ash heap of history.
Sinz54: damn good show below! Especially Schlesinger’s chirping.
13 sinz54 // Jun 5, 2009 at 7:02 am
Brutus1776 asks: “Was the Soviet Union decaying before Reagan got into office?”
Yes. So were the decadent Arab oil states. But the point I tried to make, is that this decay can even be temporarily reversed, if worldwide economic inflation vastly increases demand for commodities sold by these nations. This was a point that was largely neglected by liberals at the time; their tolerance of the root causes of inflation (cf. John Kenneth Galbraith) was weakening America *geopolitically* as well as economically.
Today, the developed world (including the U.S.) is a net importer of many commodities; Russia and the Third World are exporters of commodities. The balance of political power between these blocs shifts back and forth with the inflation rate.
The best thing that Volcker and Reagan did together, was restart strong *non-inflationary* growth in America. (While Thatcher did the same thing in Britain.) The result was that worldwide commodity prices collapsed. That, more than Reagan’s military buildup, is what shifted the world balance of power back toward the West.
Incidentally, it may also have ignited the Gulf War of 1991 (which gave the U.S. a convenient opportunity to demonstate its military might over Soviet-supplied armies). Saddam had borrowed heavily from Kuwait to finance his war with Iran. When oil prices collapsed in the 1980s due to ebbing inflation, Saddam found himself unable to pay back his debts to Kuwait. So, like any other common gangster, he just pulled out his gun and shot Kuwait to death. The U.S. responded militarily, and the world was treated to a spectacle of the U.S. militarily clobbering Soviet-supplied Iraqi armies.
14 Cforchange // Jun 5, 2009 at 7:22 am
Didn’t WFB leave religion out of politics? Wasn’t he clear that the “religous kooks” can be problematic?
I remember my father would put life on pause to hear from WFB and I know he wouldn’t admire anyone that didn’t know how to temper religion.
15 Brutus1776 // Jun 5, 2009 at 7:46 am
Sinz54: oh I agree wholeheartedly.
Cforchange: I think you are bordering a fallacious argument, in that, it is either moderate reasonists vs. religious fundamentalists. Religious cooks are problematic, I think we can all agree to that; but, that being said, believing that we can just seperate religion out of politics is problematic. We have to remember that religion plays an important role in individual lives, and communities, and is inherently intertwined in our politicking (whether we know it or do not recognize it). Burke said we are religious animals, Aristotle, we are political animals. Thus, not likely a debate to end soon.
Temper religion? Yes, nobody is advocating living strictly by the Bible, Sharia, etc. Tempering religion does not mean throwing it under the rug. As for Mr. Buckley, I would call your attention to “God and Man at Yale” and the influence of Buckley’s Catholicism in his political outlook (not to mention his admiration, and the influence on he had on Buckley, of Eric Voergelin).
16 mlindroo // Jun 6, 2009 at 2:42 am
Sinz54,
In retrospect, it seems both left wing doves and conservative hawks in the West exaggerated different capabilities of the Soviet system. You ridicule some liberal economists and that’s fair enough, but what about the assessment of the USSR’s military capabilities?
‘The Soviet Union has been busy. Theyve been busy in terms of their level of effort; theyve been busy in terms of the actual weapons theyve been producing; theyve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; theyve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; theyve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, theyve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. Theyre purposeful about what theyre doing.’
Donald Rumsfeld, 1976
The CIA strongly disagreed with this, claiming that the Soviet economy was actually decaying. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld and Cheney managed to convince President Ford to set up an independent Team B to second guess the NIE assessment. Their now declassified report grossly exaggerates the actual military capabilities of the Soviet political system. E.g. the authors did not know if the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines since they could not find any evidence. So they imply the Soviets have or are developing new advanced non-acoustic means of making the American submarine fleet vulnerable despite a total lack of evidence for it *and* despite the fact even the U.S. Navy (far ahead in acoustic technology) experts did not think it was technologically feasible! It was claimed that the Soviets did not believe in the M.A.D. doctrine, and that thanks to their large and expanding Gross National Product they would have 500 Backfire bombers and other advanced systems in place by 1984. Lots of predictions like that are made in this report, and almost all of them proved to be wildly off the mark. The USSR certainly was a military superpower in the 1960s and 70s, but nowhere near as dangerous as Rumsfeld & co. argued.
—-
In retrospect, it seems the Soviet military expansion of the 1970s was in fact mostly driven by the inertia of their military industrial complex and the lack of mechanisms to contain the countrys military programs. This does not of course mean the USSR had benign intentions and did want to compete with the U.S., but there is no evidence the Soviets had a plan or even the capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Yet the Cheney / Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz view of the USSR’s military capabilities — now almost entirely discredited — certainly proved highly influential.
MARCU$
17 mlindroo // Jun 6, 2009 at 2:44 am
Sinz54 wrote:
: The Soviet goal was world conquest. They knew their
: system had serious structural problems, but they
: figured that by raping the world’s industrial and
: agricultural might, they could keep themselves in
: power indefinitely.
But the USSR already *had* enormous natural resources and most of its export revenues came from this sector! What on Earth makes you think that their vast problems in e.g. agriculture would have been reduced by annexing further satellite states?? After all, it seems one major reason for the Soviet economic decline was that their system started out as complex and inefficient but grew completely unmanageable as the Soviet empire kept growing and evolving. More and more complex disaggregation of control figures (plan targets) and factory inputs were required, and also more communication between the enterprises and the planning ministries, and as the number of enterprises, trusts, and ministries multiplied, the Soviet economy started to stagnate. The vast military sector had the same problem (see previous paragraphs). Interestingly, many of these problems are quite comparable to those of the Roman Empire, i.e. the “system” becomes too large, complex, expensive and inefficient and in the end nobody is able to control it.
—
I am saying that Reagan was not necessary. The USSR could easily have been contained using the policies of the early 1970s as it primarily destroyed itself in the end. It would have taken a bit longer with Ford or Carter as POTUS, but the idea that a communist USSR could have achieved real and lasting world domination during the 1980s is sheer fiction.
MARCU$
18 midcon // Jun 6, 2009 at 6:40 am
It is conceivable that without Reagan, the USSR may have already been on the path to ultimate failure. However, it is clear that U.S. hastened that failure and without it, the USSR would have been more able to wreak mischief in many other parts of the world. As long as there was a strong opposition (the U.S.) USSR was obligated to devote significant resources to oppose the U.S. “threat.” To debate anything further, such as whether or not a single individual (Reagan) was responsible, while interesting, is pointless.
Bottom is, that the U.S. was at a minimum a contributing factor in the dissolution of the Soviet emprire. That should be a position everyone can accept. Call it a moderate position if you will.
19 mlindroo // Jun 6, 2009 at 8:21 am
Small clarification to my previous message:
Sinz54 originally wrote that [the Soviets-]
: figured that by raping the world’s industrial and
: agricultural might, they could keep themselves in
: power indefinitely.
I responded:
> But the USSR already *had* enormous natural
> resources and most of its export revenues came from
> this sector!
Obviously, the Soviets actually had to import agricultural products due to their ineffectual agricultural policies. But my point regarding natural resources still stands: Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua are not exactly post-WW II Germany in terms of industrial/agricultural potential or know-how.
: Under Carter, the USSR seemed to be on a real roll.
“Seemed” is the key word.
Surely you agree with me that the Soviet threat of world domination wasn’t quite as big as some believed in the mid-1970s?
MARCU$
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