sexta-feira, 11 de junho de 2004

A maior contribuição de Reagan

Foi permitir que a guerra fria acabasse sem uma guerra. O império do mal desabou por dentro, as ilusões marxistas foram enterradas pelos próprios. Não existiram purgas dos "libertados" aos "opressores".

Parte da lógica da facção mais agressiva da guerra fria foi (pelo menos para mim) desacreditada e hoje acredito que parte do intervencionismo político no exterior (apoiar golpes aqui e acolá) não contribuiu significativamente para nada e se calhar ainda o adiou mais.

Notar a referência à "Team B", que tal como Samuelson (e a CIA em geral), julgava que a economia soviética não só funcionava como prosperava. Mas o "homem soviético", tal como o John Galt de Ayn Rand, no fundo, fez "greve", e o seu sistema parou.

How Reagan Beat the NeoconsJohn Patrick Diggins is a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of the forthcoming, "Ronald Reagan: Morning in America."

"(...) In 1985, Mr. Reagan sent a long handwritten letter to Mikhail Gorbachev assuring him that he was prepared "to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate such a withdrawal" of the Soviets from Afghanistan. "Neither of us," he added, "wants to see offensive weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, deployed in space." Mr. Reagan eagerly sought to work with Mr. Gorbachev to rid the world of such weapons and to help the Soviet Union effect peaceful change in Eastern Europe.

This offer was far from the position taken by the neoconservative advisers who now serve under Mr. Bush. Twenty years ago in the Reagan White House, they saw no possibility for such change, and indeed many of them subscribed to the theory of "totalitarianism" as unchangeable and irreversible. Mr. Reagan was also informed that the Soviet Union was preparing for a possible pre-emptive attack on the United States. This alarmist position was taken by Team B, formed in response to the more prudently analytical position of the C.I.A. and then composed of several members of the present Bush administration. The team was headed by Richard Pipes, the Russian historian at Harvard, whose stance was summed up in the title of one of his articles: "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War."

Not only did the neocons oppose Mr. Reagan's efforts at rapprochement, they also argued against engaging in personal diplomacy with Soviet leaders. Advisers like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, now steering our foreign policy, held that America must escalate to achieve "nuclear dominance" and that we could only deal from a "strategy of strength." Mr. Reagan believed in a strong military, but to reassure the Soviet Union that America had no aggressive intentions, he reminded Leonid Brezhnev of just the opposite. From 1945 to 1949, the United States was the sole possessor of the atomic bomb, and yet, Mr. Reagan emphasized to Mr. Brezhnev, no threat was made to use the bomb to win concessions from the Soviet Union.

(...)

The difference between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush's militant brain staff is that he believed in negotiation and they in escalation. They wanted to win the cold war; he sought to end it. To do so, it was necessary not to strike fear in the Soviet Union but to win the confidence of its leaders. Once the Soviet Union could count on Mr. Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev not only was free to embark on his domestic reforms, to convince his military to go along with budget cuts, to reassure his people that they no longer needed to worry about the old bogey of "capitalist encirclement," but, most important, he was also ready to announce to the Soviet Union's satellite countries that henceforth they were on their own, that no longer would tanks of the Red Army be sent to put down uprisings. The cold war ended in an act of faith and trust, not fear and trembling.

But many neocons came to hate Mr. Reagan, saying he lost the cold war since he left office with communism still in place. Some even believed that the cold war would soon be resumed. Dick Cheney, as President George H. W. Bush's defense secretary, dismissed perestroika ("restructuring") as a sham and glasnost ("opening") as a ruse, he insisted that Mr. Gorbachev would be replaced by a belligerent militarist; and warned America to prepare for the re-emergence of an aggressive communist state.

Mr. Reagan gave us an enlightened foreign policy that achieved most of its diplomatic objectives peacefully and succeeded in firmly uniting our allies. Today those who claim to be Mr. Reagan's heirs give us "shock and awe" and a "muscular" foreign policy that has lost its way and undermined valued friendships throughout the world."

Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário