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Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institute whose previous books include "The Fall of the Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War," constructs his argument on two related pillars. First, that "Ronald Reagan is impossible to understand outside of his forty-year battle against communism." Second, it is "likewise not possible to understand the collapse of the Soviet Union separate from Ronald Reagan; the two are intertwined." Countering the myths that Reagan was either uniquely inaccessible or flamboyantly incompetent, Schweizer paints a picture of a determined man with a noble mission. Schweizer's Reagan is a pragmatic ideologue, a remarkably consistent politician who implemented ideas in the 1980s that he had developed in the 1950s. "But far from indicating a lack of imagination," Schweizer writes, the continuity "spoke of his tenacity." Schweizer roots Reagan's anti-communism in the tumultuous Hollywood labor wars after World War II, when real Communists with actual ties to the Soviet Union schemed to gain power. Reagan's bruising experiences in these occasionally violent and always bitter battles, combined with his frustration at the crushing post-New Deal and postwar tax burden, galvanized him. As Reagan's moviemaking career floundered, he found his calling. He would spend the rest of his life fighting communism and trumpeting the "American values," especially freedom and faith, that stood in contrast to the Soviet realities. This anti-communism would keep Reagan going, but it also set him against the prevailing political winds. Schweizer traces Reagan's emergence as a conservative, a politician and a world leader, against a backdrop of increasing American impotence in the fight against communism. He praises Reagan's steadfastness. He reminds us that Vietnam left Americans with little appetite for Cold War confrontation. Richard Nixon's policy of detente and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT) that followed led to Jimmy Carter's accommodationist policies, which proved popular until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Schweizer tends to exaggerate Soviet strength and American weakness during the 1970s, but he is correct that Reagan's inauguration marked a sharp change in U.S. foreign policy. Most postwar presidents had sought to contain the Soviets; Reagan actively worked to dismantle their empire. Instead of trying to establish stable relations while waiting for the Soviet system to collapse of its own failings, Reagan was determined to fight, and win, the Cold War. In the process he gave us the conservative mantras heard so often today: stability through confrontation, peace through strength. Many Americans and Western Europeans dismissed Reagan as a saber-rattling warrior whose military spending and martial rhetoric threatened world peace. But Schweizer shows that his words and deeds inspired aspiring democrats such as Lech Walesa (who blurbs this book) and unnerved aging communists behind the Iron Curtain. "When it came to Reagan," Schweizer insists, "his enemies understood him perhaps better than anyone." Schweizer uncovered useful documents that help define Reagan as one of the key architects of America's Cold War triumph. His impressive research offers a useful corrective to the chroniclers who simply reduce the defeat of the Soviets to a broad bipartisan coalition of presidents, to the mystical power of the American people, or to the inevitability of communist decline. America's Cold War victory was in no way inevitable or obvious. It was a joint achievement; no country or individual did it alone. But Ronald Reagan was not just lucky to be in the right place in the right time. Even if Schweizer's chapter title "Reagan Makes Gorbachev Possible" overstates it, the pressure placed on the Soviet system by Reagan's defense buildup -- and his unyielding commitment to Star Wars -- helped spread the useful cancer that was eroding the communist dictatorship's internal strength. Unfortunately, Schweizer falters toward the end. He glibly skips from the icy Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik in 1986 to the much warmer 1988 summit in three pages, squandering a chance to analyze the fascinating dynamic between the two leaders. This jump helps keep Reagan defined as an aggressive anti-communist and ignores his deep pacifist streak, one that was rooted in his piety and accounted for his disdain for all nuclear weapons and brinkmanship. The jump also prevents Schweizer from highlighting what was perhaps Reagan's greatest achievement: his impressive ability to evolve away from the anti-communism that had defined his career in order to seize the opportunity to negotiate peacefully with Gorbachev. Moreover, Schweizer tends to paint his portrait of Reagan and the world with broad brushstrokes and overly dramatic hues. The impact of Reagan's policies were more far-reaching than Schweizer allows. He fails, for instance, to explore fully America's complicated involvement in Nicaragua or El Salvador during the 1980s. Schweizer also could have analyzed Reagan's domestic policy, explaining how Reagan's anti-communism fed his aversion to big government, for better and for worse. In fairness, it is difficult to tell the "epic story" of Reagan's rise and communism's fall in brisk, readable prose, in under 300 pages without occasionally overstretching. Peter Schweizer has done valuable work. This interesting and important book not only illuminates one of the great achievements of the last century, but it may also help advance the still overly partisan conversation about Reagan and his legacy. Clearly, Schweizer, like his hero, understands that it is not wise to underestimate the power of the hedgehog.
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