Every year at Derby time, restaurant nostalgia sets in. Along with all the chatter about horses, track conditions, and betting odds, food-loving locals can’t resist.
To the editor: H.R. McMaster’s and Jonathan D.T. Ward’s fairy-tale-like analysis of the Soviet Union’s collapse is potentially dangerous. That we find such mythology around Ronald Reagan to be so prevalent among “experts” illuminates the rot at contemporary U.S. foreign policy’s core.
Détente was not a “live and let live” approach, but rather a recognition after the near-disastrous Berlin and Cuba crises that coexistence was necessary to avoid nuclear annihilation. Reagan himself realized this after being informed that the Soviets had misperceived U.S. military maneuvers as a cover for aggression.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev terminated the Cold War when he became convinced that U.S. intentions were benign, not aggressive. The U.S. accomplished far more through seeking cooperation, not confrontation, with the Soviets.