Suchergebnisse

Introduction: Triumphalism and President Reagan's Cold War legacy -- Engaging the enemy -- Reagan's military buildup : "busting the Soviet Union"? -- The strategic defense initiative : ending the MADness -- Soviet new thinking and the withdrawal from Afghanistan -- Moscow calls off the arms race -- The triumph of diplomacy and leadership.

It is often assumed that Ronald Reagan's administration was reactive in bringing about the end of the cold war, that it was Mikhail Gorbachev's "new thinking" and congenial personality that led the administration to abandon its hard-line approach toward Moscow. In The Reagan Reversal, now available in paperback, Beth A. Fischer convincingly demonstrates that President Reagan actually began seeking a rapprochement with the Kremlin fifteen months before Gorbachev took office. She shows that Reagan, known for his long-standing antipathy toward communism, suddenly began calling for "dialogue, cooperation, and understanding" between the superpowers. This well-written and concise study challenges the conventional wisdom about the president himself and reveals that Reagan was, at times, the driving force behind United States-Soviet policy