National Observer Home > No. 51 - Summer 2002 >Book Reviews

Way Out There in the Blue: Regan, Star and the End of the Cold War

by Frances FitzGerald

New York City, 2001: Touchstone, pp. 592.

Recent media reports that the Bush Administration is planning to construct an anti-missile base in Alaska, to provide a shield from “a potential enemy” in the North Asia region, demonstrate that the “Star Wars” saga is still very relevant to modern international relations. In this book, the story of the development of the Strategic Defence Initiative (S.D.I.) is skilfully interwoven by the author with an analysis of the Reagan Presidency.

During his Presidency, Reagan was frequently dismissed by his detractors as a B-grade actor with little or no political shrewdness. FitzGerald’s book demonstrates that Reagan in fact had highly developed political skills, although his personal manner displayed an unusual remoteness or disengagement both from his advisers and from their policies. Reagan’s early career in politics is treated in an interesting manner in the book. His involvement in the Screen Actors’ Guild, during the early Cold War era, led to his working for the General Electric Corporation at a time when his acting career was showing signs of stalling. This work involved hosting a television show, and touring General Electric plants, as part of that company’s “employee and community relations program”. That involved speech-making, shaking hands and telling stories to employees and community groups.

This was all good preparation for a future politician. Prior to his 1966 campaign for the Governorship of California, Reagan had to be coached by Republican advisers, using index-cards which included vital facts on the State of California. Like the actor he was, Reagan learned his lines well, and he quite often used this method afterwards. Yet Reagan was not a mere robot under the control of others. He had an innate ability to tap into the mythology of his fellow Americans, and used stories and anecdotes to persuade his audience. It was this ability which, ultimately, he used in order to sell the concept of an impregnable defence against a Soviet nuclear attack. When first mooted, this defence was not possible to create with the technology at hand. Today, it still remains to be seen whether the concept is achievable.

The author links America’s civic religious beliefs, based on American exceptionalism and the need for a national moral renewal or salvation, with Reagan’s promotion of the Strategic Defence Initiative. It was Reagan’s ability to utilise those beliefs instinctively which demonstrated that his political skills were highly developed. His famous speech in March 1983, proposing the S.D.I. (immediately dubbed “Star Wars”), set in train a massive research project which was to have a great influence in U.S.-Soviet relations. It also solved the immediate problem that the Reagan Administration was viewed by voters as being too hawkish, and that it had not done enough to bring about disarmament between the superpowers. This had led to a decline in the polls for Reagan, and to support for advocates of a nuclear freeze. The launch of the S.D.I. managed to solve the Administration’s electoral problems rapidly.

FitzGerald provides a detailed account of the division between the various factions in the Reagan Administration, the hard-liners and the pragmatists. All but the most serious students of White House politics may find this aspect of the book hard going at times. In the end, the sheer cost of the S.D.I. project, and the fact that it was still at a purely theoretical stage after a number of years, meant that the project had to be drastically scaled down towards the end of Reagan’s Presidency.

Surprisingly, FitzGerald believes the conservative view — namely, that the S.D.I., the military build-up under the Reagan years, and Reagan’s ideological crusade against Communism provided collectively the knockout blow against the teetering Soviet Empire — to be unfounded. She claims that the decline of the Soviet economy “resulted from the failures of the system created by Lenin and Stalin — not from any effort on the part of the Reagan Administration. Without Gorbachev, however, the Soviet Union might have survived for many more years, for the system, though in decline, was nowhere near collapse. It was Gorbachev’s efforts to reverse the decline and to modernise his country that knocked the props out from under the system.” Whether future historians vindicate the author’s views remains to be seen. It is at least arguable that the Reagan Administration’s build-up must have at least had the effect of prompting Gorbachev to attempt to reform the Soviet system out of fear, thus leading to the system’s collapse at the end of the 1980s.

The author also examines the various defence systems pursued under post-Reagan Administrations in a chapter entitled “Afterword: National Missile Defenses, 1989-99”. As the author states: “In a sense the history of the initiative in the 1990s is even more remarkable than that of its origins. Every time the program seemed to be ready to expire, or collapse of its own weight, something would happen to bring it to life again.” The recent news regarding the proposed Alaskan base certainly indicates that this observation will remain true for the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Robert Forrest

GALLIPOLI

By Les Carlyon

Sydney, 2001: Pan Macmillan Australia, pp. 581 and index.

It should be said at once that this is a very readable and worthwhile book. It is carefully researched, and it deals with one of the most important episodes in Australian history — Gallipoli has become central to the ethos of traditional Australia. This book brings the campaign vividly alive, and it will be read and understood by many who would not concern themselves with a drier account.

The Gallipoli campaign was badly conceived and badly executed. The British generals who planned it, under ill-informed pressure from Winston Churchill, proceeded without proper intelligence as to local fortifications and defences and without making adequate resources available. Thus the author recalls the comment by General Sir Ian Hamilton, “In matters of supply, transport and administration, our ways are amateurish”, and Hamilton’s view is noted that “the military force should have been ready before the navy began to attack.” When the naval bombardments failed to open up the Dardanelles Straits, Major-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston was amongst many who concluded that surprise had been lost, and that the peninsula had become an entrenched camp, and that there was no longer a reasonable chance of success: the expedition should in his view have been abandoned.

There will always be disagreement as to the precise merits of the various British and Australian generals who took part in the Gallipoli campaign. In the present case the author expresses his views on the matter clearly. So he says of Hamilton, “Hamilton had been a soldier, big-hearted and willing, for forty-two years; it took Gallipoli to prove that he didn’t have the temperament to be a commander-in-chief.” In contrast, he describes Brigadier-General Harold Walker as “arguably the finest of the Allied generals at Gallipoli”, and, controversially, Sir John Monash as “the greatest military commander Australia has produced”. But of Hamilton, upon whom much responsibility for the Allied loss rested, the author finally observes that “one has to wonder who could have succeeded there under the conditions Kitchener imposed”, that is, an inexcusable failure to provide the numbers of men and guns required for victory.

The author’s interesting and vivid prose, resting on careful research and erudition, is attractive and compel- ling. This book is very highly recommended.

I. C. F. Spry

 

National Observer No. 51 - Summer 2002