Carlisle & Golson. Reagan Era

8/13/2019 Carlisle & Golson. Reagan Era

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T U R N I N G P O I N T S A C T U A L A N D A LT E R N AT E H I S T O R I E S

The Reagan Era from the Iran Crisis to Kosovo


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Other titles in ABC-CLIOs

T U R N I N G P O I N T S A C T U A L A N D A L T E R N AT E H I S T O R I E S

series

Native America from Prehistory to First Contact

Colonial America from Settlement to the Revolution

Manifest Destiny and the Expansion of America

A House Divided during the Civil War Era

America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s


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Books in the Turning PointsActual and Alternate Histories series askthe question What would have happened if . . . ? In a unique editorial

format, each book examines a specific period in American history, pres-ents the real, or actual, history, and then offers an alternate historyspeculations from historical experts on what might have happened hadthe course of history turned.

If a particular event had turned out differently, history from that turningpoint forward could be affected. Important outcomes frequently hingeon an individual decision, an accidental encounter, a turn in theweather, the spread of a disease, or a missed piece of information. Suchevents stimulate our imagination, accentuating the role of luck, chance,and individual decision or character at particular moments in time. Theexamination of such key turning points is one of the reasons that thestudy of history is so fascinating.

For the student, examining alternate histories springing from turningpoints and exploring, What would have happened if . . . ? gives insightinto many of the questions at the heart of our civilization today.


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The Reagan Era from theIran Crisis to Kosovo

Rodney P. Carlisle and J. Geoffrey Golson, Editors

Santa Barbara,California

Denver, Colorado

Oxford, England

T U R N I N G P O I N T S

A C T U A L A N D A LT E R N A T E H I S T O R I E S


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Copyright 2008 by ABC-CLIO, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan-ical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quo-tations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataThe Reagan era from the Iran crisis to Kosovo / Rodney P. Carlisle and

J. Geoffrey Golson, editors.p. cm.(Turning pointsactual and alternate histories)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-85109-885-9 (hard copy : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-85109-886-6 (ebook)1. United StatesPolitics and government1981-1989. 2. United States

Politics and government1989-1993. 3. Reagan, Ronald. 4. Bush, George,1924- 5. United StatesForeign relations1981-1989. 6. United StatesForeign relations1989-1993. 7. Imaginary histories. I. Carlisle, Rodney P.II. Golson, J. Geoffrey.E876.R394 2008973.927dc22 2007016501

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Contributors xi

Introduction xiii

1 The 1980 Election 1

TURNING POINT

What if Jimmy Carter had been more successful in his first term and was

reelected in 1980 to a second term?

Introduction 1

Turning Point 7

Actual History 8

Alternate History 16

Discussion Questions 20

Bibliography and Further Reading 21

2 Reaganomics 23

TURNING POINT

What if support for supply-side economics had not developed and

stagflation had led to a depression in the 1980s?

Introduction 23

Turning Point 28

Actual History 32




3 Euromissiles 43

TURNING POINT

What if the Soviets had overreacted to U.S. installation of new missiles

in Europe?

Introduction 43

Turning Point 50

Contents


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viii CONT ENT S

Actual History 51




4 Shooting of the President 61

TURNING POINT

What if Reagan had died from his bullet wound and George H. W.Bush

had become president?

Introduction 61

Turning Point 63

Actual History 67




5 Tear Down This Wall, Mr. Gorbachev 77

TURNING POINT

What if Soviet politics had stopped Gorbachevs reforms and Soviet

troops had reinforced hard-line regimes?

Introduction 77

Turning Point 85

Actual History 90




6 The Gorbachev Coup 103TURNING POINT

What if the anti-Gorbachev hard-liners had led a successful coup

in the Soviet Union?

Introduction 103

Turning Point 108

Actual History 110




7 Iran-Contra Affair 125TURNING POINT

What if Oliver North had succeeded in his arms-hostages deal and used

funds for an anti-Castro coup in Cuba?

Introduction 125

Turning Point 132

Actual History 133



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CONT ENT S ix



8 Roe v. Wade 145

TURNING POINT

What if Reagan had appointed Supreme Court justices who had

unraveled parts of Roe v.Wade?

Introduction 145

Turning Point 152

Actual History 154




9 George H. W. Bush 163

TURNING POINT

What if George H. W.Bush had been reelected in 1992 and a second Iraqwar had been fought in the 1990s?

Introduction 163

Turning Point 169

Actual History 171




10 The Persian Gulf War 181

TURNING POINT

What if Israel had attacked in retaliation for Scuds launched by the Iraqis?

Would the Arabs have withdrawn from the Coalition?Introduction 181

Turning Point 185

Actual History 189




11 Kosovo 201

TURNING POINT

What if Russia had reacted to the U.S./NATO alliance by coming to

Serbias aid?

Introduction 201Turning Point 211

Actual History 213





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x CONT ENT S

Appendix I

Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate 219

Appendix II

Iran-Contra: The Underlying Facts 225

Chronology of the Reagan Era 237

Resources 245

Index 249


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Chapter 1 The 1980 Election

Bill Ktepi

Independent Scholar

Chapter 2 Reaganomics

Wade K. Ewing

University of Pittsburgh

Chapter 3 Euromissiles

Robert N. Stacy

Independent Scholar

Chapter 4 Shooting of the President

Elizabeth A. KramerIndependent Scholar

Chapter 5 Tear Down This Wall,

Mr. Gorbachev

Elizabeth Purdy

Independent Scholar

Chapter 6 The Gorbachev Coup

Joseph C. Santora

Independent Scholar

Chapter 7 Iran-Contra Affair

Lawrence E. Cline

American Military University

Chapter 8 Roe v. Wade

Heather A. Beasley

University of Colorado at Boulder

Chapter 9 George H. W. Bush

Heather A. Beasley

University of Colorado at Boulder

Chapter 10 The Persian Gulf War

Robert N. StacyIndependent Scholar

Chapter 11 Kosovo

Robert N. Stacy

Independent Scholar

Contributors


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I . . . regard the chief utility of all historical and sociologicalinvestigations to be to admonish us of the alternative possibilities

of history.Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy

There is nothing new about counterfactual inference. Historianshave been doing it for at least two thousand years.

Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, CounterfactualThought Experiments in World Politics

The question, What would have happened if . . . ? is asked all the timeas historians, students, and readers of history examine past events. Ifsome event had turned out differently, the whole course of history fromthat particular turning point forward could have been affected, we areoften reminded. Important outcomes frequently hinge on an individual

decision, an accidental encounter, a missed piece of information. Suchevents stimulate our imagination, accentuating the role of luck, chance,and individual decision or character at particular moments in time. Theexamination of such key hinge points is one of the reasons that the studyof history is so fascinating.

Alternate history has become a fictional genre, similar to science fic-tion, in that it proposes other worlds, spun off from the one we live in,derived from some key hinge point in the past. Harry Turtledove, amongothers, has produced novels along these lines. Turtledove has written awidely sold sequence of books that follow an alternate past from coun-terfactual Confederate victory at the battle of Antietam, resulting in therise of the Confederate States of America as a separate nation, with con-sequences well into the twentieth century.

Alternate or counterfactual history is more than a form of imaginativespeculation or engaging entertainment, however. Historians are able tohighlight the significance of an event they examine by pointing to theconsequences of the event. When many significant consequences flowfrom a single event, the alternate history question is implicitthe conse-quences would have been different, and a strange and different historywould have flowed from that time forward if the specific event in ques-tion had turned out differently. Those events that would have made the

Introduction


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xiv INT RODU CT ION

most dramatic or drastic alternate set of consequences are clearly amongthe most important; thus key battles in wars are often studied in greatdetail, but not only for their own sake. The importance of such battles asGettysburg and Antietam is not simply military. Instead, those battles and

others are significant because such deep consequences flowed from theiroutcomes. The same could be said of General Erich Ludendorffs offensivein 1918had it been successful, the Allies might have been defeated inWorld War I, and the map of Europe and the rest of the twentieth centurywould have been very different from the way they actually turned out.Similarly, if for some reason, the nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima andNagasaki in 1945 had failed, the outcome of World War II could havebeen very different, perhaps with a greater role for the Soviet Union in thedissolution of the Japanese Empire. Others have argued that had thebombs not been used, Japan would have been defeated quite promptlyeven without them.

Every key event raises similar issues. What might the world have beenlike if Christopher Columbus and his sailors had failed to return from

their voyage in 1492? What if Hernn Corts and Francisco Pizarro hadbeen soundly defeated in their attempts to defeat the Aztecs and the IncaEmpire? What if John Wilkes Booth had failed in his assassination attempton Abraham Lincoln? What sort of world would we live in if any of theother famous victims of assassination had survived, such as John F.Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malcolm X?

For the student, examining alternate histories springing from multipleturning points and exploring What would have happened if . . . , givesinsight into many of the questions at the heart of history. What was therole of specific individuals, and how did their exercise of free will andchoice at a moment in time affect later events? On the other hand, to whatextent are the actions of individuals irrelevant to the larger outcomes?That is, in any particular period of history, were certain underlying forces

at work that would have led to the same result, no matter what the indi-vidual did? Do underlying structures, and deeper causes, such as eco-nomic conditions, technological progress, climate, natural resources, anddiseases, force events into a mold that individuals have always been pow-erless to alter?

The classic contest of free will and determinism is constantly at workin history, and an examination of pivotal turning points is key to under-standing the balance between deep determining forces and the role ofindividuals. Frequently, it seems, no matter what individuals tried to doto affect the course of events, the events flowed onward in their samecourse; in other cases, however, a single small mistake or different per-sonal decision seems to have affected events and altered the course of his-tory. Close study of specific events and how they might have otherwiseturned out can illuminate this challenging and recurrent issue.

Of course, when reviewing What would have happened if . . . , it isimportant to realize exactly what in fact really did happen. So in everychapter presented in this series, we are careful to explain first what actu-ally happened, before turning to a possible alternative set of events thatcould have happened, and the consequences through later history thatmight have flowed from an alternate development at a particular turningpoint. By looking at a wide variety of such alternatives, we see how much


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INT RODU CT ION xv

of history is contingent, and we gain greater insight into its specific eventsand developments.

Alternate histories would have flowed had there been different out-comes of a great variety of events, many of them far less famous than the

outstanding battles, and the lives and deaths of explorers, conquerors,statesmen, and political leaders. Seemingly obscure or little-recognizedevents in the past, such as legislative decisions, court cases, small militaryengagements, and even the lives of obscure minor officials, preachers,writers, and private citizens, frequently played a crucial part in shapingthe flow of events. It is clear that if any of the great leaders of the worldhad died as infants, the events in which they participated would havebeen altered; but we tend to forget that millions of minor players and lessfamous people take actions in their daily lives in events such as battles,elections, legislative and judicial decisions, sermons, speeches, and pub-lished statements that have sometimes altered the course of history.

Alternate histories are known as counterfactuals, that is, events thatdid not in fact happen. Some counterfactuals are more plausible than oth-

ers. A few historians have argued that all counterfactuals are absurd andshould not be studied or considered. However, any historical work thatgoes beyond simply presenting a narrative or chronological list of whathappened, and begins to explore causes through the use of such terms asinfluenced, precipitated, or led to, is in fact implying some counter-factual sequences. A historian, in describing one event as having conse-quences, is by implication suggesting the counterfactual that if the eventhad not occurred, the consequences would have been different.

If history is to be more than a chronicle or simple listing of what hap-pened and is to present lessons about statecraft, society, technologydevelopment, diplomacy, the flow of ideas, military affairs, and economicpolicy, it must explore how causes led to consequences. Only by thestudy of such relationships can future leaders, military officers, business

people and bankers, legislators and judges, and perhaps most important,voters in democratic nations gain any knowledge of how to conduct theiraffairs. To derive the lessons of history, one has to ask what the impor-tant causes were, the important hinge events that made a difference. Andonce that question is asked, counterfactuals are implied. Thus thedefenders of the approach suggest that counterfactual reasoning is a pre-requisite to learning lessons from history. Even many historians who res-olutely avoid talking about what might have been are implying thatwhat in fact happened was important because the alternative, counter-factual event did not happen.

Two scholars who have studied counterfactuals in depth, Philip E.Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, in an edited collection of articles, CounterfactualThought Experiments in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 1996),have concluded that counterfactual reasoning can serve several quite dif-ferent purposes in the study of history. They define these types of counter-factual work:

1. Case-study counterfactuals that highlight moments of indetermi-nacy in history by showing how things might have turned out differ-ently at such hinge points because of individual free choices. Thesestudies tend to focus on the uniqueness of specific events.


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xvi INT RODU CT ION

2. Nomothetic counterfactuals that focus on underlying deterministiclaws or processes, examining key events to show how likely orunlikely it was for events to have turned out differently. The purposeof this type of study is to test how powerful an underlying law or

process is by imagining alternative situations or decisions.3. A combination of types one and two above, blending the test of the-

ory or underlying law approach with the unique event approach.

4. Mental stimulation counterfactuals that highlight underlyingassumptions most people have by showing how causes that most peo-ple believe are inconsequential could have major effects, and othercauses that most people believe are very important might have little orno effect in changing the course of history.

The reader will recognize aspects of each of these different models in theaccounts that follow. Moreover, the reader can find the contrasts betweenactual history and alternate history quite puzzling and thought provok-ing, as they are intended to be. As readers study the cases, they may want

to keep asking questions such as these:

What was the key hinge point on which the author focused?

Is the altered key event a plausible changesomething that could easilyhave happened?

Was the change minimal in the sense that only one or a few turningpoint events had to turn out differently than they in fact did?

Did the alternate outcome seem to develop in a realistic way; that is, doesthe alternate sequence of events seem to be one that would be likely oncethe precipitating change took place?

How plausible is the alternate long-term outcome or consequence that theauthor suggested?

Was the changed key event a matter of an individual persons choice, amatter of accident, or a change in some broader social or technologicaldevelopment?

Does the counterfactual story help us make judgments about the actualquality of leadership displayed in fact at the time? That is, did key actorsin real history act more or less wisely in fact than they did in the counter-factual account?

Does the outcome of the episode suggest that, despite the role of chanceand individual choice, certain powerful forces shaped history in similardirections, in both the factual and counterfactual account?

Does the account make me think differently about what was important inhistory?

Does the counterfactual story challenge any assumptions I had before Iread it?

Remember, however, that what really happened is the object of histor-ical study. We examine the counterfactual, alternate histories to get a bet-ter understanding of the forces and people that were at work in whatreally did occur. These counterfactual stories will make you think abouthistory in ways that you have never encountered before; but when youhave explored them, you should be able to go back to the real events withfresh questions in mind.


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INT RODU CT ION xvii

Introduction to The Reagan Era Volume

In this volume of the series, we see how counterfactual and alternativehistory can help us understand the events of the 1980s and 1990s. Duringthis period, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union

reached a new pitch of intensity, and then, rather quickly through the late1980s, diminished. Quite suddenly, it seemed, the world changed. Afteryears of negotiations and efforts to control nuclear weapons, the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union entered into a series of nuclear disarmamenttreaties and began to destroy a large fraction of their nuclear arsenals.Through mutually agreed inspection schemes, each side was able to ver-ify that the other side was conforming to the agreements. The threat ofnuclear warfare between the two superpowers diminished, and thenappeared to vanish altogether. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union itself brokeup into fifteen constituent republics, four of them retaining some fractionof the former nuclear arsenal: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.Russia continued to retain a smaller number of nuclear weapons and towork on arms reduction, while the other three willingly abandoned the

weapons and the expense of maintaining them.By 1990, it appeared that a new world order was emerging, with the

United States as the worlds only superpower. The United Nations wouldhelp oversee troublesome regions in the world. However, several of thosetrouble spots soon began to indicate the sorts of crises that the postColdWar world would encounter. With Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in 1990, andthen with genocide and ethnic cleansing sweeping the republics of theformer Yugoslavia, it appeared that the new world order was hardlyorderly. Instead, with rogue states like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Serbia;failed states like Somalia and Afghanistan; and groups of terrorists inde-pendent of any state control pursuing a variety of agendas, the shape ofthe future began to emerge.

Within the United States, President Reagan faced an attempted assas-sination, which left him wounded. The nation marveled at his good spir-its during his recovery but soon realized that the era of assassination ofleaders that had dominated the 1960swith the deaths of John Kennedy,Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.had not ended. Thenations course and destiny could be altered at any moment by a derangedindividual or a group of dedicated conspirators who succeeded in carry-ing out a criminal act. President Reagans second term was marred by theIran-Contra scandal; investigation of this episode revealed that elementsof the administration had conducted a secret deal to raise funds and topurchase weapons to oppose the pro-communist regime in Nicaragua.This secret support for the contra-revolutionaries was in direct violationof congressional restrictions.

President Reagans successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, oversawthe reaction of the United States to the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. In thePersian Gulf War, the United States acted as part of a multinational coali-tion, supported by several European Allies as well as several Muslim andArab states. Acting under the authority of the United Nations SecurityCouncil, Operation Desert Storm proceeded to evict the army of Iraq fromKuwait, and then to accept the surrender of the Iraqi forces. A stringentpeace was imposed on Iraq, in which that country would not be able tooperate fixed-wing aircraft over either its northern, Kurdish region or theShia-populated southern third of the country. In addition, Saddam


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xviii INT RODU CT ION

Hussein accepted visits by United Nations weapons inspectors to ensurethat his programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, including poi-son gas and nuclear weapons, were brought to an end. With those provi-sions, the ground was set for future difficulties that would come early in

the next century.As we look at the actual history of these events, we can see the impor-tance of numerous individuals, their decisions, and the role of chance inhistory if we imagine different scenarios at each of a variety of TurningPoints. During the last years of the Cold War, the two superpowers couldvery easily have unleashed a nuclear holocaust if an accident hadoccurred. The slight change of the angle of a wild gunshot could haveproven fatal to President Reagan. If the Iran-Contra exchange had suc-ceeded rather than being revealed, it might have emboldened the admin-istration to attempt an overthrow of the communist regime in Cuba. HadGeorge Herbert Walker Bush been elected to a second term, the PersianGulf War might have been followed by a longer and more difficult Iraqwar in the mid-1990s rather than in the first decade of the twenty-first

century. Each of these might have beens would have had long-rangeconsequences that would have changed the world.

Speculating about the alternatives and the counterfactuals throughthis period of the recent past suggests the importance of the role of theindividual in shaping history. At the same time, some of the outcomessuggested here show that if we are to unravel the twisted lessons of his-tory, we must recognize that long-range and underlying causes are alsocrucial. While Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev appeared toreshape the worlds destiny, they had to deal with the momentum ofevents that had created the Cold War. Although individual players likeOliver North, a leader in the Iran-Contra operation, and John Hinckley,Jr., Reagans attempted assassin, also tried to shape events, the world wasmoving in a certain direction and might very well have continued to do

so, whether or not they succeeded in their separate plots.WARNING!You are probably used to reading a book of history to find out what

happened. We offer this book with a major warning. In this volume, thereader will see what actually happened, and that part of history is alwaysdesignated ACTUAL HISTORY.

However, the last part of each chapter presents a history that neverhappened, and that is presented as the ALTERNATE HISTORY.

To be sure it is clear that the ALTERNATE HISTORY is an account ofwhat would have happened differently if a TURNING POINT hadturned out differently than it really did, the ALTERNATE HISTORY is

always presented against a gray background, like these lines. TheALTERNATE HISTORY is what might have happened, what could havehappened, and perhaps what would have happened, if the TURNINGPOINT had gone a little differently. Think about this alternate history,and why it would have been different. But dont think that it representsthe way things actually happened!


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Each chapter is also accompanied by informative sidebars, and a fewdiscussion questions that take off from the ACTUAL HISTORY and theALTERNATE HISTORY that allow readers to think through and argue thedifferent sides of the issues that are raised here.

We also want to warn readers that some may be surprised to discoverthat history, when viewed in this light, suddenly becomes so fascinatingthat they may never want to stop learning about it!

Rodney Carlisle


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1The 1980 Election

What if Jimmy Carter had been more successful in his firstterm and was reelected in 1980 to a second term?

INTRODUCTION

The 1980 presidential election was a turning point in both American pol-itics and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.The Cold War had persisted since the end of World War II, reached itsapex with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and aside from the proxy warof the conflict in Vietnam, had subsided for most of the late 1960s and1970s, the time of dtente. The Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter wasthe first president to serve a full term after the Watergate scandal that hadled to President Richard Nixons resignation, and his loss to neoconser-vative Ronald Reagan signaled a new era in both domestic and interna-

tional politics as well as the national economy.Carter was the classic example of an outsider candidate, a conserva-tive southern Democrata Dixiecrat in all but his opposition to segrega-tion. Although he had appeased segregationists in his 1970 Georgiagubernatorial campaign by refusing to condemn Alabama governorGeorge Wallace and talked about states rights (states rights was often acoded phrase for the right of states to retain segregation), he decried thepractice of segregation in his inaugural speech. At a time when most DeepSouth politicians would have considered it political suicide to do so,Carter declared that the age of discrimination and segregation was dead,and that neither would have any place in Georgia thenceforth. His con-servatism in other respects won him much support: he was fiscally con-servative especially when it came to government spending on public

works and other leftover New Deal policies, calling them pork barrelexpenses, ways for politicians to line the pockets of their supporters. Hewas a staunchly religious Christian whose sister Ruth was a well-knownevangelical.

Carter served only one term as governor before running for president,and his election was an astonishing testament to the publics desire for anoutsider untainted by Washington, D.C., given the brevity of his publiclife and his lack of federal-level credentials or experience. He was not


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2 C H A P T E R 1 The 1980 Election

naive, though; a savvy politician, he rarely misrepresented himself in hispresidential campaign but knew which element to emphasize at any giventime. He was up front about his religious beliefs, even when they earned

him mild ridicule, and was a clear alternative to the likable but suspectincumbent Gerald Ford, who had pardoned Nixon and finished outNixons term. Carters win was by a narrow margin, but he was the firstcandidate from the Deep South to be elected since General Zachary Taylorin 1848before the Civil War and Reconstruction, before the civil rightsmovement and integration.

The new president inherited a floundering economy that had alreadysuffered an energy crisis in 1973 and saw inflation rise to double digits asunemployment soared. His appointee Paul Volcker, chairman of theFederal Reserve Board, would eventually succeed in bringing inflationdown from historic highs, but it was a slow process. In the meantime, theCarter administration saw more short-term gains in foreign policy. Cartercontinued Nixons work in building friendly relations with the PeoplesRepublic of China, and he put human rights at the forefront of his agenda,condemning abuses around the world. The Republican Party and muchof the American public opposed his signing of the treaty that gave controlof the Panama Canal to Panama, but the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks(SALT) were much more popular, resulting in treaties that reducednuclear warheads in both American and Soviet arsenals. When the SovietUnion invaded Afghanistan in 1979motivated in part, many feared, bythe desire for Middle Eastern oilCarter promised that no outside force

The term neoconservative has been around for

much of the twentieth century,but when used nowit generally refers to a strain of American conserva-

tive thought that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s

and came to power in the 1980s and 1990s.

Neoconservatism was a movement away from tra-

ditional American conservatism in two principal

ways:first, unlike the older conservativism (or paleo-

conservativism),neoconservatism is not isolationist

or protectionist. Instead it seeks to establish

national security through international action: a

stable world is a safe world for America, and a safe

world for America is a democratic free-market

world.

Rather than working with any government, as

long as trade is healthy and communism is

opposed, neoconservatives encourage real, func-

tioning, American-style democracy and free mar-

kets around the world. Neoconservatives oppose

communism and the Islamic fundamentalism of

the Middle East, tending to view world affairs in

World War II terms: enemy leaders are described aspotential Hitlers who need to be stopped before

they bloom into full villainy, and the specter of the

postwar spread of Eastern European communism is

often invoked. While the worldview indicated by

the references to evilmade by Ronald Reagan and

George W. Bush is not universal to all neoconserva-

tives, it is an example of neoconservative thinking.

Second, neoconservatism is more friendly to

social programs than traditional conservatism or

the extreme anti-welfare sentiments of libertarian-

ism. In the 1960s through the 1980s especially,

many neoconservatives were Democratseither

operating within their own party (paleoliberals

who, like Carter, were opposed to the changes the

New Deal Era had wrought on American liberal-

ism) or moving to the Republican Party, like many

of Reagans supporters and indeed Reagan him-

self. A number of neoconservatives in the 1980s

KEY CONCEPT Neoconservative


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would be allowed to control the Persian Gulf and instituted a boycott ofthe 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, forbidding any American fromparticipating.

The greatest accomplishment of the Carter administration was theCamp David Accords. Affairs in the Middle East had been particularlyhostile since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, during which a group of Arabnations led by Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel onYom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, advancing on territory Israel

had seized in the Six Day War of 1967. Jordan and Iraq were also promi-nently involved, and Algeria, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, SaudiArabia, and Tunisia all provided troops or equipment. The attack led to amore militarily focused Israel, better able to defend itself and more will-ing to strike first. In 1978, Carter invited Egyptian president Anwar Sadatand Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, the presiden-tial retreat in Maryland, for secret peace talks.

After twelve days, an agreement was signed in which the United Statesagreed to provide subsidies to both governments; they, in turn, agreed tovarious conditions to ensure a peaceful relationship. These conditionspertained to such things as passage through the Suez Canal and authorityover the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip. The agreement made Sadatunpopular with other Arab nations, but it demonstrated that Israel waswilling to negotiate and that the United States could be instrumental inmediating such negotiations. Previously the popular Arab perception hadbeen that Israel was inflexible and that the United States was unwaveringin its support of Israel. Between the peace accords and Carters friendlyrelationship with the Shah of Iranwho, though losing some of hisWestern support, was perhaps the closest the Middle East had to a pro-American leaderaffairs in the Middle East seemed like they had at leastthe potential for improvement.

During the Yom Kippur War,the OPEC (Organization

of Petroleum Exporting Countries) members, aswell as Egypt and Syria, refused to ship oil to

nations allied with Israelthe United States and

much of Western Europe. OPEC included most of

the Middle Easts oil-producing countries,as well as

Venezuela, Nigeria, and Indonesia. At a time when

inflation was already problematic and American oil

consumption had doubled since the previous gen-

eration, the price of oil quadrupled over the course

of a year. The embargo caused vast shortages, as

public buildings closed to save on heating oil, ther-

mostats in government buildings were locked in

place, large American cars were replaced by com-

pact Japanese models, and gas rationing went into

effect. In an attempt to reduce the long lines of

motorists waiting for gasoline, drivers of cars with

odd-numbered license plates could buy gas onlyon odd-numbered days; even-numbered license

plates could buy on even-numbered days.

Thousands of gallons of gasoline were consumed

simply by idling cars waiting to be filled.

Conservation became a national watchword.

The national speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour

was instituted because this was determined to be

the most energy-efficient speed. Daylight saving

time was altered to save on lighting costs, though

this resulted in public school hours beginning

before sunrise in the winter in the northern parts

of the country.American auto manufacturers intro-

duced cars designed to meet new federal require-

ments. More attention was paid to the possibility

IN CONTEXT The 1973 Oil Crisis


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Carter reelected in 1980? 5

One of the last major world events of Carters presidency was theIranian Revolution. Although the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,had been an American ally for decadesthe Allies had helped him cometo power during World War II to replace his father, who was friendly withAdolf Hitlerthe United States made no effort to intervene when he wasoverthrown in 1979. The Shah had abolished Irans political parties andruled with the help of a secret police force, which assisted in counteringsupport the Soviets lent to Iranian communists; however, the Shah had

also advocated a number of reforms during his reign, including a redistri-bution of resources that made many more Iranians landowners, morerights for women and workers, and improvements to education and liter-acy that also required clergy to pass an exam proving their competence.Many of these reforms had earned him the enmity of Islamic fundamen-talists not only in his own country but across the Middle East. More andmore, even as Western rulers distanced themselves from the Shah becauseof his dictatorial policies, his enemies portrayed him as a puppet of theChristian West, and after the Iranian military stopped an anti-Shah protestwith extreme force (killing hundreds) in late 1978, antiestablishment sen-timent soared.

The prime minister of Iran asked the Shah to leave willingly and letthe exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini return after fifteen years ofexile. Khomeini was an Islamic fundamentalist who had fiercelyopposed the Shahs reforms; after his return to Iran, he rejected theprime ministers request to establish a constitutional government.Instead he overthrew the remainder of the Shahs administration andinstalled his own theocratic rule. The Shahdying of cancersoughtpolitical asylum in the United States, where Carters policy of noninter-vention had been formed both by his own disapproval of the Shahshuman rights abuses and the state departments recommendation that

of oil alternatives, though this attention essentially

died off during the apparently prosperous era of

the 1980s.By then, though, natural gas and nuclearpower had reduced some of the demand for oil,

but neither of these affected gas consumption by

automobiles. Despite its initial appeal, solar power

never caught on to the extent its promoters

expected.

The economy suffered for the remainder of the

1970s, with inflation continuing to skyrocket and

few solutions working until Paul Volckers Federal

Reserve policies began to pay off in the early 1980s.

Alternate sources of oil and non-oil energy con-

tributed to a decline in OPECs power, as various

nations increased their oil production to meet

demand, more American and Canadian sourceswere found, and the exploitation of Soviet oil

began. The embargo caused the poorest OPEC

nations to suffer as much as the nations that were

subject to it as they had no way to prepare for thelack of oil sales.

Ultimately, the 1973 oil crisis demonstrated the

power of the Middle East to affect world events

despite the regions lack of technological or military

advantages.The American government considered

overthrows and invasions, taking the oil by force,

but these solutions were rejected as inappropriate

or impractical.This new threat of the Middle East

an economic threat in the midst of the dtente that

had calmed the worlds fears of nuclear threats

would continue to shape foreign policy to the pres-

ent day,and the interest of Western world in Middle

Eastern affairs would have repercussions again andagain.

IN CONTEXT The 1973 Oil Crisis (Continued)


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any replacement for the Shah would be an improvement from anAmerican perspective.

The Iranian Revolution led directly to the energy crisis of 1979. Post-revolution Iran was in disarray and exported less oil than before, and even

with other OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) mem-bers increasing production, supply was lower and prices higher. Panic setin as people feared that the oil crisis of 1973 might be repeated or wors-ened; prices skyrocketed, rising in the United States from roughly $15 abarrel to nearly $40, a peak that would not be exceeded until 2006. Linesagain formed at gas pumps, and rationing was proposed. Carter had solarpanels installed in the White House (which Reagan ordered removed assoon as he took office).

The new Iranian government demanded that the Shah be returned toIran to stand trial for crimes against the people. He eventually left theUnited States after his medical treatment was finished, but before thathappened, Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran andtook sixty-six American hostages. Women and African Americans were

released after less than a month, but the rest were held for 444 days. Tworescue attempts failed, and the hostage crisis, like the energy crisis and theeconomy in general, was a critical point in the 1980 presidential election.Presidential candidate Reagan asked the American public if they were bet-ter off now than four years ago; the implication was that the country hadbeen better off in 1976 before Carter won the office.

Men bowing in prayer at an Iran Hostage Crisis student demonstration,Washington, D.C., November 30, 1979.

(Library of Congress)


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Carters opposition in the 1980 election was California Republican gover-nor Ronald Reagan. A former actor who had reported on the communistor suspicious activities of his fellow actors in the 1950s, the governorwas also a savvy and well-read economist and, like Carter, a staunchChristian. He had nearly won the 1976 Republican nomination andestablished much of his support then. A neoconservative who attractedbacking from many of the right-leaning Democrats, he promised to doaway with big government and stimulate an economic revival while tak-ing a hard stand against communism and the policies of dtente that hebelieved had left the countryperhaps the Western worldtoo vulnera-ble to Soviet attack. Carter tried campaigning by shifting his focus to theright, reinstalling the draft when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistanand dtente came to an endbut Reagan already had the support of con-

servatives in both parties.The Iran hostage crisis persisted throughout the 1980 campaign, as

did the oil crisis. The Reagan campaignmanaged by William Casey,whom Reagan would later appoint as the new director of the CentralIntelligence Agencyhas been accused of letting the hostage crisis lastuntil after the election had been won. (It seemed too coincidental that thehostages were released on Reagans inauguration.) But another explana-tion proposes that Irans fear of Reagans trigger happy reputationencouraged them to negotiate rather than face disproportionate reprisals.

The hostage crisis was a public embarrassment, especially once rescueattempts failed, and the Ayatollah railed against the United Statespop-ularizing the term Great Satan in reference to the countrywithoutactually giving his approval to the hostage takers. The Shah died in 1980,

a few months before Iraq invaded Iran and Carter lost the election, andCarter negotiated a release for the hostages by signing an accord pledgingthat the United States would not interfere with Iranian internal affairs.The hostages were released in 1981, twenty minutes before Reagans inau-guration, and Carter was the one who met themhis first act as the for-mer president.

The 1980 election signaled more than just a change of presidents; itwas a shifting of opinion across the country and the Western world.Margaret Thatcher had been elected prime minister of the UnitedKingdom in 1979 on a platform much like Reagans: smaller government,economic growth, and a return to a prominent, decisive role in globalaffairs. In the United States, the Republican Party gained control of theSenate. While this rightward movement had been coming for a longtimeit was instrumental in the elections of Nixon and Carterthe oiland hostage crises had combined with the weakness of the DemocraticParty to do serious damage to the public faith in the Democrats and lib-eral policies in general. Some historians might even argue that Cartersdeprecation of many New Dealera policies as symptoms of a bloatedgovernment only encouraged his supporters to move on to still more con-servative politicians, abandoning not simply the left-leaning segments ofthe Democratic Party but the party itself.


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in part to force the Soviets to overspend in order to keep up. He institutedthe Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), sometimes nicknamed Star Wars,

an antimissile defense system that would have included components inspace. One of the goals of SDI was to enable the United States to initiatea first strike by eliminating retaliatory missilesthus upsetting the bal-ance of MAD (mutually assured destruction) that had prevailed for solong, whereby neither side could afford to engage in a nuclear warbecause both sides were sure to suffer catastrophic losses.

Reagan so strongly supported anticommunist movements and govern-ments that the policy came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine. TheUnited States allied with almost any guerrilla group combating a commu-nist government or government resisting communist movements, per-haps the most famous example of which tied into the Iran-Contra Affair.In 1983, thirty hostages including six Americans were taken byHezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist group. The Reagan administration soldarms to Iran, which needed them in its war against Iraq, in the hopes thatIran could influence the Islamist group to release the hostages; they weretransferred indirectly, through Israel as an intermediary. Two years later,military aide Oliver North proposed making the sales directly, with a highmarkup, and using the profit to fund the Contras, a guerrilla group at warwith the left-wing government of Nicaragua (the Sandinistas, who hadpreviously been supported by the Carter administration). All of this wasin violation of unofficial policy as well as federal law.

Ronald Reagan giving his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July, 1980.(Ronald

Reagan Presidential Library)


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When the truth of the Iran-Contra affair came to light in 1986, sev-eral officials resigned or were fired, including North. Reagan never admit-ted to knowledge of anything other than the arms saledenying that thesales were part of a hostages deal. The Tower Commission established byCongress to investigate the matter strongly criticized Reagan for letting somuch go on without his knowledge but was unable to determine whetherhis ignorance was genuine. Vice President Bush was affirmed to have beenaware of the arrangements, though this did not harm his subsequent pres-idential campaign and he pardoned many of those involved when he tookoffice.

The basic unit of nuclear war is the missile; plane-

deployed bombs are too easily intercepted andhave not been a significant part of nuclear strategy

since the initial strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

that ended World War II in the Pacific. Following

World War II, Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles

(IRBMs) were developed by the United States with

the help of Nazi scientists extricated from Germany

by a still-classified military and intelligence program

called Operation Paperclip. IRBMs could be placed

in countries near the Soviet Union and, in the event

of a war,deployed to strike the Soviets.

But in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the

United States developed Intercontinental Ballistic

Missiles (ICBMs), pushed largely by the need to

keep up with the Soviets. The USSR had to develop

such missiles because the Russians had no allied

territories close enough to the United States for

IRBMs to be effective; although IRBMs could strike

some U.S. targets because of the proximity of the

northeastern corner of the Soviet Union to Alaska,

Washington,D.C., and other strategic targets would

still be well out of their range.The development of

ICBMs that could strike accurately from across the

worldand of nuclear submarines that could be

stationed in areas that would survive the first strike

and ensure retaliationdrove the Cold War into astate of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

Although it sounds now almost like a piece of

satire, the principle of MAD is not only very simple,

but it was for several decades very compelling: as

described by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara,

MAD exists when one side possesses such capacity

to retaliate after a nuclear strike that such an initial

strike is discouraged. Neither side can strike with-out retaliation; when neither side can survive,

nuclear war is not winnable. While MAD therefore

theoretically prevented nuclear war, it also

required both sides to maintain (and in practice,

escalate) their capabilities, demanding almost as

much attention as an actual war would have

required.

When MAD exists, it is difficult for offensive

improvements to change the status quo. But

defense improvementsdefenses that can ensure

the survival of a retaliatory strike, or multiple

strikes, or an indefinite number of strikesupset

the balance.Ground-based missile defense systems

were explored early on, and the Soviet Union used

some to protect Moscow. But Reagan, even before

he was elected president, envisioned a space-

based missile defense system, one that was itself

out of range of missile attacks but which could

deflect such attacks while they were en route from

their departure point in the Soviet Union to the

United States. Imagine a pistol duel at close-range:

it is against the interest of both parties to start the

duel because of the likelihood that both duelists

will die regardless of their respective skill. Now

imagine that one duelist,and only one, has a bullet-proof vestor a full suit of body armor. Reagan

envisioned a nuclear war that was winnable, and

this concept understandably made people nervous

on both sides of the Cold War. MAD had been a nec-

essary precondition for dtente, but as the Soviet

invasion of Afghanistan showed,MADs prevention

KEY CONCEPT MAD and Star Wars


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of nuclear war did not ensure peace between the

two sides, nor did it limit the non-nuclear ways in

which the nations could clash.Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative, nick-

named Star Wars because of its space-based sys-

tems and lasers, received a good deal of ridicule in

the press because in the mid-1980s when even per-

sonal computers were uncommon (the recently

released Macintosh cost as much as a small car and

could do less than a cell phone today) the idea of

using lasers and satellites in a war seemed need-lessly science fictional. But the idea was powerful

and at worst would have been expensive. Though

SDI was never implemented, aspects of it were

adopted for programs put forth by the Bush and

Clinton administrations.

KEY CONCEPT MAD and Star Wars (Continued)

As with Nixons Watergate scandal, what did the president know, andwhen did he know it became a question of public concernbut unlikeNixon, Reagans reputation remained intact after his approval ratingsuffered a temporary drop, and public faith in the office of the presidentseemed largely unchanged. The pressoften accused of being complicitin maintaining Reagans popularity and failing to ask him the probingquestions some issues meriteddubbed him the Teflon president, oneto whom charges would not stick. He seemed able to survive anythingand come out smiling. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice ruledthat the United States was in violation of international law in its support

President Reagan tells the nation about the Strategic Defense Initiative from the Oval Office in 1983. (Ronald

Reagan Presidential Library)


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The Reagans (left) and Bushes watch the nomination votes at the 1984 Republican National Convention from

their hotel room in Dallas,Texas. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

of the Contras on multiple counts of unlawful intervention, use of force,and breach of treaty. The United States refused to recognize the jurisdic-tion of the court and refused to pay reparations.

The Reagan era is sometimes considered to include also the singleterm as president of his vice president, George H. W. Bush, a term markedprincipally by the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War in the MiddleEast. Reagan is widely credited with the former, since the economic prob-lems of the Soviet Unionand later, its constituent member statesseemed to validate his prediction that the nation was on the brink ofeconomic ruin. Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformist elected to the premiershipby the Soviet politburo in 1985, reacted to this impending ruin withchanges that pushed the Soviet Union closer to a free-market system.With productivity at an alarming low point and a growing number ofcommunist allies entitled to the financial assistance provided by previousadministrations, Gorbachev had little choice but to begin work immedi-ately to try to improve the countrys economic situation. Hisglasnost pol-icy took effect right away; the word means openness, and in this case itincluded not simply the freedoms of speech and the press but a trans-parency of government that made the bureaucracy visible and answerableto the public.

His economic reforms, the policy of perestroika (restructuring),began in 1987. Perestroika was a significant and controversial shift away fromcommunism: private ownership of businesses in previously government-controlled industries was now encouraged, as were joint ventures with


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foreign business interests, both of which opened up foreign trade to anextent unheard of in decades. Only two years later, Eastern Europeancommunism began its collapse in what is now called the Autumn ofNations: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and

Romania all saw reformist revolutions. Several Soviet states sought ordeclared independence from the union, and the Berlin Wall came downin 1989. In 1991, after a short-lived coup by hard-line communists, theSoviet Union dissolved into its fifteen member states. The Cold War wasofficially over.

Communism itself, though, still thrivedin North Korea and NorthVietnam, in Cuba, and most prominently (at least in terms of popula-tions) in China, where in 1989 the government responded to a series ofprotests in and around Beijings Tiananmen Square by allegedly killingapproximately 1,000 civilians and injuring thousands more. The protestsinvolved two distinct types of dissatisfied Chinese: those who looked tothe Soviet Union as an example and believed that Chinas recent politicalreforms had not gone far enough, and those who looked to the days of

Mao Zedong and believed they had gone too far. The hard-line reaction tothe pro-reform demonstrators showed that although China was liberatingits economy, it was not allowing any progress politically.

In 1990, in the midst of the collapse of communism, the next threatwas already making itself known. Iraq invaded the small, oil-rich nationof Kuwait, a Western ally and former British protectorate. Iraq had in factpreviously tried to annex Kuwait in the 1960s after the smaller nationdeclared its independence from Britain, but the British military hadstopped them. By 1990, Iraq was willing to risk military reprisals becauseof the expense of the Iran-Iraq War fought during Reagans terms (anothersense in which Bushs presidency may be seen as the inertia or follow-through of Reagans). The oil crises of the 1970s were a recent memory,and Kuwaits oil production was significant to the Western economy. The

United Nations Security Council, at the request of the United States andthe United Kingdom, set a deadline for Iraqs withdrawal and declaredwar when it was ignored. The war, fought by a coalition of two dozennations and including more than five hundred thousand American troops,took less than two months.

While the war was controversial in the United States, far more dam-aging to Bushs approval rating was his decision to leave Saddam Husseinand his regime in charge of Iraq, feeling that to remove the dictator wouldleave the United States with the unwieldy and complicated task of admin-istering Iraq during a transition period. Many felt that the war, justified ornot, was left incomplete, even unwon, and the next election reflected this:Governor Bill Clinton, Carter-like in his outsider governor status but farmore liberal, won the 1992 election and was reelected in 1996, presidingover the 1990s as surely as Reagan had over the 1980s, though he faceda contentious Congress in doing so.

Clinton was the youngest president since John F. Kennedy and a pop-ular moderate Democrat, one of the so-called New Democrats whowanted to move the party closer to the center after the overwhelming suc-cess of the Reagan elections had convinced others that the party neededto embrace conservatism. His focus was primarily domestic policyannouncing, for instance, that he would allow gays to enter the military.


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His ambitious and hopeful plan for a national health care system, the goalof which was to provide medical care for all American citizens, wasdefeated by a strong campaign by the Republican Party and the insuranceindustry. Any hope of its revival was squashed in the 1994 midterm elec-

tions, when a new wave of neoconservative Republicans gained a total offifty-four seats in the House of Representatives, creating the firstRepublican majority since 1954.

The new speaker of the House was Newt Gingrich, a GeorgiaRepublican who co-wrote with Representative Dick Armey the Contractwith America (CWA), which had been introduced six weeks before theelections and turned the congressional elections into a national concern,reducing the importance of local issues for the time being. The CWAspelled out specific actions the Republican Party promised to take ifgranted the majority, with all the Republican candidates and all but twoof the Republican congressmen pledging to vote as a bloc on the bills theCWA outlined.

Most of the CWA bills died in the Senate, were vetoed by Clinton, or

suffered substantial alteration before passing into law, but the issues theydealt with demonstrate the concerns of the Republican Party during theClinton years: a balanced budget amendment and line-item veto; law andorder; welfare reform, including a two- to five-year limit on assistance andthe denial of assistance to unwed mothers under eighteen; legal reformsthat included limits to corporate liability and punishments for frivolouslawsuits; and a strengthening of parents power in their childrens lives,relative to the power of the education system (school voucher proposalsfall under this general category while also addressing bipartisan concernswith education reform).

Right-wing movements continued to strengthen in the United States.Rush Limbaughs radio show was the most visible example of a growingsentiment in the right wing that seemed to suggest most government was

bad government. This so-called Republican Revolutionwhich also sawGeorge W. Bush, son of former President George H. W. Bush, elected gov-ernor of Texasculminated in a government shutdown in early 1996,when Republicans (who lacked the votes to override a presidential veto)refused to submit a revised budget, forcing parts of the federal govern-ment to temporarily suspend operations for lack of funding. The shut-down did not last long, and the right-leaning tide was not sufficient toforestall Clintons reelection later in the year.

During the Clinton years, the economy experienced the longestperiod of growth in history, in part because of reduced defense spend-ing following the collapse of the Soviet Union and in large part becauseof Clintons focus on deficit reduction. His original plans called for aspending reduction in the hundreds of billions of dollars and a taxincrease for the very wealthiest tax bracket, but the RepublicanCongress fought him on both issues. Even with the necessary compro-mises, thoughand perhaps with Republican welfare reform helpingon some frontsClintons reforms had their desired effect: inflation andunemployment dropped to pre-1960s levels, and more than 22 millionjobs were created. Clinton also proposed the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA), inspired by the agreements of the European


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Economic Community. NAFTA removed tariffs and similar restrictionsamong the North American countries (the United States, Canada, andMexico).

His foreign policy, meanwhile, was concerned principally with peace-

keeping endeavors in Bosnia and Herzegovina (formerly part ofYugoslavia) and the province of Kosovo in the new Federal Republic ofYugoslavia, where tensions between Serbs and ethnic Albanians led to thekilling of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Albanians byinvading Serb forces. The U.S.-led attacks, in conjunction with the NorthAtlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on Serbia were not approved by theUnited Nations, an exception in an era when the United States otherwiseworked closely enough with the United Nations to prompt Americanright-wing complaints.

The groundswell of conservative fervor was enough to bolster the2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush in an election closeenough that it was decided in the Supreme Court, amid numerousreports of ballot tampering and sheer incompetence in the tallies, prima-

rily in Florida. With Floridas twenty-five electoral votes, Bush won theelection by five electoral votes, with half a million fewer popular votesthan his opponent, Clintons vice president Al Gore. Persistent issuespertaining to the election process and calls for electoral reform were thehighlight of the first eight months of Bushs presidency, as the economylost the steam built up in the 1990s and the technology-related boombegan to subside.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists associated with the al Qaeda net-work of extreme Muslim militants hijacked four airplanes. One wascrashed in southern Pennsylvania, probably because of the interventionof passengers. One was flown into the Pentagon. The remaining twodestroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, the second time inless than a decade that that building had been attacked by Middle

Eastern terrorists. The War on Terror that resulted included the estab-lishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the passing ofthe USA Patriot Act, both of which have been criticized. The UnitedStates invaded Afghanistan less than a month later, removing frompower the Taliban who had sheltered al Qaeda but failing to eliminatethe network itself or find the most important individuals responsible forthe attacks.

A few short months later, Bush declared that an axis of evil existed,three nations that supported terrorists and sought to develop or other-wise acquire weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weaponsand various biological and chemical weapons): Iran, Iraq, and NorthKorea. An invasion of Iraq followed, over the protest of the UnitedNations Security Council; though most Americans at the time believedthat Iraq was culpable in the 9/11 attacks, it was later confirmed thatthere was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. This time, SaddamHussein was removed from power, and his sons Qusay and Uday werekilled. But as President George H.W. Bush had feared during the firstGulf War, the United States became embroiled in a war against insur-gents and sectarian terrorists that lasted years after the Hussein govern-ment was toppled.


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ALTERNATE HISTORY

Every president-elect owes his victory to two kinds of votes: the onescast for him and the ones cast against the other candidate. While there

are many issues that determine voters preferences, two clear trendspersisted in the 1980 election: votes against Carter because of the oilcrisis (both indirectly and because of the effect it had on the economy)and the hostage crisis, and votes for Reagans fiscal and foreign policies.Those two are very closely linked: Reagan focused very precisely onthe faults of Carters administration and the ills facing the country dur-ing it. And the two biggest signs of those ills were caused by theIranian Revolution, which Carter could have prevented.

What if he had?In ignoring the Shahs plight, Carter relied not on old intervention-

ist policies but on two key sources of advice: his own personal dislikeof the Shahs human rights abuses and the State Departments short-sighted prediction that any change in the regime would be a good one.What if he had instead used the Shahs vulnerability as leverage anddecided to continue to deal with a known quantity rather than risk anunknown? It was potentially the perfect opportunity to reshape Iranand its future, and to build a stronger ally in the Middle East, whichthe 1973 oil crisis had shown would be helpful, even necessary, for astable American economy (indeed, the U.S. relationship with SaudiArabia has been an important part of the nations foreign relations).

Aid in the form of money and arms, and a diplomatic big stickstrategic sword-rattling to discourage potential Iranian revolutionar-iescould have been exchanged for guarantees from the Shah to stepup his reforms. The secret police could have been dissolved, or morelikely reformed, and free elections could have been scheduled for the

1980s. The Shah fell because he alienated both the conservative reli-gious factions and the liberal Western-thinking factions in his country,leaving him with little room for allies. A stronger American alliance,while driving an even bigger wedge between the Iranian governmentand men like the Ayatollah Khomeini, would have better satisfied theliberals. Oil production still would have fallen because of internal tur-moil, but not to such extent as it did, and the other OPEC nationswould have been able to make up the difference; prices would haverisen enough to be worrisome but would have stabilized within a mat-ter of months. With no Iranian Revolution, the Shah would not haveneeded to take asylum in the United States, and no hostages wouldhave been taken; with no true oil crisis, the American people wouldnot have gone to the polls in November 1980 reminded of the 1973

energy crisis.When the Shah died, the United States would have supported his

legal heir, Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, a student at the University of SouthernCalifornia. The twenty-year-old Pahlavi was a vocal proponent ofhuman rights, and he would have promoted the possibility of reestab-lishing a constitutional monarchy. Carter would have won reelectionby a narrow margin, aided by the hope of a powerful Middle Easternalliance, though Republicans still would have taken the Senate. The


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first two years of Carters second term would have been promisingthe economy would have taken a turn for the better, and although rela-tions with the Soviet Union would have been poor since the invasionof Afghanistan, the new Shah of Iran would have scheduled free elec-

tions for the office of the prime minister. The new Shah would alsohave redefined the role of monarch and would have assembled a groupof civic and liberal religious leaders to consult on a constitution.

On election day 1983, though, an Islamic fundamentalist groupassociated with the Ayatollah Khomeini and supported by key figuresin the Iranian military would have stormed the polling places and var-ious government offices, including the American embassy. Pahlaviwould have been killed in his home, with several of his advisers andhis prime minister. The Ayatollah Khomeini would not have simplybeen installed as leader, but he would have been declared the legallyelected ruler, as his people would have seized the voting results.

Fighting would have continued for much of the rest of the year,and the Carter administration would have backed an Iraqi invasion ofIran in February 1984. The resulting oil crisis would have reignited thesmoldering embers of stagflation, the combination of soaring inflationand stagnant growth that had marked much of the 1970s. A deeprecession would have set in as Vice President Walter Mondale andGeorge H. W. Bush would have secured the Democratic andRepublican nominations (respectively) for the 1984 presidential elec-tion. Bushs accusations of Carters appeasement of Middle Easternersand his vice presidents culpability in the current turmoil, along withhis calls for strong measures against the Soviets and promise of a solu-tion to the nations economic woes, would have helped him win theelection handily. Mondale would have suffered from a general lack ofcharisma and his association with a presidency perceived as at best

friendly and competent, at worst damaging and fiscally dangerous.A Yale-educated fiscally moderate neoconservative, Bushs eco-nomic plans would not have been as drastic as Reagans had been. Hewould have promised to lower taxes and would have reduced thefunding for many government programs, from foreign aid and specialinterest subsidies to public works programs. However, he also wouldhave rejected the notion of a balanced-budget amendment, declaringthat the government must be weaned of its addictions to spendingbefore it could be simply cut off. His moderate policies would havebeen slow to have visible effect but would have eventually curtailed therecession.

Bushs foreign policy would have been much more aggressive thanCarters. Under Bushs two terms, the United States would have

invaded Panama, Nicaragua, and Iraq, each time seeking to depose aleader who had at one point been an American allya point thatwould have been brought up repeatedly by the Democratic Party. TheGulf War would have been the largest of these military operations, bigenough that there would have beenif only brieflymurmurs of adraft revival, should the war suddenly explode into the rest of theMiddle East. Though anti-American sentiment would have beenstrong, the war would have been successfully contained in Iraq, in part


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because of Bushs decision to allow Saddam Hussein to remain inpower.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, would have begun its collapseandin its desperation, it would have violently crushed anticommunist

movements in Poland and Hungary, the second of which would haveled to a UN action backed by the United States. Relying mainly onembargoes and sanctions to force the Soviets from Hungary, the con-frontation would still have been ongoing when Bush left office andDemocrat Richard Gephardt would have replaced him as president. Amoderate Democrat and social conservative, Gephardt would havesupported much of Bushs early economic policy but would haveopposed him on foreign policy. In the aftermath of a Middle East warand the threat of more problems with the Soviet Union, the economywould still have been recessionary; its recovery would have slowed inBushs second term. Gephardts campaign promises would have per-tained mostly to the economy and the containment of foreign turmoil,but the dissolution of the Soviet Union would have consumed muchof his presidency. With the advent of Soviet premier MikhailGorbachev and his liberal policies, Cold War confrontation wouldhave been subdued.

Gephardt and Gorbachev would have signed two disarmamenttreaties and negotiated the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and in 1995Gorbachev would have been peacefully removed from power by a rad-ical communist faction. The Soviet Union would have broken into itsconstituent nations, most of which would quickly have converted tofree-market statesRussia itself would have remained communist until2002, the last formerly Soviet state to make the change to democracy.

Gephardt would have initiated few of the social reforms he hadhoped to introduce, but the economy would have started to regain

some of its health as the computer and telecommunications industriesblossomed and markets were opened up in Eastern Europe. The late1990s would have been marked by a rash of terrorist incidents byMuslim extremists, most of them against the United States, the UnitedKingdom, and the Western world in general, but communist die-hardgroups would have attacked as well, setting off bombs in London andtaking five American tourists hostage in Moscow for a fortnight.

In the 1996 presidential election, Ross Perot would have beenelected the first third-party candidate since the dominance of theRepublican and Democratic parties began, thanks to the publics dis-satisfaction with the economic failures of the Democratic Party, theperception of the Republican candidates as Washington insiders(Republican candidate Senator Robert Dole had been Gerald Fords

running mate twenty years earlier), and Perots upbeat appeal.Perot would have dealt quickly with the nations oil problems,

pushing through legislation that would have required from all cars soldor registered in the United States a level of fuel efficiency the industrywould have claimed was unreasonable. The debate over efficiencystandards would have become very public: anything but political,Perot would have been very clear about his belief that the bill wasunfairly opposed by big industry, and his remarks would have verged


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on the libelous. The White House would have run through three presssecretaries in its first one hundred days, during which time Perotwould have instituted an emergency gas tax as an executive action, asa way to reduce the deficit, and he would have promised tax incentives

to anyone buying a 1999 car (the first year the new automobiles wouldhave been subject to the new efficiency standards).

As the millennium approached, Perot would have called for a newconstitutional conventionpointing out that the Constitution waswritten before most of the aspects of modern American life and gov-ernment existed, and that while its basic principles were sound, it wasundoubtedly not what the founding fathers would have conceived ofhad they lived in the year 2000. Perots constitutional conventionwould have had no specific authority; it would have been intendedmore as a think tank, a way to encourage a rhetoric of principles ratherthan the sound-bite-driven politics Perot so abhorred.

Though erratic, President Perot would have been popular. Hewould have opposed the relocation of American industries to Mexicoand the interventionist policies of the last few decades in actual history.Alienating many neoconservatives who otherwise liked his ability tobreak down the two-party system, Perot would have called for a returnto isolationism, summed up in the phrase: govern America and let theworld govern itself. Military spending would have been graduallyreduced or appropriated for other uses, and Perot would repeatedlyhave declared that a defense budget should be exactly that: a budgetfor an adequate defense, not an offense and not the provision of troopsto other countries, whether those countries are free market or not. Thiswould have been the primary point on which he would have beenopposed in the 2000 election by both party candidates, but he wouldhave won with a slight majority. (Third-party candidates would not

have fared so well at the legislative levelno third-party senatorwould have won election, and only a handful of third-party represen-tatives would have been elected.)

The return to isolationism could have been too late. Terrorist activ-ity would have continued to mount, and both the Middle East and theformerly Soviet communists would have harbored grudges againstAmerican interference of the past several decades. In 2003, a coalitionof Islamic fundamentalists (mostly Iranian) and Azerbaijani commu-nists could have detonated bombs in U.S. federal buildings in Houstonand Dallas, believed to be symbols of the cowboy America they wereprotesting. An associated attack plan on the Strategic PetroleumReserve would have been exposed and prevented. Despite his boister-ous speeches on the matter, Perot would have seemed flummoxed as

to how to reactobjecting to every plan put forward without develop-ing one of his own, and contradicting himself several times in the firstfew weeks after the attacks. His plan to hunt down and bring to jus-tice the individuals responsible would not have seemed fruitful, sinceso many of them died in the attack, and he would have rejected out-right the suggestion of many Republicans to strike back at Iran.

The Iranian War would have begun in the middle of 2005,though it would have seemed inevitable long before that and would


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have played a role in Republican senator John McCains election. Thelast straw would have come when the Ayatollah would have grantedasylum to the non-Iranian terrorists involved in the attacks, essen-tially goading the United States into action. In accordance with UN

rulings, the United States would have given Iran six months to turnthe terrorists over, and on the eve of the last day would havelaunched an air strike on Tehran. Iraq, Syria, and Egypt would havejoined Irans side, with other Middle Eastern nations and Islamicgroups offering assistance of one form or another. Israel and theUnited Kingdom would have joined the United States, which wouldhave had the approval of the United Nations. Russian leaders wouldhave implied that they were considering coming to Irans aid, butnever would have done so.

Oil production would have plummeted as prices skyrocketed, fedby panic and opportunistic price hikes both abroad and domestically.Terrorist attacks would have continued on American embassies andcitizens abroad, with bombings, kidnappings, and attempts in theMiddle East, North Africa, Turkey, Greece, and France. The mostsevere would have been the shooting down of an American passengerplane by an Eastern European communist group using abandoned orstolen Soviet ordnance, and the kidnapping of twenty-sevenAmericans at the embassy in Greece. Though the Greek governmentwould have condemned the kidnapping and lent its help in a rescueattempt, most of the kidnappers would have escaped with eleven ofthe hostages, making it safely to Egypt where they would have contin-ued to demand that the United States withdraw from Iran. Formerpresidents Perot and Carter both would have made diplomatic over-tures, the latter on behalf of the United Nations. Perot would have pro-posed a redrawn map of the Middle East with a Jerusalem that would

have been resettled in twelve-year shifts, like a timeshare.By the mid-2000s, the war in Iran would have threatened toexpand, as both sides would have characterized it as more of an ideo-logical war than one between nations, even a proxy war betweenChristianity and Islam, ignoring the fact that many Muslims opposedthe extremist regimes of leaders like the Ayatollah, and manyChristians supported systems other than that of the United States. Oilprices and the popularity of large vehicles and trucks would have con-tributed to a deep recession, while electric and hybrid automobileswould have been two or three decades behind the design curve,remaining too expensive for the average consumer.

Bill Ktepi

Discussion Questions

1. In the alternate scenario presented in this chapter, independent RossPerot wins the 1996 presidential election. Do you think that Perotwould have drawn more support from Democrats or fromRepublicans?


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2. What issues do you think would be the focus of a constitutional con-vention called to rewrite the U.S. constitution?

3. If Jimmy Carter had been elected to a second term, as suggested as theoutcome of the 1980 election in this chapter, how would his policies

have resembled those of Ronald Reagan who was in fact elected? Howwould his policies have differed?

4. In the alternate scenario discussed in this chapter, different presidentsoccupy the White House from those who in fact were there throughthe two and a half decades following the election of 1980. What fun-damental aspects of international affairs remain the same as in actualhistory, and what aspects turn out differently?

5. This chapter demonstrates some of the reasons the greatest interna-tional crises faced by the United States have changed from the threatof communism to the threat posed by extreme Islamists. Are there anypolicies adopted by the actual or alternate American leaders in thischapter that might have ameliorated the latter threat? Could the actual

President Jimmy Carter or the alternate President Ross Perot haveadopted policies that would have avoided extreme Islamist hostility tothe United States?

Bibliography and Further Reading

Berman, Larry, ed. Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency. Baltimore, MD:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Busch, Andrew E. Reagans Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 andthe Rise of the Right. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

Campagna, Anthony S. The Economy in the Reagan Years: The Economic

Consequences of the Reagan Administrations.Westport, CT: Greenwood,1994.

Collins, Robert M. More: The Politics of Economic Growth in PostwarAmerica. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Denton, Robert E., Jr. Primetime Presidency of Ronald Reagan: The Era ofthe Television Presidency. New York: Praeger, 1988.

Fitzgerald, Frances. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and theEnd of the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Germond, Jack W., and Jules Witcouver. Blue Smoke and Mirrors: HowReagan Won and Why Carter Lost the Election of 1980. New York: Viking,2001.

Gilder, George. Wealth and Poverty. New York: ICS Press, 1993.

Glad, Betty, and Chris J. Dolan. Striking First: The Preventive War Doctrineand the Reshaping of U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2004.

Haynes, Johnson. Sleepwalking through History: America in the ReaganYears. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.

Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan, 19641980: The Fall of the OldLiberal Order. New York: Prima, 2001.


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Lettow, Paul. Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.New York: Random House, 2006.

Salamon, Lester M., and Michael S. Lund, eds. The Reagan Presidencyand the Governing of America. New York: University Press of America,

1987.Troy, Gil. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).


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24 C H A P T E R 2 Reaganomics

With slow economic growth, the effects were multiplied. The world oilmarket was increasingly controlled by OPEC (Organization of PetroleumExporting Countries) as that cartel sought to raise prices for crude oil byreducing global supply. For the United States, this occurrence would nothave been as painful had the Shah of Iran not been overthrown by hard-line Islamists in the 1979 revolution. Those in power, including the

Ayatollah Khomeini, viewed the Americans as a mortal enemy and refusedto continue supplying the cheap oil that still drives the U.S. economytoday.

In any American city, the hardship of long lines of cars at filling sta-tions was not quickly forgotten by the voting public. Drastic increases inthe price of goods and services forced many Americans to make hardchoices. When the election of 1980 came, many Americans were fed upwith the policies of President Carter and were looking for change. Thepersonification of this change was to come in the form of California gov-ernor Ronald Wilson Reagan. A fiscal conservative and staunch anticom-munist, Reagan had the everyman

Documents

Carlisle & Golson. Reagan Era