Story

The Evil Empire

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Authors: Newt Gingrich

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

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Spring/Summer 2008 | Volume 58, Issue 4

President Reagan delivers the "Evil Empire" speech in Orlando on March 8, 1983.
President Reagan delivers the "Evil Empire" speech in Orlando on March 8, 1983. the Reagan Presidential Library

A quarter century ago, President Ronald Reagan delivered two masterful addresses within two weeks of one another: the so-called “Evil Empire” and “Star Wars” speeches. In them, Reagan laid out two great strategies for dismantling the Soviet Empire. He did it boldly without backing off, not permitting the economy, news media, polling numbers, or the permanent governing elite to intimidate him.

By calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” Reagan sent a clear signal that America was going to challenge the Soviet Union morally, win the psychological information war, and de-legitimize it. If the government was evil, he argued, how could it have authority? In the second speech, Reagan announced the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, thus instigating a scientific and technological arms race that the Soviet Union could not win.

Reagan’s strategy worked indisputably, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet we tend to forget that Reagan’s ideas—and overall approach—were so radical at the time that almost no one accepted them as the basis of sound policy. At the time, paths were clear to a somewhat more conservative Cold War à la Nixon and Ford or a more liberal Cold War à la Jimmy Carter, but the grand strategy to eliminate the Soviet Union needed Reagan’s vision.

Even today, few in the academic left and news media believe that Reagan was right. The anniversary of these two speeches provides an opportunity to examine this critical period and ask, “What are the lessons for today we might learn from Ronald Reagan?”

Reagan’s ideas were so radical that almost no one—including his own staff—accepted them as the basis of sound policy

In Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer argued that Reagan methodically pursued a coherent general strategic goal. Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, who had served in Reagan’s cabinet and had an office next to mine at the American Enterprise Institute, confirmed Schweizer’s premise during one of our conversations.

The ambassador admitted that neither Reagan nor anyone serving with him would have predicted the Soviet Union would disappear in 1991. However they believe it was much weaker than the elite thought, and that if America kept crowing it that something good would result. This was the underlying psychology of the team that Reagan assembled in 1981.

The United States was a mess in the early 1980s. Reagan had inherited an economy from Carter that was in collapse. The recession that Carter’s policies induced did not fully kick in until 1982, so it became Reagan’s problem. Pundits and some academics talked about a permanent recession. In his newsletter, Alan Greenspan conceded that the economic situation would not get much rosier. As a result, Reagan had