Collectively the men in charge were, quote, those inhuman monsters, he wrote in his diary, after hearing of the plight. Individually, however, soviet leaders were adversaries, not enemies. And reagan wanted to negotiate with them. He wanted, from the very start, to negotiate with them. In january of 1983, in discussing some of the arms negotiations with the soviets, he wrote in his diary, found i was wishing i could do the negotiating with the soviets. They cant be any tougher than Frank Freeman and harry cohen, the respective heads of paramount studios and columbia pictures. So, let me briefly summarize three examples of reagan engaging his cold war adversaries. And the first is, you know, still a somewhat surprising story of reagan and pregorbachev soviet leaders. For more than five years, reagan wrote in his memoir, recalling the year 1985, id made little progress with my efforts at quiet diplomacy. For one thing, the soviets, soviet leaders kept dying on me. When he wrote that, a lot of people thought, well, thats thats a great line, but it was true. He did pursue quiet diplomacy si and soviet leaders did respond by dying on him. The first letter he wrote to brezhnev in 81, he described meeting him when he came to visit president truman. The president writes in his letter, you took my hand in both of yours and assured me that you were aware that you were dedicated with all your heart and mind to fulfilling our hopes and dreams. It is in this spirit, in the spirit of helping the people of both our nations, that i have lifted the grain embargo. Perhaps this decision will contribute to creating the circumstances which will lead to the meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace. The following year, around the time of the westminster speech, reagan expressed interest to his advisers of the possibility of meeting with brezhnev at the an upcoming u. N. Conference in new york. He made overtures. Brezhnevs decline in health in the late spring of 82 made this impossible. In the speech we just saw where the president talked about, i will agree that brezhnev can speak on american tv if i can speak on russian tv i think he was 100 sincere about that. He would have welcomed that, not just to humiliate brezhnev, which, at that time, it would have, if you ever watched on youtube brezhnev speaking on tv. But i think it was earnest and i think he followed through on this. After brezhnev, after the fall of 83, when the soviets walked out of the inf negotiations, reagan writes to antropov, i continue to believe that despite the profound differences between our nations, there are opportunities, indeed a necessity, for us to Work Together to prevent conflicts, to expand our dialogue and to place our relationship on a more stable and constructive footing. Though we will be vigorous in protecting our interests and those of our friends and allies, we do not seek to challenge the security of the soviet union and its people. The following year, after antropov departs, reagan wrote his successor. In thinking through this letter, reagan wrote at the end of it in april of 1984, in hand, i have reflected on some length at some length on the tragedy and scale of soviet losses in warfare through the ages. Surely those losses, which are beyond description, must affect your thinking today. I want you to know that neither i nor the American People hold any offensive intentions toward you or the soviet people. And this goes on. The point of it is that in march of 1985, reagan was wellprepared and had set the positions to work with gorbachev to achieve incredible things. The inf treaty. Reagan, i write in my look, more than anyone else, is responsible for shifting the terms, shifting the negotiations on arms control. Critics mocked the zero option when he proposed it. He was 100 earnest and honest. He changed, i think more than anyone else, the terms from strategic arms limitations to reductions. Now, im i may not get time to finish all my points here, but critics at home and within nato were adversaries. And henry now, i think, speaks, obviously, with much more experience than i in terms of having seen the president. But i find in the records that this idea of an end run around the experts was critically important in terms of reagans strategic thinking. Around the time of the westminster speech, as someone mentioned earlier, the Nuclear Freeze movement was a phenomenon. 1 Million People gathered in central park on june 12th, just several days after the westminster speech, and sort of old guard, old cold warriors start writing that the u. S. Should consider renouncing first use of Nuclear Weapons. And to reagan, this was this was sort of nothing could anger him more that the very people who had constructed the idea of Nuclear Destruction put him in the position as president of having to think about this every morning and every night when he goes to bed. That they are now coming out, having not been involved in government for at least 15 years, and basically saying that hes a warmonger, implying. If i could just close quickly, the end result of that, i think, shapes very much what reagans efforts to engage his adversaries at home, i think, helps understand why we get the announcement of sdi when we do in march of 83. I think its a way of reagan trying to sort of coop, to make an end run, take the sails out of the Nuclear Freeze movement, which was a real threat to what he perceived as things that needed to be done to redress the strategic balance. My third example, which i wont mention because you can all go get the book, is the relationship between reagan and gorbachev, which is even more remarkable now that we have the record than i think it appeared at the time. I think, in the end, reagan was sincere in this vision that the u. S. Would build sdi, he would share it with gorbachev and the two nations would use that as an insurance policy for an arms control deal and, as he said over and over again, to prevent a madman like gadhafi from threatening civilization. Thank you. [ applause ] i would like to begin by thanking the staff and faculty of Regent University who have worked on this series on Ronald Reagan for almost a decade. The determination and the heart and the organizational capacity that theyve demonstrated has made this one of the most important reagan series that exists in universities and in the think tank world and in the president ial library world. So, i really would like to congratulate them. I hope you can take a moment. [ applause ] id also like to say that i think its important that this series continue on reagan at regent, because when one thinks about reagans life, religious faith was at the core of his political and personal life. And somehow, in recent days, it seems as if some are saying that reagan was an agnostic, faith wasnt so important to him, that he was a relativist, but that actually isnt the case. And what regent stands for as an institution of higher learning, rooted in the Christian Faith is consistent with how reagan Ronald Reagan governed. Within moments after having been shot and arriving at the George Washington hospital in washington, d. C. , and then learning about what happened to him, one of his first acts was to say a prayer and ask for the forgiveness of john hinckley, jr. , his wouldbe assassin, because he believed so much in the redemptive power of forgiveness and prayer. And then as he recovered a few weeks later from his wounds back at the white house, he asked the deputy chief of staff to set up a meeting with him with a man of faith. And quickly, there came the archbishop of the Catholic Diocese in new york, straight to the white house to meet with the president. He overheard them talking and heard reagan say, whatever happens to me now, im going to serve god. My life is in his hands. And then he quickly translated that into a belief that it was his job as the president of the most powerful nation on earth to rid the world of Nuclear Weapons. Hed been somewhat of a nuclear abolitionist, and thats been written about before, but i believe that reagan being shot transformed his understanding of what it meant to have a military buildup. That the buildup was part of a strategy for a very different goal. And that goal was to spread human rights around the world. To make people free. I dont think it was so much to instill democracy in every country that he could, but to really increase the capacity of Civil Society and then let People Choose the particular form of government that they would want. He believed in the power of the american ideal, as has been noted earlier, but he wasnt like many in both republicans and democrats in i think recent decades, at least in the 2000s, who have seen it as the responsibility of the United States to make the world over, to nationbuild in Something Like the United States. Reagan really cared about freedom. And he believed in people. So, what i want to talk about today is how, in a counterintuitive way, we can say that reagan, Ronald Reagan was a human rights activist. That will be intellectual hearsay in the academic world, and many that didnt like reagan. But i think when you look at his record, if he was anything, it wasnt that he was just trying to build up a military, trying to even end the cold war. I think he wanted to just increase the zone of free people, to unleash freedom around the world and then let people, given his belief in liberty and independence, how they Work Together, figure it out for themselves. That, to me, is the essence of reagan and thats why i think his having been shot was the defining moment of his presidency, because it clarified for him in his mind what his purpose was. And it was to use military and strength to achieve the goal of freedom in the world. And he focused on human rights. It is also significant, as was noted earlier, i think in wills talk, that reagans First Successful negotiation with the soviets had nothing to do with arms control, had nothing to do with bombs and bullets and trade and commerce, but it had to do with allowing seven pentecostals whod lived in the u. S. Embassy in moscow for five years to exit safely to the west and reagan never talked about it. We learned about it many, many years later that it was a human rights issue, that he scored his first major victory with the soviet union. But let me talk a little bit more about why i think human rights was so important to reagan. It was important to him because people were important to reagan. Reagan felt that governments existed for the people, that the people were the sovereign, whether you were an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime, that people could have the power that they naturally were given by god, not by government, that they would undo totalitarianism and authoritarianism without war. Because in addition to wanting to eliminate Nuclear Weapons, regan desperately wanted to avoid war. So, he focused on sovereignty. And thats something that i think mystified his critics, is that he was talking a language that they kind of agreed with, like the Nuclear Freeze movement, as was mentioned earlier. He shared the goals of the freeze movement. To eliminate Nuclear Weapons. His strategy was just very different. Through calling the soviet union an evil empire. Similarly, on human rights, human rights activists knew there was a new person in town, kind of a new sheriff in town that was making human rights a bigger deal at the state department, the Human Rights Bureau took on a greater significance. Got infused in all of the other regional bureaus. But for reagan, was trying to understand who the sovereign was and he was clear that it was the people, and if it was the people, then he had a special responsibility to help protect people and make freedom important. So, a big part of the reagan story thats not known, beyond what he did on the military side, what he did in terms of Economic Growth was that he poured resources, millions, billions of dollars and a lot of his own personal time into the nonmilitary dimensions of american power. The International Communications agency. Radio free europe and radio liberty. Speeches like the westminister speech were being listened to in realtime in the soviet block with an intensity and a level that they had not been before, including his famous evil empire speech in march of 1983. And it was russians and their homes, not leaders and the kremlin saying, youre right, our government is evil. Our government, our leaders, what theyre doing, it goes against nature. The purpose of government and the purpose of mans life in this world. So reagan actually was a president who was trying to reach people and a populist manner globally at a level that no cold war president had ever dared try. And the rhetoric that he used always harshly about marxism and lennonism ending up in history, evil empire for the soviet government, on and on, was always about government and its evils, never about people. He was always trying to find a way to empower people, to lift themselves up to topple their own government. With the United States backing them up with the rhetoric and the policies, both military and nonmilitary, to make it clear that they would not be left alone. That was the core of reagans presidency. And i think when he had the pentecostal victory, he felt that he would have many more and, in fact, he did. And in particular this outstripped all other cold war president s, as well. And most of the cases that he helped resolve, it became an important part of the soviet union and still is today in israel, much of that reagan had worked on in the 1970s before he became president. And that is where i believe he got the sense that if he became the occupant of the oval office, that he was focused on human rights as his core objective. He wrote about the soviet pentecostals in his daily radio essays that he gave in the late 1970s. He gave radio statements three days five days a week, three minutes a day before there was talk radio. I believe reagan was the first talk radio person. No one could talk back then. But he gave these radio scripts for about four years after he was governor of california and before he launched his 1980 president ial campaign. Many of them were about human rights issues like the soviet pentecostal families. He was working on their behalf as an activist speaking to about 20 million americans a week. That was a huge number in the late 1970s. He was probably talking to more americans every single day than any single politician. Remember, we didnt have the internet and we didnt have cable news, or just the beginning of cable news as he was winding these up. And so reagan was using the radio essays as a way to have a conversation with the american public. People would write to him and he would tell their stories throw the radio scripts. So when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply influenced by reagans own hand. So when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply influenced by reagans own hau. So when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply influenced by reagans own hag. So when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply influenced by reagans own hah. So when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply in his own writing, hes always telling a story about someone. Rarely a story, but often about a particular individual and he also will call them by name. That is something that he forged in the late 1970s in his radio script as a way to contribute to his role as a human rights activist. And even his most dire military policies that drew the greatest criticism like the Strategic Defense Initiative itself, announced in the same as his evil empire speech, it was done for a human rights purpose. Reagan rejected the notion, the conventional classical thinking of the cold war that the only way to Nuclear Stability was to have people on both sides, the soviet union and the u. S. , held as hostages to a nuclear conflict, thereby rejecting the possibly that either leader would pull the trigger knowing that with retaliatory power that his country, too, would be destroyed. Reagan said, thats no way to run a world. And to call it Nuclear Stability doesnt make any sense. But its also amoral because it doesnt allow people to decide if they, in fact, want to live this way. So fdi was about getting to a policy of human rights but would say lets make Nuclear Weapons irrelevant. Lets develop a shield that could keep them from entering our country, thus, why would anyone want them in the first place. So it was done for a nonmilitary reason of protecting the people. And, in fact, in 1968 while governors two years into his governorship in california Ronald Reagan authored a paper, a governors role in Foreign Policy, a type script and we dont know if he wrote it himself, but in that, he begins to, for the first time, wonder aloud about mutual destruction which robert mcnamara, the secretary of defense, had put forth as the doctrine that would carry us through and, in fact, has from that period until now. And he said a governor has the responsibility, first and foremost, to protect the people in his or her state. So early before he became president , reagan was thinking in the human dimension about his political responsibility. I think thats a part of the reagan story that hasnt been told. His relationship with the soviet jury, his understanding of military aspects from a human rights convention, how his own religious faith helped him build this unique equation. I dont think until we understand that we can understand Ronald Reagan. The day before he was shot, he attended the local i think it was a presbyterian church. And after service, he came back to the white house and began working on his speech which was given to labor Union Democrats and he was shot shortly thereafter the next day. And he began to write and think about the perils of a mutuallyassured destruction oriented world. And so at the very beginning of his presidency, day 69, the day before he was shot, reagan was thinking about how to get out of the military equation that hurt peoples lives. Now, some could be critical of what i have to say and i see im on time, but i do want to say this. But there was so much at home that looked like reagan wasnt a human rights president. There were continual issues around race and rights. No one can say that reagan was a race president , one that expanded the conversation around race in the United States. I think thats not quite right. I think reagan was a man of his time and he did talk in some pivotal speeches early in the after he lost to gerald ford in 1976 about making the Republican Party the party of lincoln. It was in january of 77. I believe that they spoke of this speech earlier at the Mayflower Hotel where he talked about making the Republican Party the party for blacks and hispanics and broadening it. I dont think the country was there. I dont think the Republican Party was there. I dont think the advisers around reagan were there. But i do think that he set the stage powerfully in his rhetoric, if not some of his policies, to make the United States domestically look like what he was fighting for internationally, which was to increase freedom around the world. And when we look at the reagan doctrine, his policies in central america, even the iran contra scandal that almost toppled him, all of these in some ways were his attempt to make the United States a more noble place by focusing on people. Iran contra was clearly a violation of laws and understandings the u. S. Had with other countries, funding iran or supporting its military arms after claiming neutrality in the iran and iraq war of the 1980s. But who would have done better and who has on the issue of global terror since reagan. He was trying to get americans being held hostage in lebanon free. And the hardest scenario in International Relations is, when youre a great power, youre a democracy, and youre transparent and your adversary is a transnational actor and its black box and its Holding People hostage, its such an unfair fight. So he violated the spirit of the understanding in the iran iraq war and tried to get iran to pressure hope that iran would pressure hezbollah so that it would facilitate the release of americans being held hostage in lebanon. But now we have an Obama Administration that has negotiated and its just very difficult. And on issues of individuals and rights, its very extremely hard for the United States to find a way. Reagan was perhaps, after jimmy carter, the president who faced it most immediately. Carter with the iranian hostage crisis and reagan with the lebanon hostage crisis. But i dont think it suggests that reagan was not attempting to be moral and human rights oriented in his policies. He just stumbled the way every american president has. Im over time and i thank you so much. [ applause ] i told you to expect four engaging and informative talks and i hope youll agree with me that our distinguished panel certainly delivered. Yes, you did. [ applause ] and i hope, like me, that you learned a great deal. One thing in particular i learned is that James Graham Wilson has a sense of humor. I thought when he was sending me emails signed comrade wilson that he just spent too much time in the archives. But it turns out he was joking. It was a joke. Now, as we did following the first panel, well have a question and answer session of roughly 20 minutes. Thanks to our all seven of our panelists for keeping to their allotted time. We are actually just a shade ahead of schedule. So we will make good on our promise to get you out of here by 1 00. We have collected and culled through the audience questions. And were going to begin right away. The first is from jeff palmer from sarasota, florida, now a chesapeake, virginia, resident. He asks and this is for any or all of the panelists what lessons can we draw from reagans strategy against the soviets . How can they apply to a new grant strategy to deal with militant islam and russian expansionism . Shall i start, perhaps . Please. I think one of the aspects of reagans approach to Foreign Policy that hasnt really been fully absorbed is the way in which he integrated the use of military strength and diplomacy. We often separate those two. That is, we, for example, want to approach problems by wanting to focus entirely on diplomacy as were doing currently you could argue in the case of iran. Lets negotiate and be consistent in negotiating and eventually even if in reagans case they keep dying on us, well eventually make some progress. And dont maneuver with any military force before that, that is before negotiations are ended or failed