Did U.S. President Ronald Reagan end the Cold War? Or did the war end because Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned it? William Inboden argues forcefully for the former interpretation in his new book, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. Reagan's strategy in dealing with the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War involved reviving the U.S. economy, restoring American self-confidence, rebuilding American military might, and working closely with our democratic allies. He then pressured the Soviet Union into an economically unsustainable arms race, engaged in proxy battles with them around the globe, and waged a successful propaganda war that pitted the political, religious, and economic liberties of the “free world” against the bankruptcy and tyranny of the “evil empire.” But when liberalizing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in 1985, Reagan saw sooner than most of his advisors that here was a reformer with whom he could work to bring peace. 

William Inboden is the Executive Director and William Powers Jr. Chair of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. He previously held senior positions with the State Department and in the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. In this podcast, Inboden describes his work on Capitol Hill, his graduate study that focused on both U.S. diplomatic history and American religious history, his service in the Bush White House as well as with the Legatum Institute in London, and his return to academia. He details the factors that inspired him to write The Peacemaker, the declassification of Reagan-era documents that enabled him to arrive at new historical insights into the Reagan presidency, and his own change in perspective that led him from being intensely critical of Reagan (particularly with regard to his support of authoritarian anti-communist regimes and insurgencies in Central and South America) to holding a more favorable assessment of his legacy. 

Inboden also discusses how former Republican president Dwight Eisenhower exerted a more significant influence on Reagan than most historians have recognized, how Reagan’s conception of the Cold War differed profoundly from that shared by his predecessors, how the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka “Star Wars”) was at the heart of his strategic vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and why he is confident that the Reaganite tradition in the Republican Party can be revived. Inboden also argues for the value and relevance of history for policymakers, as well as why he believes that public universities need to uphold their end of the implicit social contract they have long maintained with American society.