The American Spectator

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Meanwhile, Thatcher and Reagan worked closely together in the early 1980s against the unilateral disarmament policies of the left in Britain and on the European continent. As a counter to several hundred Soviet SS-20s aimed at Western Europe, NATO proposed the deployment of a similar number of American cruise and Pershing missiles. There were massive demonstrations against deployment in major European cities, but the West, led by Thatcher and Reagan, stood firm. General elections were held in Britain, Holland, Belgium, and Italy in the fall of 1983, and the peaceniks were decisively defeated everywhere.

O'SULLIVAN'S SKILL AS A REPORTER comes to the fore in his dramatic description of the several Reagan-Gorbachev summits, most notably the one at Reykjavik. He goes to the heart of the fierce debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative by explaining that Reagan regarded SDI not as one facet of the nuclear deterrent but as "the central element in a global system of nuclear arms reduction." In order to reduce stockpiles on both sides, Reagan insisted, "missile defense would have to be available to all nuclear powers." Conservatives as well as liberals criticized the president's position -- liberals because they were wedded to the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction, conservatives because they were convinced you could not "trust" the Communists with such knowledge.

But Reagan pointed out that a system of agreed global defense would protect everyone against what he called "some madman... secretly set[ting] out to produce some [nuclear weapons] with the idea of blackmailing the world." Reagan's argument, writes O'Sullivan, foresaw scenarios like those we face today: "an Iranian bomb, a nuclear device in the hands of al Qaeda, even the risk of an accidental launch by a nuclear state." Reagan, the author insists, was no utopian dreamer: He sought not a flawless defensive shield but a prudential "mix" of missile defense and nuclear disarmament.

In summing up the individual and collective achievements of the president, the pope, and the prime minister, O'Sullivan states that Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot; revived the U.S. economy, which went on to enjoy more than 20 years of consecutive economic growth; restored the spirit of America; and established a "new conservative dominance in American politics" based on small government and low taxes.

John Paul II, besides helping bring down the Soviet empire, bequeathed to Pope Benedict XVI a Catholic Church that was large, growing fast (particularly in the Third World), and becoming more orthodox. According to O'Sullivan, Thatcher's reputation is higher in the rest of the world than in Britain, but even in her native land the Iron Lady's policies that defeated inflation, restored British industry, and helped win the Cold War are "almost universally regarded as correct." Still she bears the burden of the vehement opposition and even hatred they aroused, especially among the liberal intelligentsia.

In an elegant coda to his marvelous book, O'Sullivan writes that it is "a spiritual element that best explains [Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul] and their achievements." All three, he says, "taught and embodied the virtue of hope.... In very different styles, all were enthusiasts for liberty." And they were confident they would win.

Conceding that we face very different problems today than the president, the pope, and the prime minister did, O'Sullivan argues there is every reason to hope that we can overcome them. After all, he writes, adapting what Lady Thatcher said in her eulogy of President Reagan: "We have an advantage that they never had: We have their example."

topics:
Taxes, Trade, Law, Iran, NATO, Communism, Nuclear Weapons