Romesh Ratnesar: The U.S. and Mubarak: What Would Reagan Do?
[Ratnesar, a TIME contributing editor-at-large, is a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War.]
"You will be visiting Berlin at a time of ferment," Secretary of State George Shultz wrote to his boss, Ronald Reagan, on May 11, 1987. The confidential memo was included in the briefing materials given to Reagan before a trip to Europe, which would include a speech in West Berlin. "Your address ... offers the chance to call for the lowering of East-West barriers and an improved situation in Berlin," a city that had been divided for 40 years. Shultz encouraged Reagan to appeal to Germans' hope for change. "There is a sense," the Secretary wrote, "of a need for emancipation."
One month later, Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and delivered the six most famous words of his presidency: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Two years after that, the Berlin Wall collapsed.
Most of the President's foreign policy advisers, however, thought it had been a mistake for Reagan to issue the challenge to Gorbachev. The exhortations made by Shultz in his memo to Reagan — part of a sheaf of newly declassified documents made available to me by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — were unusual. Reagan Administration officials wanted to pressure Mikhail Gorbachev to open up the communist bloc, but they were uncertain about how aggressively to do so. Progress takes time, some argued. The world is complicated. Gradual change is in America's best interest....
Read entire article at Time.com
"You will be visiting Berlin at a time of ferment," Secretary of State George Shultz wrote to his boss, Ronald Reagan, on May 11, 1987. The confidential memo was included in the briefing materials given to Reagan before a trip to Europe, which would include a speech in West Berlin. "Your address ... offers the chance to call for the lowering of East-West barriers and an improved situation in Berlin," a city that had been divided for 40 years. Shultz encouraged Reagan to appeal to Germans' hope for change. "There is a sense," the Secretary wrote, "of a need for emancipation."
One month later, Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and delivered the six most famous words of his presidency: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Two years after that, the Berlin Wall collapsed.
Most of the President's foreign policy advisers, however, thought it had been a mistake for Reagan to issue the challenge to Gorbachev. The exhortations made by Shultz in his memo to Reagan — part of a sheaf of newly declassified documents made available to me by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — were unusual. Reagan Administration officials wanted to pressure Mikhail Gorbachev to open up the communist bloc, but they were uncertain about how aggressively to do so. Progress takes time, some argued. The world is complicated. Gradual change is in America's best interest....