Evil Empire 103on. As a result, this side was seen as the sickly flower of media—and
Putin’s—manipulation. By choosing sides at the beginning of this
ongoing conflict and by succumbing to the Reaganite inheritance,
Washington lost the chance to operate as an honest broker, to tamp
down tensions on both sides, and to push them toward a mutually
acceptable resolution.an irony is that Reagan’s reductive rhetoric did not impede his own
foreign policy in the same way. He was more flexible than his wording
implied. When he had the chance, he worked brilliantly with Gorbachev.
Yet the burden of Reagan’s rhetoric has grown and endured, imposing
on U.S. foreign policy the unspoken attribution of goodness to the
United States. This has been bad for the U.S.–Russian relationship. The
underlying U.S. assumption is that Russians must accept U.S. action
in Europe as a force for good. After 1945, after all, the United States
brought lasting peace to Western Europe. It built up structures for the
multilateral resolution of conflict, including what would become the
European Union. It helped put to rest the Franco-German animosities
that had resulted in two world wars. In 1989, this assumption goes,
the United States managed the end of the Cold War peacefully; wisely
presided over Germany’s reunification; and then joined with Germany,
France, and other Western European powers to extend the blessings
of the Pax Americana to Central and Eastern Europe. The lynchpin of
U.S. policy was granting sovereignty to small states. There would be
no spheres of influence. Nobody was entitled to an empire in Europe.
Lithuania had the right to choose EU and NATO membership. So, too,
in theory, did Georgia and Ukraine, and this right was the cornerstone
of a free and peaceful Europe.