break the stalemate of the cold war with the potency of ideas. but there's another way that the strategy was fundamentally speeded we will eat its american history tv program now and take you live to u.s. senate for what is expected to be a brief session. live coverage of the senate here on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., december 26, 2023. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable brian schatz, a senator from the state

of hawaii, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until >> there will be more of those pro forma sessions over the next couple of weeks while the senate is in recess. the next votes january 8th, return aid to ukraine and border security. watch live here on c-span2, we return now to american history tv. >> across the arc of reagan's report rhetoric to allow his presidency. the first one was to, in reagan's view speak of truth about the soviet union and we know that reagan made any number of harsh comments and as

i demonstrate later in the paper, these harsh comments on occasion continued after 1984 and even the straight january 16th speech included harsh criticism. i wish i had the time to make the argument in detail, but the ivan and anya passage one of the most eloquent of reagan that jim and sally could travel where they want and ivan and anya could not. and telling the truth. and reagan came into office, inthere were mistakes in our policy and i wanted to do something differently like speaking the truth about them for a change, peter robinson, the great speech writer argued that reagan's insistence on telling the truth produced a trumpet-like quality to his

speeches and i think that's especially evident in the great-great soviet speeches. and one goal of this was to get the soviet's attention. we know that he was successful in doing that. after the westminster speech, they labeled reagan the new messiah. richard pipe said the london speech infuriated the russians more than anything else. and said that reagan's response to him when he told that was, so we touched a nerve. reagan wanted to touch the nerve to get their attention and he combined that with an arms buildup that as i have argued previously, was not designed to prepare for war, but was designed to create a strong negotiating position so that he could get real arms reduction. his objection to the previous arms control agreements had been that they had been limitation and not arms reduction. reg said, in his autobiography,

i wanted to go to the negotiating table and end the madness of the mad policy and america had to upgrade its military capabilities so we could negotiate with the soviets from a strength, not weakness. and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons and he said this many, many times in public, but we did-- i remember at the time, did not believing that he meant it, thinking it was entirely tactical, but we now know it was not tactical, it was a very firm believe. even in the evil empire speech reagan said, this doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves or refuse to seek an understanding with them. i intend to do everything i can to dissuade them of our peaceful intent, for the nuclear monopoly with the 30's

and 40's something he said many times and referenced his proposals for a 50% cut in strategic ballistic weapons. even in the evil empire speech always labeled the most incendiary of reagan's speeches, possibly the first press conference may be in that category as well, reagan may clear the arms. it was reagan's defense of ideals. asuggest to you that the speech at westminster is the speech from a president talking about western liberalism means. they're wonderful passages that made it clear, and echoed churchill, from the black seas, the regimes planted by

totaltainerism had to establish their legitimacy, not one regime, i love this line, regimes planted by bayonet, george w. bush read that line before we decided to invade iraq. i especially like had a passage that reagan wrote himself when he pitched the battle of democracy and freedom, in the history of the west. and i'm going to read a passage, it's eloquent on the idea. reagan wrote who would not voluntarily decide not to have the right to vote and hand out propaganda instead of newspapers, government control instead of unions. and for those the state, instead of those who till it. a single political party instead of free choice.

a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity and again and again, the truth in those words have been demonstrated and often regimes have stifled this end, but it remains that there's a desire. ideas were utterly central to reagan's thoughts. in the beginning of his first term, reagan focused on the tough talks and the arms buildup, with defending democratic values. after he succeeded in getting the arms buildup in process, there is a shift to greater focus on calls for arms control. it's what i see is a shift in emphasis and that's when he proposes the inf and the start talks and many at the beginning

of inf perceived it as an unfair proposal, but it became the basis for the actual treaty that was finally negotiated. i argue that the principle that holds together this strategy is a defensive democratic ideal. reagan really believed that he could win the argument and create a situation in which it was in the interest of the soviets to change their policy. he was an idealist and all classical liberal. the consistency and evolution present in reagan's cold war strategy and his rhetoric, i think reinforced the judgment of ghattas that he was a skillful politician for many years and one of i.t. sharpest

strategists are and suggests that american presidents should negotiate against the studio chiefs first and if they did that, they would learn a great deal. now, i want to make the argument that what i call an evolution in his strategy is reflected across the arc of his rhetoric. now, i do not have time to develop this now. in the paper, which is really the -- a very rough draft of about the first third of a book. i look at the question of whether reagan consistently made statements for arms control and statements affirming a desire for peace between 1981 and 1983. and he did. and then, i consider whether reagan continued to critique the soviet union and make other statements that were harsh in nature and defend an arms bill that after 1984, and i don't

have time to go through that today, but i see that across all of the arc of all of his major soviet speeches. what this suggests, i think, is that having a coherent policy based in ideas should be at the core of responding to threats to world peace from totalitarian government. it seems to me that it has great relevance for how the united states and the west deal not only with putin and russia and, but also in the future potentially with china. and so, i see the evolution of reagan's soviet rhetoric as demonstrating one final thing, and you see this in the handwriting files and the speech writing files that reagan was the primary author of this strategy, often

overruling the pragmatist in his administration, but also, overruling tony dolan and the others, who let's say less pragmatic and this is only one anecdote, but reagan either edited or wrote about 60% of the final speech. you cannot spend more than five minutes with speeches that reagan edited. i remember clearly when i first discovered this the realization that, reagan was really smart. but does that skill in editing reveals a very sophisticated mind. thank you very much. [applause] >> well, we mostly kept to our time limits and so we have time for some discussions. questions, comments?

go ahead. >>. >> an excellent presentation, i'm curious, particularly for the last two presentations, but most of the entire panel addresses. what you see reagan doing prior to his election, his strength. about his commitment to arms control reductions and the last point really advances your theory. seems there's a lot out there on the record reagan working particularly 1976 and the election in 1981 that might advance your work and your arguments. thank you. >> i'll start. you can tell from my presentation that i went earlier and earlier when i submitted by topic i was going to be focusing on the two speeches, but then i just kept going backwards. so for me, when i said going

back to the 1940's, i mean going back to the 1940's. but the period you're talking about lines up a lot in terms of content and rhetoric with the radio addresses and we know that reagan wrote all of those and again, looking at his handwriting that robin was talking about is those illuminating and sun. and you see over and over all of these different scenes are there that he's going to develop in terms of strategy and policy, and i mean, there are so many examples that it's in every area, too. it's in the military part, it's in the arms reduction argument, it's in his dislike and hatred of war. the real meaning of peace, he has multiple addresses on the real meaning of peace and two on the classification of the truman administration statement, and human rights

throughout, you get a lot on that, too. so all the different pieces of reagan are there and it's as if he's been thinking it through, writing about it, speaking about it, and then he's ready to go do it. and i'm struck by, i forget where nancy reagan writes it, might be in her own book that her husband was always a writer and people didn't notice that and i think getting to spend time in archives shows that. you're seeing -- i went through the handwriting, too, even though we've seen the anderson books and the brinkley edition of the diaries and tough, but makes a difference when you immerse yourself in his handwriting because that's his strength. >> i've done analysis of the speeches in the 1980's, and consistent with what i've said, and some cite the famous debate with robert kennedy in the '60s. speech writers say consistently that the first place they

always started with mining reagan's previous speeches because they agreed that there was consensus that reagan was his own best speech writer. so, i see-- now, as reagan assumed office this happened most when he became governor of california and became president and, you know, he said things with more nuance than he did as a private citizen. and, but to some extent that change happened when he was running for president. >> if i could add quickly, on that tony dolan even says in various places, interviews and so forth, that when people asked him how did you write so well for reagan, he said because i went and read reagan. >> if you ever -- you should look at the westminster address and look at the dolan draft and then look what reagan does to it. and there are places where re