Center’s Gaffney Challenges Revisionists’ Deprecation Of The Reagan Role In Toppling The ‘Evil Empire’

(Washington, D.C.): The determination exhibited by many of President Reagan’s critics to deny
him any credit for the destruction of the Soviet Union and its empire was much in evidence at a
conference sponsored at Rutgers University last weekend. To their credit, the organizers broke
with the widespread practice in academe of denying an opportunity to participate or speak at any
length to those whose “politically incorrect” views contradict the conventional wisdom.

The contrarian case — i.e., that Reagan policies were a critical catalyst to terminating the “Evil
Empire” — thus was heard by an audience typical of those in institutions of higher learning
throughout the United States that are rarely, if ever, exposed to such views. As a result, future
generations of policy-makers risk missing or misapplying the valuable lessons of the Reagan era
for the dangerous period to come.

Among the dissenters were several senior members of President Reagan’s administration: former
National Security Advisor, Robert McFarlane; former Under Secretary of State William
Schneider; former arms control negotiator Richard Staar; and former Acting Assistant
Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney. Important contributions were also made by Professors
Steven Rosefielde and Edward Luttwak and, from the floor, by retired career U.S. intelligence
officer William Lee.

Among the former U.S. officials, academics and arms control activists who — to varying degrees — gave preponderant, if not virtually complete, credit for “ending the arms race” and bringing
about systemic reform in the Soviet Union to Mikhail Gorbachev were: former Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency Director Paul Warnke; former Ambassador to Bulgaria and arms control
negotiator Raymond Garthoff; former OMB official Richard Stubbing; former CIA analyst
Melvin Goodman; Professors John Prados and Saul Mendlovitz; and anti-nuclear campaigner
Randall Forsberg. Former Soviet apparatchik and current Russian Ambassador to the United
States Yuli Vorontsov delivered a luncheon address intended to place Gorbachev’s role (and his
own) in the most flattering possible light.

Attached are remarks made by Frank Gaffney on the second day of the Rutgers conference
entitled “The Arms Race and the End of the Cold War.” Mr. Gaffney, who currently directs the
Center for Security Policy, concluded by observing:

“…While I rejoice in the freedom that has come to many millions of people as a result
of conditions Ronald Reagan did much to engender, even those of us who applaud the
collapse of the Soviet Union must not allow that achievement to obscure a worrying
reality: Russia today continues to pursue many of the programs and policies that
gave us concern during the Cold War — especially in the area of nuclear war-fighting capabilities and other weapons of mass destruction…It remains to be seen
what use the Russians, under this or some future government, decide to make of such
superiority as they are striving for. It will be an incalculably terrible tragedy, however,
if we allow the most important lessons of Ronald Reagan’s presidency to be unlearned
— and the opportunity he provided for peace with security to be squandered.”