On The Brink, Jay Winik, (Simon & Schuster, 1996).
I bought this book, new, when it first came out fourteen years ago, but never got around to reading it because I was usually otherwise preoccupied, and besides, it's a formidable book, almost 700 pages, and no colored pictures in it, and lots of big words......hence a book the primitives aren't ever going to read, but should.
It was written by someone with impressive liberal credentials, by the way.
Having spent the last two days reading it--I could rarely put it down--I regret not having read it long before.
The book deals with U.S.-Soviet relations during the Reagan administration (1981-1989), most but not all with the various arms-control negotiations and summit meetings. It also covers things such as the struggle for the soul of the Democrat party during the 1970s all through the 1980s (as we all know, the good guys lost there), the collapse of any real purpose for the United Nations, and the competition between one of the best Secretaries of State we've ever had, George Shultz, and one of the best Secretaries of Defense we've ever had, Caspar Weinberger.
It focuses mostly upon four people, all these other people and events swirling around them--Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Kampelman, and Elliot Abrams, all of them Democrats who had become considerably disillusioned with James Carter (1977-1981), who was giving away the farm.....and almost succeeded.
In 1980, one would have had to be some years past 60 years of age, to remember a time when the west, and America specifically, were not in decline and retreat. It's true the United States was instrumental in winning two world wars, but the history of the 60 years 1920-1980 was that of a lack of will, decay and erosion, as western democratic institutions and influence servilely acquiesced to the emergence of the socialist alternatives.
I grew up in this era; seeing large parts of the global map turn socialist grey (or red, for blood).
I grew up believing that the good guys were going to lose, in the end. But one hoped the end would take a long time coming, and that we democrats (small "d" here) would acquit ourselves valiantly in our inevitable demise, so as to serve as an example for generations hundreds, thousands, of years later.
I was very pessimistic. It was inevitable; the bad guys were going to win, in the end.
As a college student, I hailed Alexander Solzhenitsyn's speech at Harvard during the late 1970s, despite that no one else did. What he said was exactly true--the west had lost its will to survive.
Remember, this was also during the massive "nuclear freeze" demonstrations; demonstrations "demanding" that the United States rein in its weaponry, while demanding no such thing of the socialist empires, during the increasingly acrimonious Democrat partisanship in Congress, during various humiliations of the United States on both the battlefields and the forum of public opinion.
We weren't going to make it; we were going down.
Very fortunately, franksolich had nothing to do with the conduct of foreign affairs during the Reagan administration
Up until the advent of people such as Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Kampelman, and Elliot Abrams, I was not ever aware that such people existed any more, public officials with great responsibilities who actually believed in winning rather than giving way.
Damn, I was a negative kid.
When we were still at our old home, one time I commented that December 25, 1989 had been perhaps the most momentous day in my life. That morning, when I arose, I glanced at the screen of the television set, and watched as the bodies of Nicolai and Elena Cecesceau were dragged through the streets of Bucharest.
I stopped breathing, and had to sit down to watch.
My God, I thought; rather than the socialists killing the people, the people are killing the socialists.
The world had turned upside down.
Anyway, it's a good book, maybe a little long for most, but a good book.