Reagan’s War is the story of Ronald Reagan’s personal and political journey as an anti-communist, from his early days as an actor to his years in the White House. Challenging popular misconceptions of Reagan as an empty suit who played only a passive role in the demise of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer details Reagan’s decades-long battle against communism. Bringing to light previously secret information obtained from archives in the United States, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia—including Reagan’s KGB file—Schweizer offers a compelling case that Reagan personally mapped out and directed his war against communism, often disagreeing with experts and advisers. An essential book for understanding the Cold War, Reagan’s War should be read by open-minded readers across the political spectrum.

On February 6, 1981, at his first National Security Council meeting, Ronald Reagan told his advisers: “I will make the decisions.” As Reagan’s Secret War reveals, these words provide the touchstone for understanding the extraordinary accomplishments of the Reagan administration, including the decisive events that led to the end of the Cold War. In penning this book, New York Times bestselling authors Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson drew upon their unprecedented access to more than eight million highly classified documents housed within the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California—unseen by the public until now. Using his top secret clearances, Martin Anderson was able to access Ronald Reagan’s most privileged exchanges with subordinates and world leaders as well as the tactical record of how Reagan fought to win the Cold War and control nuclear weapons. The most revelatory of these documents are the minutes of Reagan-chaired National Security Council meetings, the dozens of secret letters sent by Reagan to world leaders, and the eyewitness notes from Reagan-Gorbachev summits. Along with these findings, the authors use Reagan’s speeches, radio addresses, personal diaries, and other correspondence to develop a striking picture of a man whose incisive intelligence, uncanny instincts, and quiet self-confidence changed the course of history. What emerges from this treasure trove of material is irrefutable evidence that Reagan intended from his first days in office to bring down the Soviet Union, that he considered eliminating nuclear weapons his paramount objective, and that he—not his subordinates—was the principal architect of the policies that ultimately brought the Soviets to the nuclear-arms negotiating table. The authors also affirm that many of Reagan’s ideas, including his controversial “Star Wars” missile-defense initiative, proved essential in dissolving the Soviet Union and keeping America safe. Riveting and eye-opening, Reagan’s Secret War provides a front-row seat to history, a journey into the political mind of a remarkable leader, and proof that one man can, through the force of his deep convictions, bring about sweeping global change.

Describes the Reagan administration's covert campaign against the Soviet Union that increased stress on the Soviet economy.

Ronald Reagan as a man of ideas.

Reagan’s War Stories examines the relationship between Ronald Reagan, the public and popular culture. From an overview of Reagan’s youth and the pulp fiction he consumed, we get a sense of the future president’s good/evil outlook. Carrying that over into Reagan’s reading and choices as president, Griffin situates narrative at the center of Reagan’s political formation and leadership providing a compelling account of both Reagan’s life, his presidency, and a lens into non-traditional strategy formulation. Author Ben Griffin tells three stories about an American president who ushered in the end of the Cold War. A survey of Reagan’s youth and the fiction he consumed and created as an announcer and actor, reveals how the future president’s worldview developed. A look at the rise of fiction and popular culture rife with pro-Americanism in the 1980s details a uniquely symbiotic relationship between the chief executive and popular culture in framing the Cold War as a struggle with an “Evil Empire” in the Soviet Union. Finally, Griffin outlines how presidential personality and reading preferences shaped President Reagan’s pursuit of the “Star Wars” initiative and belief in the transformative combination of freedom and technology. Griffin demonstrates that novels by Tom Clancy, Louis L’Amour, and science fiction influenced Reagan’s view of 1980s geopolitics. His identification with fiction led Ronald Reagan to view European Cold War issues with more empathy but harmed the president's policymaking when the narrowness of his reading led him to apply a white-hat/black-hat framework that did not match the reality of conflict in Latin America. Reagan treated fictional portrayals seriously, believing they shaped public views and offered valid ways to think through geo-political issues. Seeking to shape the reading habits of the public, his administration sought to highlight authors who shared his worldview like Tom Clancy, Louis L’Amour, and Allen Drury over other popular writers like Robert Ludlum and John Le Carre who portrayed the Cold War in less stark moral terms. The administration’s favored popular authors in turn intentionally incorporated Reagan-era policies into their work to advocate for them through fiction, thus reaching a broader audience than via official government releases and speeches. Showing how Reagan used narrative as both a consumer and a communicator, Griffin notes that Reagan identified with certain stories and they shaped him as a political leader and later and influenced his approach to complex issues. When handled deftly, incorporating fiction created a common language across the administration and provided a way to convey messages to the masses in a memorable fashion.

Reagan’s War is the story of Ronald Reagan’s personal and political journey as an anti-communist, from his early days as an actor to his years in the White House. Challenging popular misconceptions of Reagan as an empty suit who played only a passive role in the demise of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer details Reagan’s decades-long battle against communism. Bringing to light previously secret information obtained from archives in the United States, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia—including Reagan’s KGB file—Schweizer offers a compelling case that Reagan personally mapped out and directed his war against communism, often disagreeing with experts and advisers. An essential book for understanding the Cold War, Reagan’s War should be read by open-minded readers across the political spectrum.

During the first two years of Ronald Reagan’s second term the United States developed an offensive strategy for dealing with conflict in the developing world. Nicaragua was a primary target of this policy. Scholars refer to this as the Reagan offensive: the first time that the United States eschewed the norms of containment and sought to “roll-back” the gains of communism. However, the Reagan offensive was also significantly driven by a response to the emergent threat of international terrorism. Terrorism provided a vehicle that justified its use of aggressive proxy war and pursuit of regime change in Central America. U.S. policy with Nicaragua demonstrates the importance of terrorism to the development of a more aggressive United States in the post-Cold War world. This book examines the influence of the U.S.-Contra War in establishing a precedent for the use of overt pre-emptive force against sovereign nations in the name of counterterrorism. In the 21st century, the United States undertook a policy with the world based on a broad definition of self-defense that called for an array of actions that often violated traditional norms of international law and recognition of sovereign rights. This book demonstrates that the precedent for this change occurred in the late Cold War as the United States sought to respond to an escalation of global terrorism. The emergent problem of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s transformed how and when the United States applied force in the world.