Planning Reagan's War: Conservative Strategists and America's Cold War Victory
"Planning Reagan’s Waris arguably the most extensive treatment of a new view of Reagan’s foreign policy that has been emerging over the last few years. Francis H. Marlo contends that Ronald Reagan was an innovative strategic thinker who had formed his own ideas about the role of the United States in the international arena long before he became president. As president he rejected containment and mutual assured destruction and pursued instead a grand strategy designed to win the Cold War. Marlo shows that Reagan understood traditional power and more importantly the power of ideas. He recognized that America’s most potent weapon was the West’s superior values, political system, and economic system. In the end, Reagan reached out to Gorbachev from a position of strength and ended the Cold War without firing a shot—the acme of a successful strategist. His ideas and approach contributed to the collapse of communism as a viable organizing form. Planning Reagan’s War charts this political policy and its wide-ranging impact today. I believe it will inform the debate on the Reagan presidency for years to come."—Hy S. Rothstein, senior lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and co-editor ofThe Three Circles of War: Understanding the Dynamics of Conflict in Iraq