One of the most Orwellian aspects of modern conservative ideology is their application of doublethink to history. The conservatives repeatedly denounce what they call "liberal revisionism," while at the same time engaging in their own revisionist re-writing (read: forgetting) of history. Probably the single best example of this is the conservatives' tiresome and fictitious claim that "Reagan defeated the Soviet Union." An interesting side point about the conservatives' claim is that they are almost right; but that even they don't want to admit what it is that they're almost right about, as it would negate the deeper argument that they are trying to make with their Reagan fantasy.
The essential conservative argument about Reagan is, that Reagan defeated the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War by spending the Soviets to death, making them spend lots of money for military weapons to counter the heavy spending that we were engaging in. They assert that the Soviets were forced to outspend themselves in order to keep up with US spending, and that the Soviets could not afford this alleged increase in spending; by not spending money on more needed projects (like better roads, or improved agricultural systems, or better consumer goods), the Soviets wasted themselves away on military spending. The conservatives lay the credit for this alleged behavior at Reagan's feet, citing the enormous defense budget of his first four years of administration.
As is the case with most myths, this one has a certain element of factual basis, which is as follows:
1) The Soviets did, indeed, over-spend themselves on defense, throughout the entire course of the Cold War; this over-spending did contribute significantly, probably decisively, to the fall of the Soviet Union by making it difficult for them to fix many of their non-defense-related troubles after the conclusion of World War Two.
2) Reagan did, indeed, substantially increase American defense spending, by an amount that rivals many wartime increases in American history.
3) The Soviet Union began large-scale deployments of numerous high-tech land, air, and sea-based weapons systems during the Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations (e.g., the T-80/85/90 battle tanks, the BMP-1 and BMP-2 MICVs, and new infantry weapons and hand-held missile systems; MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, and the Tupolev "Blowback" bomber; a major new aircraft carrier class, the Kirov-class nuclear cruisers, and several other major seacraft classes; and many new and improved missiles for all three dimensions of modern warfare).
4) While the final collapse of the Soviet Union technically occurred in 1991, on Bush, Sr.'s watch, many of the decisive or formative events occurred during Reagan's regime in 1988.
Where these facts stop, and the conservative fictions begin, is in the relationship of Reagan with his political reality and the motives and objectives of the Republican Party at the time of Reagan's regime; and in the motives and spending behavior of the Soviet Union. The conservatives do their best to repress these other facts, as they invalidate many of their arguments today about the value of different aspects of Reagan's policy.
First of all, when presenting this argument, the conservatives do not like to remember the reasons and motivations behind Reagan's defense-spending hikes. When Reagan came into office, American national security was a shambles. President Carter had slashed the defense budget beyond the point of reason, and had canceled outright many vital military development programs. Logistical and operational capabilities had also been sacrificed. As a typical example of the state of affairs, by the end of administration, the US Navy didn't have enough fuel and ammunition to keep its ships stocked up; ships coming back to port were forced to cross-deck their remaining fuel and ammunition with ships getting ready to leave port. For a nation not at war and with no adversaries of consequence, this might be acceptable in peacetime, but the US was still engaging seriously in the Cold War, and at any time might have had to engage the Soviet Union in a full-scale military struggle. Thankfully, the leaders of both superpowers kept our differences from exploding into global warfare, but if things had gone otherwise the US would have had to overcome some major disadvantages in any conflict fought near the end of the Carter administration.
These problems were addressed by the Republicans both before and after the 1980 elections. The US Defense Department printed tons of literature, some of which I still have in my personal library, decrying America's military inferiority to the Soviet Union, and trying to sell back to American taxpayers, the US Congress, and the next president those programs cut by the Carter administration. The Pentagon wanted to see the B-1 bomber and Ohio SSBN/Trident ICBM programs re-installed, and also wanted to accelerate the delayed funding for the long-overdue M1 tank program. All of these programs, given new life by Reagan's budget, proved to be successful defense systems; the conventional warfare systems at least have proven their worth in action. But what is forgotten now is that Reagan's policy was not to "outspend the Soviet military", but to catch up to an opponent perceived as having finally achieved superiority. It had long been recognized that the Soviet Union held and would retain uncontested numerical superiority in most classes of military equipment, but NATO and the US had long fought to retain technical, qualitative superiority. A war between the superpowers would have been a contest between the larger but less sophisticated forces of the Warsaw Pact, and the smaller but qualitatively superior forces of NATO. By the end of Carter's administration, however, many American strategists were concerned that we had lost the vital technical edge, and that our numerical inferiority was worsening as well. The Republicans went into the crisis mode, and rapidly set out to repair American military capabilities when Reagan came into power.
A second problem with the conservative image and its conflict with history is that the Soviets deployed many major, new weapons systems during Reagan's regime which had been under development for some time (on the order of 10-20 years for most systems, which was normal for both the US and the USSR). Again, the Defense Department literature of the day was chock-full of de-classified intelligence for the average American to see what kind of weapons the Soviets were getting ready to deploy, so anyone who was interested (as I was at the time) knew well in advance about these systems long before they deployed to operational units. The Defense Department made sure that we knew about them during Carter's administration, so Reagan's regime can't be given credit for these weapons "suddenly" deploying; they had been designed in the 1960's and early 1970s, and then developed for deployment through Nixon's and Ford's presidencies and finally into Carter's. For interested civilians with no security clearance, such as myself, the deployment of the MiG-29, the T-80, and other contemporary weapons systems was no surprise, but a long-anticipated and expected event. It had nothing to do with Reagan; had Carter still been president, or a different Republican taken office, these weapons systems would still have been deployed when they were. And the spending on these systems was predominantly already completed by the time Reagan took over; the Soviets had already committed themselves financially and economically to the production of these systems before Reagan took oath as the president. The research, development, and deployment of these systems had nothing to do with Reagan or with American defense policies made after the Soviets had already committed themselves.
Once these weapons systems began deploying, Soviet military factories continued production at already established (or in some cases very marginally lower) rates than before; so, during Reagan's first term and the first half of his second, the Soviets did not make any visible response in defense spending or production to Reagan's defense expenditures. In fact, during Reagan's first term, the Soviets behaved as if they were perfectly comfortable with their security affairs and with their production and deployment levels (and if the Pentagon wasn't merely being paranoid in pointing out their perceived inferiority, then indeed the Soviets had every reason to feel comfortable).
However, in Reagan's second term Soviet behavior did start to change, and the truly sad and ironic part of these changes is that to a modest degree Reagan actually does deserve some of the credit for events; yet the conservatives refuse to acknowledge his real impact on events because it would go against the entire grain of current conservative ideology to do so. In 1985, Gorbachev became the General Secretary, and Gorbachev began making changes and demonstrating an interest in improving the Soviet system across a wide range of problem areas. By this time, Reagan's own defense policies had finally started to kick in, and the US now needed time to get these systems online. With a seemingly more reasonable leader in the Kremlin, Reagan chose to ignore all of the "Evil Empire" speeches that he had made and began actively seeking a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Reagan's complete reversal of his own foreign policy resulted in the Reykjavic summit, at which both Reagan and Gorbachev decided that they could work with each other. Gorbachev went back home and immediately began preaching "Military Sufficiency" to the Soviet Army. "Military Sufficiency" was political jargon for "cutting military spending across the board." It was basically the philosophy that the Soviet Union only needed forces sufficient to defend her territory, and that (with the US being reasonable about things, not to mention still somewhat behind on actual deployments) there was no immediately perceivable threat to Soviet territory, so the army was much bigger than it needed to be, and was also far too widely deployed in areas outside Soviet territory proper. Reagan had finally managed to get the Soviets to change their behavior, and that they did: by slashing their military budget, unilaterally withdrawing their entire army from central Europe (without America expressing any interest in doing the same), and ending the war in Afghanistan.
This, then, was the first visible sign that the Soviet Union had noticed Reagan's administration. Their behavior from Carter's time remained consistent until just after the Reykjavic summit. Then, suddenly, they noticed Mr. Reagan; and decided for the first time since World War Two that the US did not represent an immediate threat. So, while the conservatives give themselves a hard-on by imagining Reagan pumping up the American defense budget and forcing the Soviet Union into a defense-spending showdown, the reality is that the Soviets made Reagan (or at least the US government) change America's behavior instead. And while the reality of "Reagan the Warrior" is really rather impotent, the conservatives completely ignore "Reagan the Peacemaker", who did have an impact worthy of mention.
The conservatives' Reagan myth is not a mere mistake of perception or of misinterpretation, but is a deliberate marketing strategy intended to sell the conservative ideology and goals. The Republicans depend on the Reagan myth for their political strength and vitality; while it is not the central focus of conservatism, a recognition of "Reagan the Peacemaker" at the expense of "Reagan the Warrior" could jeopardize the Republican Party's image and their ability to sell their ideology and goals to the public. The conservative ideology can best be summed up by what J.L. Talmon called totalitarian democracy, and is based on the classical conservative ideal; which is the belief that men are not able to govern their own actions responsibly, but that a government of the rich and educated elite are so capable. The conservatives strive for an American society that is regimented and centralized, based on certain traditional authority figures, especially the father (at home), the corporation (at work), the state (in law), and God - specifically the Christian version (in the individual's mind and soul). The conservatives depend on American fears of the outside world, and have gone to every effort to exaggerate every possible force that does not represent their image of America as a "threat" to America. These fears must be met with by force, and not by negotiation or compromise; negotiation and compromise are contrary to the values of totalitarian democracy, in which authority is imposed with no regard to the wishes of others. Totalitarian democracy opposes the inclusion of alternate points of view, and of conflicting interests, and requires the maximum application of forceful authority wherever dissenting opinions may appear. Therefore, the idea that a threat can be reduced or eliminated by negotiation and compromise is detrimental to the Republican image of America and the world. The reality that the Soviet Union was peacefully convinced to demobilize on its own, and the idea that current "threats" can also potentially be "defeated" by reasonable and inclusive methods, is contrary to the heart of conservative ideology and objectives, and therefore to Republican strategy.
As a result, the Republicans, together with the conservative-owned media (ironically nicknamed by its very owners and operators as "liberal"), have transformed Reagan, at first impotent and merely responding to Soviet initiative, and then able to implement a reasonable and peaceful solution to a major threat of war, into something very different: a powerful and strong leader who forced the Soviet Union into defeat by strength of arms. The conservatives have deliberately revised history in order to sell their ideology of reaction, fear, force, and authoritarianism, a frightening package for the future that can best be described as totalitarian democracy. Peace, negotiation, and compromise can play no part in the conservative landscape, and so they must not merely create a vision of strength from thin air, they must also cover up all traces of the very elements of negotiation and compromise that Reagan employed in helping to end the Cold War and the Soviet threat. The conservatives must first cover up their own history, and then write a new one from whole cloth. They defend their dubious position by going on the offensive and condemning the liberal presentation of the facts as "revisionism." Thus, the conservatives employ doublethink as a central and principle strategy in their cultural offensive on truth, freedom, democracy, and morality.
