American Experience

Historian Robert Dallek on Reagan and Foreign Affairs

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ROBERT DALLEK: Ronald Reagan in foreign affairs, I think, was someone who had certain, very general ideas, general propositions by which he lived: to combat communism, to build up the American military power to assure our national security against any conceivable threat. Now, he was well served by a group of foreign policy advisors who were sensible, who were realistic, people like Cap Weinberger and George Shultz, Jim Baker. They helped him greatly.

And he was also served by circumstance. He happened to be there at the right time, it was the right moment, the Soviet Union was going into an eclipse, it could not sustain itself with its economic and internal contradictions for all that much longer, and Reagan happened to be there and had the wisdom to take advantage of it. So I would say he has a general design, but the fact that he appears to be so successful in foreign affairs also has to do, a great deal, with circumstance, with luck. As the great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Events are in the saddle and ride mankind," and Reagan was fortunate that the events turned in his favor.

Jimmy Carter, by contrast, in the 1970s, was very unlucky. He had to deal with the oil crunch, he had to deal with the Afghani invasion by the Soviets, a series of events that served him very poorly. Reagan was lucky, but he was also, had a good general design, and he had effective advisors.

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