Word: sovietize
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...March 1983, Reagan gave a landmark speech calling on the U.S. to build a shield that would render Moscow's nuclear missiles "impotent and obsolete." Whether or not the U.S. could build such a Star Wars shield was less important than the Soviets' knowledge that they themselves never could. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) quickly became an obsession of the Soviet leadership. Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev tried to derail it through propaganda and arms control. But Reagan steadfastly refused to give...
Reagan's boosters argue that it took a weapon that never worked to win a war that was never fought. For having failed to kill the program, the Soviets were prodded by SDI into trying to modernize their society--which could only be achieved by liberalization. "I used to think SDI didn't have a great impact," says Lawrence Korb, who was an Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration. "But as I meet former Soviet marshals and talk to them, I'm increasingly convinced it had a major impact. The Soviets feared it could work, and that...
...deeply guided by the principle that the Soviet system was wrong. It made a tremendous impression when we went to Berlin and stood on a balcony to see the other side. There was not a soul on the street, and we thought how eerie and disturbing that was. When we went to Checkpoint Charlie, and Ronnie was shown the line that people couldn't cross, he took his foot and put it over the line. He felt it was important to assert what was right. He got very stubborn and even mad when his advisers would take out a line...
...chances. In the fluffy 1941 comedy Million Dollar Baby, he's Peter Rowan, a rebellious composer who's "got a sour disposition and a mouth to match." He calls himself "just a student of history. Civilization's rotting away." (Back then, he didn't mean the Soviet Union.) Reagan is pretty persuasive as a fellow spoiling for a fight with the world...
Bush notes how Reagan's warmth and humor could reshape his positions without creating the impression of inconsistency. "He sent me off to see [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev. I guess I was the first one of any authority to meet with him. I wrote out the cable of that meeting and sent it back saying this leader was different. When I got back, many people were disgusted." Nevertheless, Reagan, who had famously called the Soviet Union the "evil empire," was warming to a quiet thaw. "I don't think the President ever changed his views to 'I love communism,'" says...