NPR: “New Book Dissects Reagan’s Role In The Cold War”
March 9, 2009
The Cold War used to be my academic passion. It’s taken a back seat to gardening and urban farming for some time now, probably because I’m just tired of being in college. (“Senioritis” strikes even us old timers, it seems. I’m not even 35, but compared to many of my fellow students, I’m an old timer.) And try as I may, I have not been able to grow either books nor beer in my gardens…
James Mann’s book peers into the mind and the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and shows that the now-deified (by the right, anyway) president was often at odds with the pundits and talking heads of the day.
Moreover, I suspect it shows that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev played a much bigger and more central role in ending the Cold War than may have been thought by many. Yes, Reagan figuratively waltzed with Gorbachev in the end, but it was Gorbachev who began the process of deep thaw within the once-myopic state.
I look forward to reading this book.
And please, if you can, buy it through a local book seller. (Harry Schwartz, we miss you!)
What I wonder about this, and there are two things that I wonder about this, is:
1. Why did Russia agree tot his, and what did Georgia give up in exchange for this?
2. Will Ukraine be next on Medvedev’s Putin’s list?
What was going to be one of the above thoughts was a comment about how the United States played no direct role in negotiating the ceasefire. Is it odd that the United States, which was once more often than not the arbiter of peace in world conflicts, is not directly involved in this? Perhaps. But looking at a BBC article on the ceacefire, I see that French President arbitrated the agreement.
“Mr Sarkozy, in his current role as EU president, held talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow for most of the day before flying to Tbilisi.” [Link to BBC.]
The Europeans are settling the affair amongst themselves seems more logical to me than the U.S. intervening. For one thing, how could we? What good would it do for our already overextended military to try and insert itself in this region? Second, it strikes me as though it would be flamingly hypocritical for us to say “Hey, now, Vladdie boy, don’t go attackin’ other sovurn nations,” when that is exactly what we did in Iraq. And the ‘resident apparently did tell Putin something along those lines.
I’m glad that Sarkozy could use his position as EU president to try to settle this ugly little war. Hopefully it will succeed, and the war will not continue. If only someone could have stepped in around August 1914, the world would be a totally different place, albeit not one worth speculating on. If Sarkozy’s ceasefire holds and Russia actually does stop bombing and occupying South Ossetia, we will have reached a landmark in European diplomacy. Now please refer to my second question, and discuss that amongst yourselves.
