In 1983 Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and condemned Soviet leaders as cold-blooded, barbarous murderers for the shoot-down of Korean Airlines flight 007. Meanwhile, Soviet propagandists depicted Reagan as a maniacal warmonger driven by a primitive anticommunism to wage dirty covert wars in Central America and elsewhere. The lack of contact and communication between top leaders increased the risk of a dangerous misunderstanding of miscalculation.
Yet just five years later – on a beautiful morning in Moscow thirty years ago this week – when a reporter asked Reagan whether he still considered the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” he replied: “No, that was another time, another era.”
Those few words – and the dramatic improvement in Soviet-American relations they reflected – have important meaning for today, when American-Russian relations seem to be hopelessly mired in mutual suspicion and prominent American politicians vilify Vladimir Putin as “evil.”
Reagan’s statement in 1988 seemed to many to be the most striking moment in the days Reagan spent in Moscow – even more important than his arms reduction discussions with Mikhail Gorbachev. But commentators diverged radically in their responses.
Soviet officials hailed Reagan’s statement as a reflection of the fading away of Cold War hostility and the success of their efforts to end the mutual enmity. On the other hand, American anti-communists like William F. Buckley and Zbigniew Brzezinski rebuked Reagan, adamantly insisting that the Cold War was not over and the Soviet empire was still evil.
The story of those different responses to Reagan’s remark offers two major lessons.
First, the Soviet celebration of Reagan’s statement on May 31, 1988 should remind us that, contrary to some mythmakers, American-Soviet conflict did not end in 1991 with a defeated Soviet Union hauling down the red hammer and sickle flag over the Kremlin. Instead, the superpower arms race and geopolitical rivalry ended through a process of respectful dialogue and negotiations that focused on common interests. By the time Reagan came to Moscow in May 1988 the United States and the Soviet Union had signed and ratified a treaty to eliminate dangerously destabilizing intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) from Europe and the superpowers were on the way to more far-reaching arms reduction agreements.
The prime lesson from that experience for U.S. policy toward Russia today is that rhetorical denunciation, military pressure and economic sanctions will not by themselves bring desired breakthroughs. After fruitlessly condemning Soviet leaders in his first three years, Reagan generally reined in his rhetoric and then reaped the benefits of diplomatic engagement with Gorbachev after he came to power in 1985.