ple and the U.S. Congress were reluctant to persist in
Lebanon. President Reagan withdrew all U.S. troops
in February, 1984, and throughout the rest of the de-
cade, the Reagan and Bush administrations were
pestered by radical Lebanese Muslims and Palestin-
ians taking Americans as hostages. Indeed, one of
the secondary goals in the Iran-Contra affair was to
secure Iranian help in winning release of some of
the hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. The
“Vietnam syndrome” of reluctance to employ direct
military force to achieve U.S. objectives continued to
shape popular attitudes and foreign policy through-
out the decade. Presidents Reagan and Bush la-
bored under this constraint.
Impact One resource abundantly available to and
frequently used by presidents was the “bully pulpit”:
Both Reagan and Bush employed presidential
speeches effectively to portray the forces of lawless-
ness and tyranny abroad as common enemies, not
just of the United States, but of all free peoples.
Within the Western Hemisphere, this rhetoric was
challenged by the United States’ willingness to sup-
port repressive dictatorships as long as they were op-
posed to communism. In Europe, however, the Cold
War was defined by the struggle between the democ-
racies composing the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation (NATO) and the communist bloc powers of
the Warsaw Pact. Especially across East Central Eu-
rope, Reagan was a steadfast advocate of the view
that the Cold War was not merely a contest between
two strong empires but a titanic struggle between
the good of the West and, as he memorably put it to
the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982, the
“totalitarian evil” in control of the East.
Known as the Great Communicator, Reagan had
an ability to turn a phrase that never was more effec-
tive than when he visited the Berlin Wall on June 12,
- He implored the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorba-
chev, to “tear down this wall.” Such phrases may have
sounded quaint to jaded Western publics, but in com-
munities of activists denied all basic and fundamental
human rights in East Central Europe, Reagan was
heard. In the fall of 1989, all across the region, re-
ligious and human rights activists confronted each
totalitarian system Stalin had imposed in the late
1940’s. Symbolized by the opening of the Berlin Wall
on November 9, during 1989, freedom was won
peaceably by the peoples of Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, East Germany, and Bulgaria, and by violent
anticommunist revolution in Romania. The wide-
spread revolution vividly underlined that the purpose
of U.S. foreign policy outlined by President Harry S.
Truman in 1947—containment of communism until
free peoples could overcome it—under Reagan and
Bush finally had been achieved.Subsequent Events The worldwide anticommunist
revolution championed by the United States during
the Reagan-Bush years grew in the early 1990’s, cul-
minating in the collapse of the communist system in
the Soviet Union itself in August, 1991.Further Reading
Cox, Michael, et al., eds.American Democracy Promo-
tion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts.New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000. Eight leading ana-
lysts assess the importance of policies to advance
U.S. values in winning the Cold War.
Gaddis, John Lewis,The United States and the End of
the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provoca-
tions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Eminent historian reveals how habits learned over
several decades successfully guided the manage-
ment of the final stages of a dangerous super-
power rivalry.
Matlock, Jack F., Jr.Reagan and Gorbachev: How the
Cold War Ended. New York: Random House, 2004.
Veteran diplomat and Reagan-era U.S. ambassa-
dor to Moscow reveals the complicated interplay
between Soviet efforts to reform, the U.S. arms
buildup, and diplomatic efforts to end the Cold
War.
Woodward, Bob,Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-
1987. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Through focus on efforts by Director of Central
Intelligence William J. Casey, Reagan-era policies
that confronted the Soviet Union, its allies, and
international terrorism are revealed.
Gordon L. BowenSee also Anderson, Terry; Beirut bombings; Ber-
lin Wall; Bush, George H. W.; Cold War; Grenada
invasion; Iran-Contra affair; Iranian hostage crisis;
Israel and the United States; Kirkpatrick, Jeane;
Klinghoffer, Leon; Latin America; Middle East and
North America; North, Oliver; Poindexter, John;
Reagan, Ronald; Reagan Doctrine; Reagan’s “Evil
Empire” speech; Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI);
Terrorism; Weinberger, Caspar.390 Foreign policy of the United States The Eighties in America