Talking to enemies - Reagan's surprising approach

A big question looming over the presidential race is whether or not we should talk to our enemies. Conservatives seem to think that doing so is a sign of weakness; Barack Obama, on the other hand, says that he would. What few people seem to remember is that Reagan was strongly in favor in engaging our enemies in dialogue, particularly the Soviet Union. In public, he was known for such inflammatory rhetoric as referring to the USSR as an "evil empire." Behind the scenes, he took a different approach. Melvyn Leffler provides the details in last Sunday's LA Times:

Housed in the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is a trove of evidence concerning his efforts to talk to the nation's enemies, including a series of letters that he wrote to Soviet leaders, often in his own hand to underscore their authenticity.

It wasn't a popular idea:

Within his administration, Reagan's desire to talk to the enemy encountered bitter opposition.

The importance of Reagan's determination to talk cannot be understated. I'm quoting at length:

As Reagan's determination to talk to the country's main adversary grew, he came to understand the evil empire in ways that surprised him. The Soviets, he learned, were frightened of his actions. Indeed, we now know from British and U.S. intelligence reports that the autumn of 1983 was the second-scariest time in the Cold War. That's when the U.S. military exercise Able Archer tested command and communications procedures for firing nuclear weapons in wartime, raising fears in the Kremlin that Reagan might be preparing a surprise attack.

Reagan was astonished. He wrote in his autobiography: "Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians. Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did."

Was his new insight correct? He began asking visiting emissaries: Were the Soviets really afraid of U.S. power? Again and again, he was told that they were.

All of this started to pay off when Gorbachev showed up. It's easy to lose sight out just how revolutionary Gorbachev was. He really did change the fundamentals of the Soviet Union, and laid the ground for the dismantling of Communism.

While he was president, I thot of Reagan as a dimwitted, stubborn, absent-minded, warmongering old fool. It wasn't hard to justify that; he made all kinds of simple mental mistakes, he didn't seem to be interested in complex theories, to say the least, he took lots of naps, he was a little slow on the uptake. But he was a nice guy. And that seemed to be the basis of his success - he just charmed people. But to me, this was bizarre. OK, he's a decent human being, but is that enough to be president? In retrospect, he was thinking a lot more than I gave him credit for.

From the outset of his presidency, Reagan grasped that strength was a backdrop for talks but that little could be achieved without talking to the country's key adversaries. The enemy might be evil, but common ground might be found. The adversary might be evil, but change might come. Political systems might be oppressive, but they were not forever. One had to have confidence in one's values. One had to have patience and perseverance. One had to talk. Talking to your enemy did not mean giving away the kitchen sink; it meant gauging his nature, taking his measure and determining what next to do.

He may not have been deep, but he had some common sense that I didn't realize at the time. Which, in a lot of ways, is much more important than the ability to crunch big numbers of wander through theoretical matrices. Turns out all of us - liberals and conservatives - can learn something from Reagan.