onlectures in history american history tv on c-span3 every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. lectures in history is available as a podcast. -- up next simon miles participates in a discussion on his book engaging the evil washington, moscow and the beginning of the end of the cold war. he argues that the carrot and defusepproach help to tensions in the 1980's. this online event was cohosted by the national history center and the wilson and they provided the video. >> i am delighted to introduce and moderate today's panel, which will begin a conversation the evil empire.

the conversation to which we 30 to all of you will be 40 minutes. feel free to use the raise hand to wee --ity or email start raising your hands if you us agot a question to give sense of how many questions are out there. first up will be dr. simon miles, the author of the book. simon is assistant professor at the sanford school of public policy at duke university. he is a historian of the cold war. in the journald of cold war studies. he is of course the author of the book we will be talking about today, engaging the evil

empire, his first book. he holds a phd in history from the university of texas austin and he will talk afterwards we introduce our distinguished commentators. >> thank you, eric. it is a pleasure to be here as so much of the historical scholarship that really got me excited about history is probably the reason i am a historian and i will leave it up to the audience to decide whether that is for better or for worse. it was so closely associated all the cold war center and the work that was being done by those who went before me so it is a treat to be here with you and especially with mary and elizabeth giving some comments. this book started as a

real puzzle. on the one hand, i was very familiar with the kind of cold war story of i guess we could call the death of detente. the soviet invasion of afghanistan, the iraq hostage crisis, events in latin america theafrica too that spelled end for many people of company.et relationship of reagan and gorbachev -- gorby as reagan took to calling him -- so much so that i would say that become80's period has

one of the textbook cases of old rivals putting their differences aside. itself of the cold war is something that strikes me by unexpectedness. it is there then it is gone. wondered how did we get there? how did we get this end of the cold war story and how do we get there in such a way that seems like such a swing? from the end of detente, from the end of u.s.-soviet cooperation to collaboration, cooperation between the two superpowers? how do we get there during a period in which they conventional story goes the superpowers are not even talking to one another? you have on the one hand reagan,

who is maybe too ideologically focused to even talk to the soviets. on the other hand you have who do not seem like a real doer to some people. happened have to have during the first half of the 1980's that explains how we get from the late 70's to the late 1980's. with this project, i went .ooking for that i looked for an explanation that thed tell us more than second cold war image of implacable hostility that could maybe show us what accounts for this transformation and may be prefigure some of the momentous thets that associate with

process of ending the cold war. i went looking in the soviet archives,the american i went looking in the archives of a lot of their allies. one of the elements i am proud of in this book is the incorporation of a variety of perspectives on the cold war, a variety of materials as well. let me run down the big three things i found. the cumin day conversation -- q and a conversations will flush these out in more detail. understanding the speed and scope of the changes in the 1980's begin at the beginning of that decade. two shifts.to one shift that is perceived to union and fromt

a war of words supplemented by back channel dialogue to one of reaganialogue between and gorbachev. that was the first big thing i bigd in writing this book, shifts that explain trends that are locked in at the first half of the 80's and have such a big influence on the latter half of the decade. thatas many have argued ronald reagan was either a flip-flop or on strategy -- on strategy towards the soviet union, some famously said he had none, he was too much of a simpleton, the united states implemented a consistent approach. a dual track strategy that shaped both of those aforementioned processes.

it was carrot and a stick. reagan calledwhat quiet diplomacy. it is a lot of back channel negotiation going on between east and west. a lot of deals are happening quietly. the second element, the stick is peace through strike. ideological offensive, the political offensive of trying to bring american allies on board with the united states. makehird point i want to is that moscow actually had strategies of its own. the soviet union is not just upon, but is an octave -- an active participant in the cold war even under brezhnev at the end of his live,

constantine train? as well as the kyle gorbachev -- at the end of his life as well as gorbachev. to show it as a -- the soviet approach to policy, which is to reduce cold war tension in order to create breathing space for moscow in order to compete more effectively against the united states. i have said a lot, so i want to wrap it up there, but thank you to everyone in the audience for coming and thank you to everyone for organizing this. >> thanks. have twoed we distinguished, wonderful commentators with us to start the conversation. elizabeth charles and mary sarotte.

historian ats a the state department researching and compiling the foreign relations of the united states series. she completed the reagan administration volumes on the the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty. she is now researching the george h. w. bush records on the collapse of the soviet union. she finished her phd in modern russian cultural history at george washington university in 2010. she has an m.a. in russian history from boston college and she currently serves as the president of the society for history in the federal government.

on theo serves curriculum into training committee of the national council on public history. the holder ofs the distinguished fellowship of the circle studies at johns hopkins university. most recently she was the dean's professor of history at the university of southern california. she is also a research associate at harvard university center for european studies. b.a. at earned her harvard. she is the author of five books, 9: theing collapse and 198 struggle to create post-cold war europe, both of which were financial times books of the

year. marywing graduate school, served as a white house fellow then joined the jack nolte university of cambridge only then to go off to teach at ufc. she is a former humboldt scholar, a member of the council on foreign relations. we will start with mary, who will depart early today to go and teach. endk each commentator to their commentary with a few questions for simon. simon will get a chance to immediately respond to the questions so we can start the conversation. yours.he zoom room is >> it is an honor to be here and a pleasure to acknowledge the work of a billion scholar doing -- brilliant scholar doing work

on the reagan era. i was casting my eye over the names of the people in the audience ended is a testament to the people -- to your work. roy, sandy rushed , jamesvid holloway wilson, aaron schaefer, william braithwaite, a very impressive collection of colleagues, editors. it is a testimony, simon, to the importance of your work. i recommend you wall by the book. you can do it while -- you all buy the book. you do not even have to pretend you are listening to me because i cannot see you.

i was told just to give you a few moments of thoughts because we want to give time for the audience so i will not go into great detail but i am a huge fan of the book. i am particularly interested to learn about the beginning of the 1980's. we start the war with at least to this perception that there may potentially be nuclear conflict and we ended with the peaceful collapse -- end it with the peaceful collapse of the berlin wall. the extreme difficulty of working as a scholar at the -- i have had, my the good advantage of working with the archivists at the george h. w. bush library who have bent over backwards to help me with my mandatory review request i have been filing since century.f the last everyone who works in that area

knows there were is a large amount -- there is a large amount of documents in the public domain. charles is working on bringing even more out. isgan -- the reagan library much more of a museum and platform for events than for research. it is fiendishly difficult to work there. it is a credit to simon that he has been able to start getting things out. inis beginning to be a hole the historiography. we have good scholarship on bush . i recently got a bunch of documents declassified from the clinton presidential library, most notably, conversations between clinton and yeltsin. whenwriting about you u.n. expansion.

it is great to have documentation of this dual track approach, this idea that there was no reagan reversal, there was no complete about-face between the first and second term. i was particularly interested to read that there was no reagan reversal because matlock has always consistently said that and it is -- i only have the highest regard for matlock ended is good to see it confirmed is goodently -- and it to see it confirmed independently by scholars. . gaddis has written, a participant in events does not necessarily have the best of you because your perceptions extend no further than your own senses. a participant is by definition artist painting. you're surrounded by people.

you do not have perspective -- .s by definition participating you are surrounded by people. do not have perspective. at a distant height, you lose detail but you have perspective. both good to have perspectives. want to zero in on because it is of interest to me -- at one point in the book you talk about, page 49 for those who already have the book, ways that the kremlin hope to use the debate over intermediate nuclear forces to break nato, in other words to play on this tension nato into one hand the strategic necessary of strategic and the

necessary of needing those weapons. tensionther hand, the -- and the u.s. and nato the popular revulsion at them. moscow was looking to leverage that discontent to break nato. this comes up later once the wall comes down as a way to put the brakes on germanic kitchen he suggests to gorbachev, how about we propose a referendum where we say to germans you can have your unification if you give up the nuclear weapons on your soil, particularly the short range ones? eitherght the west would not have them at all, which would be a public relations coup or theyow because --

would have this referendum into there was a fighting chance that moscow's favorite -- and there was a fighting chance that moscow's favorite team would win . i would be interested in your thought on how that is playing out in the earlier 1980's. i cannot stress this -- the 80's switches in the middle of the decade. working on the early 80's is different than the late 80's. in the future, historians who work on 2020, some historians will say "i work on october 1, 2020 but only on twitter." we will have to get that specific. the 80's are not that bad, but it is different. as someone who has worked on the late 80's for a while, it is good to have some company on the early 80's. could, maybe i will

actually pick up on your point about the quantity of information. it is so true as time progresses the quantity of material that requires declassification -- such that once we get into the that,of ddm, things like i really feel for those whose job it is to do the public's work and get that information coursecluding of elizabeth and her colleagues at the state department. you mentioned some of the challenges. as some of the solution was sort mdr requests to the extent that i could and to the extent that those came in time. i spent five years getting my

phd and that was not enough time for a great many of those request to be completed. i am still waiting on some of those. it has been a couple years since i finished. my approach was to find backdoors. that was applicable to the russian case where some of the eastern bloc nations, especially east germany, of course ukraineovakia, and also provide a wealth of scholars, material for scholars that once that eastern bloc perspective but you can't necessarily get it that eastern bloc perspective but you can't necessarily get that from russia. the amount of material you can get now in moscow is a spectacular in terms of things that have been open for only a brief amount of time in the 1990's, were closed down in the

years and have been opened back up. i certainly made use of some of that in this book and working in those materials now for another project. so where that led me -- i want to talk about the reversal and imf, which is the other thing mary has charged me with. the reagan reversal story makes a lot of sense, because if we focus as a lot of the key works that put forward this argument dead because they were so recent, if we focus on the public elements of this, that is absolutely what you see. you get the evil empire speech in 83. theate 82, you have westminster speech.

then it really does change quite quickly. i deal with the reagan askingl thesis is by what else is going on? what else is happening under the hood, if you will, of american policy? that is where to me the picture becomes more complicated. on the one hand, some of the catalysts that have been put errs for acatalyze reversal looked different to me using international sources. internalmiss and elements,bureaucratic but also what is actually happening.

ingan did not just decide january 1984 that he wanted to talk to the soviets. he decided that back in the mid-1970's. the same time he was lambasting jerry ford for doing it for political reasons and lambasting jerry carter for doing it -- johnny carter for doing it, hugh saying we need to find a way to talk to them -- he was saying we need to find a way to talk to them. the 80's he in starts implementing it quite quickly. in the book i highlight an episode in berlin where the reagan administration maintains a sustained back channel dialogue between the u.s. ambassador to the federal west germanyrmany, and the ambassador to the german democratic republic, east

germany. the former, reagan's appointee, showed up and he said ronald reagan sent me here to use this as a forum for conversation to try to keep the cold war under control, to try to keep it cold. what i see is not a reversal but from more ofphasis the buildup. here, important to stress whatever his lion eyes may be lionization may 1981, he was not optimistic. they have had us beat for forever. we are in big trouble here. then you have stagflation

disasters, the demoralization of the american public. as the u.s. situation improves, reagan is more confident and his advisors are more confident. ambassador matlock who we are privileged to count as a colleague here at duke as well as george schulz who pushed his agenda forward of doing more overt as opposed to covert engagement. that is how i think about it. to me as somebody who not only teaches history but also strategy, this is good strategy. good strategy is responsive to changing reality is whether that is at home or abroad. good strategy as interactive as a sent -- in a sense. fruit.cy bears your question about imf and nato is such an interesting one

because it shows how much more is going on in this period. is a civil society question too. earlyspecially in the 1980's is an extremely fraught subject at home. some of the biggest protests in the history of some of europe's great cities are over the imf issue, especially in germany, which is going to be the home of pershing to listing muscles -- p ballistic missiles. the era of thes common women's peace camp, of a whole universe of

peace organizations not only in western europe. there are for example a robust east german peace movement. -- inndeed western western europe funded by the east germans, they were the conduit for various forms of support but not made up of communist sympathizers, made up of people who were really fightingbout in -- nuclear presence in their homes. is not a uniquely european phenomenon. look at the midwest. living next to a giant bull's-eye so to speak -- this gives us a useful opportunity

and that is why they are putting a lot of money and effort into so theyo drive a wedge can call into question whether or not the military element of alliance, a military alliance is actually viable. this strikes a lot of people in the kremlin as an opportunity to call into question some of the old cold war issues. will the u.s. a really trade u.s. for paris -- new york for paris or chicago for von, for west berlin? nato isto imf to break appealing to the soviets. it is cheap in the grand scheme of the ways you can test nato's

viability. disappointmental to a lot of people around eastern europe. around europe -- >> take for example the u.s. in 1983,of grenada invading a commonwealth country with no notice to the u.k. margaret thatcher starts saying, wait a minute, you are putting nuclear weapons on my territory and if you will do that without giving us a heads up, what are you going to do with those awfully powerful tools? this is a key part of that story. thank you for those questions and for your generous comments. >> less bring into the conversation. >> thank you. i am pleased to be here and to

discuss this amazing book. i know simon has been working on this project for a long time and i cannot talk enough about the depth of archival research, all the archives you went through, makes this book shine and shows us what you can do, looking at archives and digging around in places that you may not think you are going to find something allows you to get the nuances of these stories on the superpowers during this period. i do need to start with my disclaimer, these views are mine, not of the u.s. government, and my comments are going to be based solely on declassified and publicly available materials.

now that that is out of the way, like simon, i have worked with these characters and documents and in these archives for far too long and lived with these people and their decision-making and how they work is fascinating, but simon has done us a great service by filling an enormous gap in this literature. this book starts with gorbachev in 1985, goes to 1991, how gorbachev's reforms impacted what happened in 1991. as simon shows us with this book, in this period, the current of these events where there. i know well from my work in the office with my colleague who completed the other reagan volumes, we see the documentation of reagan reaching out, talking to the soviets,

trying to open this dialogue, but it is behind the scenes, it is not public. in public, you get rhetoric about the evil empire, how the soviet system did not work and would not function. this is all in public. the behind-the-scenes that shine through in simon's book. to me, it is in the title, engaging. that was throughout this entire narrative. behind-the-scenes, we see the secretary of state talking to the soviet ambassador. we see ambassador hartman in moscow engaging with his soviet counterpart when possible. we see schultz meeting on the fringes of u.n. meetings, any other international meetings.

they are trying to find a way to communicate, trying to open this dialogue. in one of simon's footnotes -- i found it entertaining to put this in a footnote -- a reminder to bush that neither superpower should allow strong rhetoric for domestic consumption to influence international relations. that encapsulates what this book is about. in public, we may say things, but behind-the-scenes, we are trying to figure out a way to make this relationship more fruitful at engaging with each other. why this is happening is what is important and where simon shines through with his analysis. he explains to us that the soviet union needed the breathing space.

i enjoyed your analysis of how they were behind-the-scenes running things. i thought that was fascinating. i would love for you to talk more about that. it is how these leaders were making decisions to engage, to give the breathing space they needed, because they recognized that reagan and the u.s. were economically on better footing, so to get where the soviet union needed to be to improve its economic situation, they were going to have to cooperate with the u.s. once we get gorbachev on, this changes dramatically and gorbachev is more well-positioned to make this happen. the other think i think simon's book does is put this in a global context. it tells the story of the u.s. and soviets and how they were trying to engage but also talks about the allies on each side, how leaders were meeting with

u.s. officials, how u.s. officials were meeting with people and east germany, people were meeting in london, people were trying to talk. i thought it was interesting and i wish we had more of that but i believe that was an issue of space and try not to write too long a book. i think you do an excellent job of leaving in the dramatic events and issues, especially 1983 was tumultuous, the imf missiles being deployed. what is in it for either side to keep talking? you dove into that and that is where this book provides an excellent analysis. this has not been studied enough until now. my two questions i will start with, if you mentioned that within each government, the

soviet and u.s. governments, there are factions who do not want to engage of the soviets and do not want the soviet leadership to engage with the u.s. this comes out in the book. i am wondering if you could flesh that out and talk about these sections and how reagan is able to push down people like michalski and weinberger and make them realize that he is serious about talking to the soviets, and the same thing from the soviet side. i think we need to know more about the soviet strategy, what they are trying to do. i think more discussion of that would be interesting. also, i think, what policies laid the foundation for gorbachev that maybe we under appreciated, that we are not

thinking enough about, and did you have one or two ideas that they started that gorbachev was able to deal with? i have more questions but i will stop there for now and just say that i enjoyed reading this book. the footnotes and archival use is incredible and thank you for writing it, and i will look forward to a discussion with all of these amazing participants. christian: simon? simon: thanks so much. with an eye on the clock, i'm going to not get as full an answer as i could to those excellent questions. let me make the following brief remarks. i too wish that there had been more on the allies in here and in order to scratch that itch, i'm writing an international history of the warsaw pact, but

that will be a little bit of time coming, but i'm looking forward to using some of the material that was on the cutting room floor for this project to drive that project, or at least part of it. on the faction issue, this is such an important element, because not only at the time in a lot of government, except for those parts which were intensely focused on kremlinology, but also in the popular perceptions of the soviet union then and now, it is a monolith. even the phrase evil empire denotes there being an emperor

who runs the show. what i found for this period and for so many other people who have done work on the soviet union before me and after me find that it is more complicated than that. in fact, i can probably answer both your questions by talking about -- people within the kgb but also within the central committee's international department who had a strong sense that all was not well. there is a wonderful memoir by the head of the analytical section of the kgb who talks about defections, and not high-profile defections, but young kgb officers probably on their first postings who have

gone through the ideological vetting, get to the west, then say, you know, this is for me. that is the information that a lot of other people in the leadership are not seeing. he says this tells me something about our country. about where we are. the answer i will give to the policy is the fostering of his coterie -- they called themselves the freethinkers. the creation of an environment in which they could come closer to speaking truth to power than anyone could elsewhere in the soviet union. who is the most famous? gorbachev. who comes into office with a keen understanding of the full

picture of the soviet union's problems, that is why i argue he is willing to go further than anyone else was. others understand this. i am glad you mentioned the inclusion. one of my mentors as a graduate student always described me as america's preeminent poroshenko revisionist and i don't know he meant it as a come lament. -- a compliment. with apologies to frank if he is on that call. i wear that badge probably. probably. -- proudly. i see a lot of interesting -- i would not say policy innovations, because a lot of

what he is doing is going back to the playbook, but he is aware of the problems and in some ways, he turned to older solutions. there is a power struggle going on around him and some of these efforts are confounded. the fact that his kidneys don't work also confounds some of these efforts. in the united states, george schultz is such a key figure because he is a skilled political operator, but he can also deliver results. when makowski and weinberger are trying to stymie these efforts, not only can schultz go around in the bureaucratic labeling, but he comes back with a win, he consistently, and that is very meaningful in terms of shaping american policy. so i see those as the key elements here. andre and shoko does introduce

certain economic policies which figure in some ways. given his kgb background, he is more reticent about touching it. gorbachev is an innovator in that regard. he opens an establishment, a president -- precedent. andropo could say, we need to change this, this is not working, without undermining the system. gorbachev takes that and ones -- runs with it and does damage to the system. that is an observation. that is a key element also of that. but thank you for your generous comments and for those questions. christian: thanks so much.

we are quickly getting to the q&a session and i do want to give the audience a chance to chime in. i know, mary, you have to run. is there anything on your mind that you would like to ask simon? otherwise, i will see if elizabeth has another question. i know you have to run. anything urgent? mary: i only wanted to say -- by the way, the photo behind me is the reagan ranch, which i pulled up in honor of professor miles' visit. i would like to encourage everyone to vote. am i allowed to do that? [laughter] christian: is there an election coming up? mary: yeah, there is. simon, you have an amazing crowd. i know you have not been able to scroll through the attendees

like i have. i think we should go to the audience as soon as possible because there is depth of expertise out there. christian: thanks, mary. elizabeth, i will try to weave you in later in the conversation. we will open it up. simon, if you could be a little more concise, that would allow us to accommodate more questions. we have focused on making acceptable the soviet side. -- making acceptable materials on the soviet side. i would love for you to talk about -- you mentioned the u.s. side, the difficulties there. i think it is important for you to talk about the russian and other documentation and to what extent it goes beyond what has already been uncovered and published in recent years,

especially for the gorbachev period, where we are seeing a lot new work coming out. secondly, if you could talk more about both sides, especially the gorbachev factor. the competition, which strikes some people as reductionist interpretation of what gorbachev was about and a qualitative difference that the world. with -- world got with this soviet leader. if you could respond to that, because i think that is one of the major arguments in the book,

at least indirectly, that you make. simon: happily, christian. i will try to do so briefly, though you make that hard by asking me to talk about all the wonderful archival materials under those hospices. let me do my best to answer both in a brief manner. there was an enormous amount of material in russia that i have. mary mentioned some of the slowness of declassification at the reagan library. there is a lot of material you can get from the russian side from the russian state archive of contemporary history in moscow where the american side is still classified. i humbly submit no one should be happy about that status quo. in my interactions with folks in the u.s. government, it is a point i like to make and eyesight the specific episodes -- i cite the specific episodes.

cite the specific episodes. my approach was to basically build on a network understanding of how alliances work. even if you accepted the most top-down interpretations of what the warsaw pact was, and i don't and i try to argue against a lot of that in this book -- in order to tell someone what to do, you still need to tell them what to do. you need to explain what they are supposed to say, supposed to do, supposed to think. that leaves a paper trail. a voluminous paper trail. that gives us access to the thinking in moscow, even if only as distilled and packaged for the consumption of their allies. sometimes, it gives us access to stories that have not been told before.

i mentioned the berlin back channel. i have never seen explicit american documents about this. i have seen some materials from arthur burns papers, which, if you know about it, makes more sense in that context. but i have never seen the american side of this, nor have i seen the russian original side. i came across a purely by accident, if i am honest with you, all of this in the east german archives translated from russian into german. that is the promise, to me, of this approach to research. as you said, an approach which is so deeply connected to the work that the wilson center and international history project have been doing. on gorbachev, i could talk for a long time about this, so let me just make the point -- this might sound cryptic but i don't mean it to be. the gorbachev of 1989 is a

different gorbachev than the gorbachev of 1985. for better or worse, i think for better, this book ends with gorbachev of 1985. there are evolutions in his thinking. i would argue that some of those have been skillfully packaged in the past as being pure, liberal-minded policy shifts, but at the time were very much driven by needs. in particular, the needs for anything approaching a diplomatic win, even if it was just the successful conclusion of the summit, because things were going poorly at home. the gorbachev of 1985 almost immediately after coming into power excoriates the united

states for caring about human rights. i talk about that in the fifth chapter. it jumps off the page. his real -- it jumps off the original pages, i would not say that about my own. his real frustration with key -- with hypocrisy about human rights is different from the gorbachev of 1989. that is not a full answer. but with an eye on the clock, that is where i'm going to leave it. >> thank you. i am not a specialist in the 1980's, so take this question as an outsider's engagement with your engagement with the subject. if i hear you correctly, the impression that one gets quite clearly, or at least i got clearly, is that the first half

of the decade successfully laid the foundations for american success in the second half of the decade and there is something -- a way in which you portray quite positively the reagan administrations approach -- reagan administration's approach of dealing with the soviets. then there is a paragraph that you have in the introduction about what you don't cover in the book and you say that, thinking holistically about reagan's foreign policy, moving past the partisan rhetoric, the failings cannot be ignored no matter the success. and there are failings on american policy in central america. with the contras, the sandinistas, the human vice violations inside el salvador --

human rights violations in el salvador. could you bring those back into the picture? reagan is pursuing his grand strategy in the first half of the 1980's, he is beginning to lay waste to central america. if you could just that into the picture and how does that temper -- if you had twice the number of pages, how would that factor in? simon: it is a critical question and of course, you did not mention this, but there is a conversation to be had on domestic policy as well. i think a lot of this story,

holistically, as you rightly say, have to do with ronald reagan's leadership style, or as we can term it, lack thereof. reagan was a bad manager. you can regularly read in internal memos, everyone walking out of a meeting believing they had been given the green light to do whatever they want to do by the president. which, if you know what they are talking about, is impossible because it is predicated on the other when not being allowed to go forward, so people are taking a live license, then we see, for .- a lot of license then we see, for example, the iran-contra scandal, taking a lot of liberties, to put it extremely, extremely mildly. so reagan was very focused on the u.s.-soviet question. absolutely true. part of the reason i feel i can get away with this focus is that it mirrors the present and this is the policy issue, the foreign policy issue in particular, which has his fingerprints the most on.

it. latin america is beyond a tragic story of american policy and it was allowed to become that by the vicious cycle of a degree of indifference on the part of reagan, but an overall ideological tenor which he sets which says that fighting communism is a good thing. a lot of aides in regional or functional roles say, i want to fight communism and i'm going to do that in latin america because that is my purview. then there is the element of the proximity and the thinking in a lot of american government circles at the time, and this is not unique to the reagan administration, that there is more room for maneuver because latin america, the united states' backyard, the feeling that what is acceptable there -- things are acceptable they are

which might not be acceptable elsewhere. in a bigger book, this might feel like a less positive book about the reagan administration because those failings are serious and they absolutely matter, which is why i try to acknowledge them in the introduction. i am a believer in responsibility in the fact that the person whose name is on the shop bears responsibility, but when it comes to where reagan is involved, on a lot of issues that are not u.s.-soviet relations, he takes a backseat. one of the challenges of writing this book, you look through national security council minutes and the president is almost absent sometimes. it is in other, smaller meetings, the meeting after the meeting, etc., where he makes

his views known, and latin america is not just -- this does not excuse anything, but it is one of the cases where you see some of this playing out with disastrous consequences. thank you for that question. that is an important element. christian: let's go to audience questions. first, i would like to call on an ambassador. please unmute yourself. >> mi on muted? unmuted? >> yes, you are. >> that was a thought-provoking discussion. i want to make some brief points, firstly about -- [inaudible]

the second point, the whole policy of carrots and sticks goes back well before reagan. [indiscernible] thirdly, i think it goes to the question which was mentioned at the beginning, i think that perception the americans had in the 1980's was matched among the russians.

i think not enough attention is paid to the question of how the players perceive the situation as well as what the situation actually is. [indiscernible] throughout the 70's, you have one soviet after another saying, this is not working. a lot of people gave sophisticated input trying to deal with the problem of that. so when gorbachev arrived, he was arriving well prepared. [indiscernible]

a very stimulating discussion. christian: thanks very much. simon, would you like to respond to that? if not -- simon: the point is well taken about this. reagan is not the first person to implement such an approach. your reference is spot on. if you do read the book, you will find the reagan spin on that approach and on the russian perception, which you rightly raised, is so critical to all of cold war history.

christian: let me call next on william hill. please unmute yourself. >> can you hear me? christian: yes. >> thanks very much for a fascinating presentation. i have not read the book, i look forward to going through it. i witnessed a number of the things that you described and analyzed in it from a junior position to be sure. i have one short comment and one question. i am not sure that the non-changing aspects of the background are fully appreciated in more popular histories of the soviet union, in particular before he moved over to the kgb as head of the international department of the central committee, where he has

assembled a cast of analysts, many of whom appear later as architects of dislike or -- as architects. he chose a different path once he made his push for general secretary. i just wonder to what extent you dealt with that aspect. i am wondering to what extent you find changes in personnel had influence on the direction and development of u.s. policy towards the soviet union. we don't get george schultz until a couple years into the administration. reagan starts out with a chief

national security advisor on russia and later moved to matlock, quite different approaches and different experiences in dealing with the soviets. i wonder to what extent that does that. simon: thank you. let me answer as briefly as i can. on the pre- kgb background, absolutely critical. i ranked that as one of the most important things he does, bringing this coterie around him, which is the kernel of the team in 1985 and onwards.

i think that is critical and i do also agree with you that he is the specter of the kgb. i think it can be overplayed in terms of what is policy views are. he is the loudest voice against intervention in poland in the 1980's, vice his policies towards prague and hungary. personnel is key and i can talk for a long time about this so i will simply say, the arrival of people like george schultz and matlock who are in step with how reagan thought about the cold war, how he thought about the soviet union is vital in enabling the president and others around him to execute on this strategy successfully.

i give a lot of credit to matlock, to george schultz, also to george h w bush, who is a strong voice in this camp during the tough battles, including richard price, who is not totally opposed to this but does not want to go as far as reagan himself. so thank you for those two points. christian: thank you. if numbers of the audience could introduce themselves briefly by name and affiliation, if you like, that would be helpful. >> my audio is working. thank you for letting me ask a question and thank you for the presentation. i have not read the book yet but i will. i took part in some of the demonstrations you talked about. why did the reagan people choose the back channel diplomacy while using this extreme rhetoric?

the arms buildup was another part of that policy, which we saw as dangerous. we, so many in europe and the u.s., would not want to support the reagan administration and were skeptical of what it wanted to do. through some other things you said, did reagan have this big strategy, that a blueprint to end the cold war? read the book. it sounded like you were talking about this, something like a grand strategy. thank you. christian: thank you. question about the grand strategy. simon: grand strategy question mark. as someone who teaches a course on grand strategy, i should add a question mark to the title. why choose the quiet diplomacy and overt on diplomatic statements?

i think the basic answer is the reagan administration did not feel in the early 1980's that they were in a position that they could turn that diplomacy into success. there is a strong feeling that they don't want to talk for talking's sake, that they are going to do something big, like a summit, that there needs to be actual results. they felt that at this point, they would not be able to get the result that they wanted out of them. that is why they focus on the hair-raising rhetoric and military approach, but that also gives leverage. for example, the investments in things like accurate nuclear missiles, we can see how that benefits the u.s. bargaining position later on in the imf treaty.

reagan did not have a blueprint to end the cold war because he did not think it was going to end in his lifetime. at the beginning of his administration, there is a consensus that the soviet union would probably be around for another 60 years. there was no sense that reagan was going to be alive to witness the end of the soviet union. of course, he was wrong on that. rather than seeing this as a blueprint to end the cold war, i would say it was a blueprint to reduce cold war tensions on american terms. our one, american comparative advantage vis-a-vis the soviet strategy -- reducing the levels

of nuclear armaments. i described reagan's strong personal views, nuclear abolitionism if you will, which is something he very much wanted to realize. it is not so much a blueprint to end the cold war or when the cold war, -- win the cold war, but it is a mindset of how to deal with the challenge posed by the soviet union in ways that favor american interests. thank you for those questions. christian: next, we go to john. sorry for butchering your name. >> i think i am unmuted now. i am trying to figure this out. your pronunciation of nine name -- of my name was very good. i am a university professor emeritus at the university at

the university of illinois at chicago and i wanted to ask, what role did the solidarity trade union in the 1980's, what influence did that have on soviet thinking? christian: thank you. simon: solidarity is a critical element of this history, of course. on one hand, it certainly is instructive to the soviets about the real problems that they have, not only in their own country, but in the warsaw pact about increasing dissatisfaction with the status quo. we know that gorbachev really does not view the warsaw pact leaders fondly at all. at one of their funerals, he brings them together and says, you are basically on your own.

we are not going to be intervening. but i would say that the key issue is that it shows the possibility, the many soviet leaders, especially in the military, look back on the soviet nonintervention at the behest of people, the nonintervention in polish affairs is the deathknell. it opens up the range of possibilities for action by a lot of leaders. no one really is willing to go as far as 1989 so quickly, but it is pivotal. i think we can see a degree of the emboldened mint -- emboldenment based on soviet nonaction.

christian: we will go next to james. please unmute yourself. >> there we go. yes, thank you for the presentation. i wanted to focus on the last year of the administration. you spoke about the evolution of policy and you see it much as i did in my one book on the subject. i want to focus on personnel. in that last year of the administration by the accounts of several people, the senior officials for the administration are getting together to make decisions without reagan.

i think a quote was, he was past the point of being in the system to prevent something from happening. in some ways, he might be vastly more detached, and on the other hand, you have a vigorous debate that leads to the paws of the next administration, a vigorous debate on is gorbachev just another soviet leader or does he represent something different? schultz is the plan advocate. -- prime advocate. the question is, how much do you find that reagan is himself participating in that debate or stealing that debate, or is he leaving it to others? christian: thank you. simon: i find a very active reagan on this issue. part of this goes back to the comments i made in response to eric's point about the bigger picture and there are a lot of cases where reagan allows

bureaucrats -- not bureaucrats, they are political appointees -- to exercise initiative with disastrous consequences. so i don't see it as that simple and i would say that the soviet union issue was to reagan, at this point in particular, when there is a summit on the horizon, the key issue. on the nature of the soviet he is doing what matlock called soviet union 101. he is doing lengthy seminars with discussion papers talking about not just the nature of the new leader but the nature of the soviet union. on the nature of the new leader, reagan writes a memo with his own thoughts on this in october of 1985, he dictates a memo with his thoughts on the matter, in which, again, we see the evolution from 1985 to 1989.

reagan is saying, the soviets would not have let this guy be in charge if they thought he was going to give away the farm, so obviously, he is a skilled political operator within the soviet context and he is committed to the soviet cause, perhaps reagan says the communist cause. so reagan is on the record on this debate and at this point, he is saying, gorbachev, there are some things that make him look more appealing, also things that make them more dangerous. this is a guy who can do pr, this is a guy who is sort of glamorous but also engaging and

personable, which you cannot necessarily say -- so this is dangerous. what makes him new makes him a better advocate for his ideology. reagan is very involved in this. he is actively engaged in this question, he is producing policy documents on this issue. his views change, though. over the course of the 1980's, his views change on gorbachev. at this early time, he is in the thick of it. christian: i want to give elizabeth a chance. let me bring in two questions that came to us through the email. one is from philip brown, interesting that the archives

are open these days, given the example of paul whelan, american president in russia. do you have fear or concern about doing research in russia? secondly, a question by brad morris, how do you evaluate the significance of reagan's attempt to impose sanctions on the western allies regarding the pipeline with the soviets? also, was reagan abandoning this plan? simon: let me answer the first question with a no. no i am not unaware of any of those issues, i have nothing but nice things to say about the archivists and other folks at the moscow archives. that being said, i do take care to comply with all the visa rules, etc. the pipeline, fascinating issue,

kind of apropos of mary's earlier question about imf because this is a key source of tension where on one hand, you have this -- perhaps as a canadian -- this typical american extra territoriality on the dealings of other countries, which turns around and bites the reagan administration. in particular, margaret thatcher, who is generally perceived as reagan closest ally, she is probably his harshest critic on the siberian pipeline issue. that is another key obstacle to challenge to nato cohesion. it does not portend well for the imf issue. on one hand, it is seen as american overreach and to many people, american arrogance, and

on the other hand, because the united states can't get its allies on board, and this is frustrating to the reagan administration, but reagan in particular backed down to a certain extent on this issue in order to preserve the stability and solidity of the alliance and not subject it to a less necessary stress test than deploying cruise missiles. christian: elizabeth, any follow-up questions, short questions, since we have a number of questions collating? elizabeth: i don't, i'm going to let you keep going with the audience, but i'm apologizing to simon. i will tell the audience they

should be coming out soon. the documentation in these two volumes will marry well with everything simon has written about and provide more context. look for them soon on the internet. christian: thank you. question by email. how accurate was the early 1980's cia estimate on the fragility of russia's economy in pushing reagan's economic warfare? did it empower those who believed a resolution of the cold war was possible as opposed to those who thought the ussr would continue for much longer? simon: the issue of the soviet economics performance is a book in and of itself. one thing i was struck by, especially in the early 1980's, was the sense that capitalism

was in crisis, right? that does not mean that people were looking to the soviet union, the soviet model, but there is a great op-ed in the new york times in 1979 which is called, japan, return the favor and occupy us. there is a lot a publications at this time, including, if you can get your hands on one of the original versions of paul kennedy's book, the cover art tells the story of the united states on the decline and japan coming up behind it. not communism, socialism, but a more significant role for the government in managing the economy was seen by many people as a strength, not as a weakness or liability.

i think that colors a lot of the interpretations of people like reagan and how they interpret, how they orient themselves through cia estimates, which are on one hand telling a bad story about the soviet economy, but on the other hand, ronald reagan is saying, we are in the worst economic disaster this country has seen since the great depression. it is easy to look back on the late 1980's and think that that is the economic climate, but early 1980's, you are talking about a recession, barely gotten out of stagflation, the memory of panic at the pump is a fresh one, and that is when policymakers read these memos saying things are bad in the soviet union, many are saying true, but we think they can

recover from that in a way out -- our economy might not be able to, and things are not so great here. christian: thank you. i want to see if we can get three more questions real quick in one after another and then give simon a final chance to respond before eric will wrap up today's event. please unmute yourself. brief question. >> hi, everybody. i commented -- thank you for the presentation. it is very much in quincy and withinton's -- coincidence the views that i have about this issue. i have not seen the book yet but i will. i am happy there is a book based

on more documents. the other thing is a comment on -- [indiscernible] i perceive the comment as you believe in 1985, gorbachev spoke about nonintervention. i don't agree with that if that is your point because my position is different. it was the summer of 1988 when the soviets gave up the idea of intervention. then the question is about the fbi. what was the role of fbi? it has been documented for a

long time now, how gorbachev was begging reagan to give up on the idea of fbi and reagan said no. christian: appreciate it. please unmute yourself. a brief question. >> i have read the book so i want to ask you to talk more about the relationship between reagan's strategy and reagan's doctrine. did the u.s. economic situation in the 1980's matter to carry out reagan's grand strategy?

thank you. christian: thanks. please unmute yourself. >> george schultz in his memoir said that the day pershing to arrived in germany was the equivalent of d-day for the reagan administration. one of reagan's iconic moments was what he said in berlin, mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. this was arguably not a message to mr. gorbachev so much as an effort to influence many other audiences, so i would like any comments you would have on the public diplomacy effort during the 1980's to make the imf issue compatible for resolution, given the fact that european

governments had assigned on, -- had signed on, more or less to this decision in 1979, but , they had domestic opposition. any comments on double a public -- on the role of public diplomacy on the imf issue. christian: thank you very much. we are past our time, so simon, a quick response, you probably don't have time to respond to each question individually, and hopefully the conversation continues afterwards. simon: let me briefly say, on gorbachev about the eastern block being on their own, i don't think that they necessarily take seriously, the leadership of the warsaw pact countries, but i think gorbachev means it seriously. even get your hands on a copy of

the book, you can see the you can see the reference to the russian archives where i get this information from. on the economy, it is critical. it is critical because early in the reagan term, he needs to focus on the economy. that is the big issue. it is not foreign policy. this is something that makes a lot of eastern block policymakers welcome his election, which is a counterintuitive aspect of what we know happens later, but many people in the check slovakian ministry say, he is going to focus on the economy, he is not going to nail us on human rights like jimmy carter. that is critical and that economic strength and the recovery

emboldens the ship from covert to overt diplomacy, which i talked about earlier. especially public diplomacy, when it comes to imf, it is undeniable that there were not good at it. they sent out william buckley, whose job it is to bring everybody on board, and he comes back and he is not persuaded that he has succeeded. that is not william buckley the conservative pundit, this is a state official. the public diplomacy is not very successful. overcome by a lot of quiet diplomacy especially with u.s. and nato allies, a critical aspect. >> thank you, my things to you, simon, elizabeth, eddie mary. over to eric for final words. my thanks to you as well as those posing questions from the

audience. >> you're watching american history tv every weekend on c-span3. by america's cable television company. to you byis brought these television companies as a public service. >> tonight on lectures in history, a professor teaches a class about how colonial history is remembered through historic sites and monuments and sometimes contested. here is a preview. she's pictured here in two of the monuments, she has a number of monuments erected to her, most of which put up in the 19th century. woman who is the earliest publicly funded

monument of a woman in the united states. see on up of which you the left. choice an interesting that tells us a lot about what americans were trying to commemorate and celebrate about their colonial past. in the 19th century. a colonial massachusetts protestant woman and mother who is taken captive by a woman -- indians in quebec. the war was one of the series of these wars we discussed in class quite a bit. the wars between indigenous competingoted around of claims the french and english imperial interests had for the northern american territory and clashing interests among native peoples as well that intersect with all of these.

discussed, people are taken captive in these wars and she was one of these. she was taken captive along with her newborn daughter. along the march from massachusetts to new hampshire where she ended up while captive, indigenous people who captured her killed her daughter who was only six days old by smashing her head against a tree. hampshire,ve in new in a grisly fashion, she returns the favor. she is taken captive with her infant daughter and with the woman who was helping to nurse her through her pregnancy and recover from the birth. when they arrived in this island in new hampshire where they were stopping with the people who had she, alongaptive, with the other woman with her and a boy who had been captured

separately, the three of them decide to rise up in the night and free themselves. which is understandable. what they do next is slightly less understandable to contemporary points of view. and killded to rise up and scalp 10 native americans including two men, two women, and six children and returned with the scalps as bounty. in fact, not only returned with the scalps but petitioned the massachusetts authority to pay them for the scalps, which they did. not only is this moment celebrated at the time and scalps of the indian, men, women, and children rewarded by money from the massachusetts government, she is celebrated enough so that she does have the statutes erected to her and this also was defaced the summer.

a reminder that women are complicit in these complicated paths as well as meant. >> learn more about colonial monuments tonight at 8 p.m. eastern here on american history tv. >> next on "the presidency," national portrait gallery senior historian gwendolyn dubois shaw provides an overview of the calories new exhibit, "every eye is upon me: first ladies of the united states." she discusses how paintings and photographs depicting these women can provide insight into their lives and time in the executive mansion. the white house historical society hosted this event and provided the video. colleen: this evening, it is my leisure to welcome dr. gwendolyn dubois shaw. gwendolyn dubois shaw is the national portrait gallery senior historian and director of history, research, and scholarly programs. appointed in 2019, she is the first woman and first