'Warriors three' - The Collapse of the Soviet Union

Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II: there are no finer names to get Lefty blood boiling. John O’Sullivan, a conservative writer, journalist, and editor and one-time advisor to Thatcher, finds all three admirable. But then that’s how it goes. One side’s heroes are another side’s villains and God forbid we should find anything admirable in our villains or disappointing in our heroes. Not that The President, The Pope and the Prime Minister: Three who changed the world is a hagiography. But it is certainly written from a conservative viewpoint.

Its main thrust is the part these three played in the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are those that will tell you the Soviet Union would have collapsed anyway. Oddly these are often the same people who were screaming at the policies that were brought in place to try and engender the collapse of the Soviet Union. These policies will never work! They’re dangerous! We’ll be at war before the USSR collapses! [USSR collapses] Oh well, that was always going to happen.

This is the argument used whenever someone we don’t like does something that is good; that was always going to happen, or as an alternative, oh anyone would have done the same in the same circumstances. God knows I’ve done it myself. But John O’Sullivan shows that the downfall of the Soviet Union was brought about in large part due to the change in direction at the Vatican, Downing Street and the White House when these ‘conservative’ leaders took quite radical turns.

It was Richard Nixon who engineered Détente, a policy of co-existence that was to ensure that the two

most powerful nations in the world would have no reason to go to war. But what this did, as writers and dissidents such as Natan Sharansky will tell you, was to trade the human rights of people living under the Soviet Union for international stability. Living in a Western democracy that now was under less threat, this probably seemed like a good deal. Living in a gulag, less so.

Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II refused to accept the Soviet Union as a fact of life. And this was quite a radical step. During Reagan’s presidency for example, Teddy Kennedy visited the USSR to advise them how to deal with Reagan. This was not done out of any traitorous leanings but because Kennedy, like so many, assumed the USSR was not going anywhere and so to antagonise them as Reagan was doing, was dangerous. It was sincerely held belief, and as it turns out, wrong.

John Paul knew what living under a Communist dictatorship was like, which drove his policy towards the Soviet Union. His visit to Poland in 1979, which O'Sullivan sees as a starting point, was greeted by thousands and thousands of his fellow Poles, giving them the knowledge that their unhappiness with their government was shared by millions of their fellow Poles. Between his speeches calling for free and just government and their sheer will and numbers, the Poles received strong moral support for their long and difficult campaign for freedom.

This was supported by political, military, economic and moral pressure from Britian and the US. Sullivan brings together many of the events of that time from 1978 through to showing the effect on the Cold War endgame, including the Falklands War, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the assasination attempts on all three of his main players. Some of the stories as played out in popular culture are revealed as having layers. For example, Reagan’s Star Wars Initiative as it was known was a controversial attempt to build defensive missile shield in outer space. This was portrayed at the time as as dangerous game of military-economic brinkmanship. Less well known was Regan’s repeated offers to the USSR to share the technology. If both sides had it, then they could both reduce their nuclear stockpile as it would not be much use. This offer was knocked back, more than once. Certainly I never knew this. Doubtless the element of risk was still there. But if O’Sullivan’s account is accurate, Reagan read the Soviets better than they read him.

 Of course it was not just these three people who brought about the change. From Lech Walena through to the thousands of politicians, workers, protesters and dissidents in many countries, most of whose names we will never know, there were many others, and their struggles and sacrifices were crucial. But their efforts would have been in vain without the support of these leaders showing it in practical terms on the world stage.

You can read of more critical accounts of this time - His Holiness by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, for example - if you wish, and I don’t claim this book to be the final word. Any big topic like this requires wide reading. Nor, before anyone jumps and down, do I claim these three are beyond criticism. But it shook a few of my preconceptions of the time, particularly my view of Reagan, and that’s a good thing. If you only read to find writers you agree with, what’s the point of reading at all?