Kommersant: Russia’s Daily Online
March 24, 2008
By Mikhail Zygar
 
Politicians celebrate the anniversary of Star Wars and the Evil Empire
 
Last week was the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's historical speech, in which he called the USSR the “evil empire” and proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, later to be known as Star Wars. Admirers of the late president say that that speech guaranteed the United States victory in the Cold War. Kommersant special correspondent in Washington Mikhail Zygar took a look at how American politicians intend to apply the lessons of those years.
 
The Evil Empire 25 Years Later
 
The American Enterprise Institute, one of the think tanks closest to the Bush administration, was among the first to take note of the anniversary. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife works there, as does former president of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz. He held a celebratory conference last week dedicated to the memory of Reagan's speech before fundamentalist Christians in Orlando, Florida, on March 8, 1983, in which he called the USSR the “evil empire” for the first time. On March 23 of that year, Reagan proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative to the U.S. Congress.
 
Former speaker of the House of Representatives and influential conservative thinker Newt Gingrich delivered a festive report at the American Enterprise Institute evil empire anniversary conference.
 
What would have happened, if Reagan had not decided to give that speech? What would have happened if he had not called the Soviet Union the evil empire? he asked. And he answered. The Soviet Union would still exist today and the Cold War would still be going on.
 
Besides politics, Gingrich is active in literature. He has written several “alternative history” novels. One of them describes what might have happened if the U.S. had not entered the Second World War. In the former senator's novel, the Soviet Union loses the war and the Cold War breaks out between the U.S. and the Third Reich. So, when honoring Reagan, Gingrich was indulging in his favorite genre as he outlined how history would have unfolded without that speech by the 40th president of the United States.
 
As Gingrich sees it, and many American conservatives share his point of view, the Cold War was a clash of opposing ideologies. That was why, he says, it is not possible to talk of a new cold war now. Neither Russia nor China now has an ideology that they can spread in the world with any success. Reagan, appearing before evangelists in Florida, dealt the Soviet ideology its death blow.
 
You have to call things by their names, opined Gingrich. You have to call right right and wrong wrong. And only Reagan could do that. He understood that they needed to go on the offensive against the USSR to defeat it, not haggle with it.
 
Gingrich considers today's evil empire Iran. The only ideology that can stand up against American liberal democracy and spread throughout the world is the Islamic ideology, and that makes Iran America's most dangerous opponent.
 
Wrapping up his impassioned presentation, the former speaker of the House, of course, turned to the current election campaign. He recalled how Reagan's “evil empire” speech was criticized and laughed at by U.S. liberals and the Democratic Party. But now we know who was right and who was wrong, he noted. But the same people who had no understanding of world politics are trying to teach them how to live now. They say that U.S. President George W. Bush's policy was a mistake and they can fix that mistake! It's preposterous!
 
Moving on to his own candidate, 71-year-old John McCain, Gingrich returned to alternative history. What would have happened, if Reagan had decided in 1980 that he was too old to serve his country? The Cold War would still be going on…

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