Customer Reviews

Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

The more I read into this book, the more fascinated I became by Frances FitzGerald's portrayal of Ronald Reagan as a man others have mis-defined. She describes how wonderfully Reagan represented the American can-do story, spirit, and roots, then tapped into it to become president, and then represented it in developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. That SDI, the missile shield, then took on an expensive ($60 billion so far) and, thus far, successful political life of its own without very much technical success to show for itself, is as intriguing (if depressing) alook at Washington politics as one can find. This book isn't the polemic that some conservatives are so quick to call it. From careful reading, I see not the author's criticisms or conclusions but her reporting of other peoples'-- including those in the Pentagon, CIA and the defense diaspora. This is thorough reporting, not book-length punditry. Having remembered Ms. FitzGerald's Vietnam book, "Fire in the Lake" as anti-war book, I re-read it to find a study of Vietnamese society that was just as thoroughly researched. Dismissing her as a left-winger is dangerous. I did a little research and discovered that her father used to be Deputy Director of the CIA.

This book may have been a bit misleading in its dust jacket description, it is a step by step history of the SDI project. It does not offer a detailed description of the politics around the end of the cold war, just an overview. To be fair to the author, there is just too much information involved to cover both the SDI project and the fall of the USSR so the author might have bitten off a bit much. She does a wonderful job in explaining the SDI process; the book is well written and is easy to read - a challenge when taking on complex international politics and weapons development. The author does go through some of Reagan's history, a bit of republican history, and some history on the Carter presidency in relation to SDI. She really relied on memoirs, interviews and articles from the people involved in the projects or policies within the Reagan Administration so it seams as though most of the info is straight from the horses mouth.

It is not possible to completely tell the SDI story without also talking about the American foreign policy through the 80's and the author does a good job with the limited space. Her only mistake may have been to include the few anti Reagan items in the book. I say this not in that her comments were overly harsh or out of line, just that it turns some of the focus to the book to the negative statements and the strong Reagan supporters have come out to denounce the book. I thought she was fair in her treatment of many of the players in Reagan administration, I have read a number of the books that she sites as sources and I could not find any misstatements. The fact that all of the issues she does raise about Reagan come from people whom worked in the Reagan White House or on his campaigns, adds more weight to the overall thesis that Reagan did not have a good understanding of the SDI project.

Overall the book is a fascinating look at the SDI process and Reagan's relationships to his staff in regard to this program. I would have liked a bit more detail on how the 1st Bush administration handled the hand over from Reagan, but overall the book is very informative and well written. As SDI seams to be back in the headlines it is worth reading it if only to understand what has brought us to the current point.

At 592 pages, this book was more about Reagan himself, althought the context was the Star Wars project and the Cold War. I wanted to read it though because from browsing a few pages of the book in the bookstore, I knew that the book could not be any worse than Dutch, a poorly written book that should be displayed only as an example of what not to do when writing a presidential biography. Although the author does poke fun at the monumental waste of Star Wars, a small comfort to me and my spent tax dollars, the author does give the Reagan credit for winning the Cold War. There a lot of interesting stories in this book that you cannot find in the dry history textbooks my child complains about reading. The prose is crisp and clean and the author stays on track. In short, Way Out There in the Blue is a book with substance and content that most anyone can read. I hope you find it as entertaining as I did.

First.....don't listen to any right-wing types who try to portray Frances Fitzgerald as some sort of liberal hack. Second.....buy this book and read it. "Way Out There in the Blue" is an amazingly detailed and straightforward discussion of the Reagan Administration and its foreign policy, specifically in regard to nuclear weapons, anti-missle defense, and strategic arms limitation. While it is true that Fitzgerald has no love for throwing money away on unproven and impractical defense schemes, the book is a fascinating depiction of the chaos and back-stabbing within the Reagan Administration, an administration in which policy advisors were left to make policy and defend their turf because the president would not or could not assert any leadership. As John Sears has said, Reagan's detachment gave his staff enormous powers. "You could do almost anything you wanted and you didn't have to check with anybody. You could do all these amazing things...Reagan wasn't involved...." Although different in focus, this book is far superior to Morris' "Dutch" in its grasp of the real Ronald Reagan.

Third, the depictions of Ronald Reagan (despite what his worshippers on the Right may claim) are not those of Fitzgerald, but are the commentaries made by those within the Reagan Administration itself, the people who had to work intimately with him and had to deal with the frustrations of having no leadership at the top. For example; "I had never known anyone so unable to deal with close personal conflict." (Michael Deaver) "There's a generation gap between what Reagan thinks he knows about the world and the reality. His is a kind of 1952 world. He sees the world in black and white terms." (John Sears) "There were a lot of ideal worlds in Reagan's mind, and sometimes he lived in them." (John Sears) In regard to policy decisions, Reagan would say, "That's your business. I'm out here selling it. You tell me." (John Sears) "It's very unusual to have a president who is not interested in policy at all." (Henry Kissinger) "I went all through this reasoning, but he did not understand my investment strategy. For him the idea of anti-missle defenses had an appeal in itself. My own concepts for leveraging Soviet behavior were lost on him." (Robert McFarlane) "I feel you people are leading the president out on a limb." (George Shultz) "Reagan totally believed in the science-fiction solution he had proposed without consultation with his secretary of state or his secretary of defense...." (Lou Cannon) "He was never the initiator." (Helene von Damn) "He made no demands, and gave almost no instructions. Essentially, he just responded to whatever was brought to his attention.... At times he would just change the subject, maybe tell a funny story...." (Martin Anderson) Reagan "chose his aides and then followed their advice almost without question. He listened, acquiesced, played his role and waited for the next act to be written." (Donald Regan) "An imperceptible bobbing of Reagan's head was supposed to mean that he was pleased with a point, while a slight tightening of the mouth was considered a sign of disapproval. [The staff was left to guess] "whether or not he had any opinion-or any thought-at all." (Lou Cannon) Reagan was "among the least analytical and most unread of presidents." (Lou Cannon) When Les Aspin asked Ken Adelman who spoke for the administration, his answer was, "Everyone." Poindexter had told Reagan so many different stories that "this sort of confused the Presidential mind as to what he could say and couldn't say...." (Donald Regan)

Well, one could quote endlessly like this, but this is not the point. The point is, read this book. You will find it a fascinating look at the end of the Cold War and the various positions staked out over nuclear weapons and anti-missle systems...worth understanding as the George W administration is reviving it big time. It is, at the same time, a fascinating look at the mind of President Reagan and the mind-sets of his advisors that helps dispel the Right-wing myths surrounding his administration. This is so timely because most of the characters are still around...including Richard Perle who has re-surfaced in the George W Administration. Five stars without question.

This book was about far more than Star Wars. Fitzgerald also gets into US foreign policy with the Soviet Union and the demise of the USSR. This is not a light book: it is thick and excellently researched with great references. There is no doubt the book backs up the liberal perspective on all of topics, however, as I've mentioned, she backs up everything she says. I have no problem with people disagreeing with her - just be as thorough in your disagreements. PEACE.

Reading this book, my overriding thought was, "Thank God for the Balance of Powers!"

It is not a big national security secret that Ronald Reagan is a likeable guy. Despite what other reviewers imply, I did not get the impression that FitzGerald dislikes the former president or is out to belittle or poke fun at him. In places, her portrait of the man is even endearing. Where she does point out his shortcomings, she uses documented quotations from those who worked in the Reagan White House or on his campaigns. I can't see how that is controversial, especially since all of the critical comments she relates are from conservatives.

Reagan may have had a hands-off management style, but clearly he was a shrewd politician. As an actor, he knew the power of image, and how to use it. Reagan also had a genius for making the small move that gave big returns, like the "impromptu" fireside chat at Geneva with Gorbachev. FitzGerald relates these events but underplays Reagan's good moves and emphasizes his disinterest in policy and micromanagment. Carter micromanaged and I can't say America was better for it.

It's interesting to me that the reviews here are of a piece with the on going debate over military and nuclear strategy. Some claim that FitzGerald doesn't know the subject. FitzGerald herself often claims that many of the principal policy makers in the story didn't know the subject. The game rule seems to be that anyone who doesn't share your opinion doesn't know what he or she is talking about and is a radical of the opposite camp.

Of the cast of characters, the US Congress, particularly Sen. Sam Nunn and Rep. Les Apin come off best. On the White House team, George Shultz appears as a reasonable and decent man, probably the best of the bunch. Cap Weinberger seems an insecure bulldog who doesn't think much for himself. Paul Nitze is more human than I remember him. Richard Perle, well, is Richard Perle; and Bill Casey is the American Brezhnev: an old Cold Warrior who was not keeping up with the times. Lastly, George Bush is largely quiet and off camera (doing God knows what).

In retrospect all this blather about arms control came to naught. The Soviet Union imploded from its own dead economic weight. It had nothing to do with the arms race.

SDI would have been no help on September 11th. Nor would it be any help against chemical or biological weapons. (Ironically, Reagan gave $300 million, arms and training to the dogs that returned to bite America's hand: the Afghan mujaheddin, and their leader Osama Bin Laden. So much for defense.)

My opinion (fwiw): SDI is a boondoggle. Still is. It will never stop a terrorist. It will only stop domestic programs, create budget deficits and (listen up you conservatives!) cause Congress to raise our taxes to pay for it (for which Bush, Sr. was denied re-election). The only real reason I can see to support SDI is if you are a defense contractor. Profit is good, but let's be honest about our motives.

The book is timely for today, as the Bush Jr. administration replays Reagan's best scenes.

Despite all the naysayers, I give this book 5 stars, as a well researched, respectful, thought-provoking rehash of the Reagan years and how a nation had its chain pulled in the name of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The first portion of this book attempts to construct plausible psychological theories for why Reagan proposed building the system in the first place--finding clues in his movie career, Puritan theology, etc. The middle portion tracks the history of the proposal and the fitful attempts to build a system and then in an epilogue she ponders why the system is still being built even after the end of the Cold War. She handles the facts of the story masterfully, rendering the potentially confusing bureaucratic history of the project in a narrative which is relatively easy to follow. But she makes the ideology and politics which surround the story unnecessarily bewildering. Here's a possibility that she seems never to have considered: Ronald Reagan and the supporters of SDI simply want to have a way to stop incoming nuclear missiles from detonating on American soil. (...)

To give Ms FitzGerald her due, the objector there yielded some points that she would not have, and that makes the book even more confusing. For example, she maintains that President Reagan was sort of just a national salesman, albeit a great one. The title of the book, in fact, comes from a Willy Loman speech in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand : Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman
there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give
you medicine. He's the man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And
when they start not smiling back--that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots
on your hat, and then you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream,
boy. It comes with the territory.

So her theory, or one of them, is that Reagan never really believed much in SDI and just proposed it out of desperation when he was doing poorly in the polls. However, he sold himself and the country so well on the concept, that it refuses to die. Of course, Reaganauts can't reveal all this, so the program requires an official mythology so there's this official version of the genesis of the idea for missile defense which involves Reagan having an epiphany during a 1979 visit to a NORAD base, when he realizes, reputedly for the first time, that we have no defenses against missile attack. He is so troubled by this realization, that we lie naked before a nuclear aggressor, that he envisions a space shield.

The author gleefully goes about poking holes in this mythic tale (a tale which to the best of my knowledge she is the only one who believes is central to the history of the program) presenting counter evidence with fanfares and flourishes, seemingly unaware that the evidence she marshals weakens her own theories. She makes a big deal of the fact that Reagan, when he had previously run for President, had often mentioned how intolerable he found the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction and it's requirement that we live in a state of nuclear terror. This certainly puts the lie to the official story that she fabricated, but, more importantly, it indicates that, far from a function of political expediency, Reagan's dream of escaping the threat of nuclear weapons was long standing and very nearly central to his vision for his Presidency. Apply Occam's Razor to Reagan's stated reason for building SDI and it turns out that his own words offer the simplest explanation.

This speech, the text of which FitzGerald would have done well to include in the book, not only addresses most of her arguments and makes her efforts to discern "real" motives seem silly, it effectively addresses the concerns we hear voiced most often about SDI today--cost, difficulty, reliability, threat to foes, uneasiness of allies, etc.. As was so often the case, Reagan seems to have been able to perceive the future and in this one address to the nation, at the very moment of conception of the program, he anticipated all of the attacks that SDI would meet, laid them before the American people himself and answered them. What FitzGerald thinks of as a mere sales pitch, looks, to those like me, who support him, an awful lot like vision. Make that big "V"ision. Reagan simply saw further and with greater imagination than most other men, but especially than other political leaders.

Two other particularly annoying flaws show up in the book. First is the author's insistence that Gorbachev, almost alone, is responsible for the end of the Cold War. It is her thesis that Gorbachev came to power fully intending to destroy the Soviet Union and then set about in a rapid and organized fashion doing so. She gives no credit to Reagan and is particularly dismissive of the role of SDI and other modern weapons programs in putting pressure on the Soviets. She cites the fact that they failed to match our arms buildup as evidence that the Soviets were relatively unfazed by our increasing superiority. One wishes she had at least considered the possibility that Reagan was right and that the Russia was already pushed to the edge and could not possibly keep up. The failure to vastly increase their defense spending may simply reflect the fact that they were maxed out. (Also, in light of the Afghan War, it is awfully hard to accept the numbers she cites which show fairly steady spending. the war must have sucked up resources at some point.)

As to the credit she gives Gorbachev, it appears that she simply took his word for it. The Bibliography contains virtually no citations to Russian primary sources, though it does cite seve

If ever there was a book that answered a crying need, it must be Way out there in the Blue. With meticulous research and a touch of psychoanalysis, Fitzgerald disects Reagan's billion dollar initiative -- which most physicists (with the exception of Edward Teller)found unworkable. Along the way, Fitzgerald sheds light on Reagan's enigmatic personality and shows how his experiences and his acting career made him susceptible to proposing the defense shield. A truly superb work, this book will persist over time as the definitive account of the SDI. Note: For another good description of the issues underlying SDI, see Edmund Morris's Dutch.

Having read Ms Fitzgerald's well researched account of the history of Reagan's SDI initiative, I came away with awareness of the naivete of our former president's ill conceived proposal to build a shield offering total protection against the intrusion of an atomic weapon. To be sure her account is going to rattle Reagan idolaters, (as is obvious from some of the one star customer's reviews), but anyone who approaches this crucial policy question with an open mind will be impressed by Ms Fitzgerald's documentation, research and candid findings. Frankly,there is no book which can hold a candle to it. When all is said and done, former President Reagan, a man short on scientific knowledge but able to deliver prepared remarks in a convincing tone, stands before us like the Emperor who was not wearing any clothes.

Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, which won the Pulitzer Prize, was one of the best books written about the Vietnam War during the conflict, and her America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century was a splendid study of how Americans think and write about the past. So I was, quite frankly, a bit disappointed by this book about President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). I am, quite frankly, inclined to agree with what I perceive to be FitzGerald's main premises: Reagan never had a clue about the technical difficulties involved in devising and implementing a ballistic-missile defense system; the cost of the program would have been astronomical, even by American defense-spending standards; and, even if S.D.I. had been deployed, it never would have accomplished the one thing Reagan promised: Protecting the American people from the threat posed by nuclear weapons. But FitzGerald meanders. In an "Author's Note" at the beginning of the book, FitzGerald writes: "This book began with my interest in the appeal Reagan had for the American public and the direct connection he made to the American imagination." Well enough. But FitzGerald then asserts that she chose to focus on S.D.I. because "it was surely his greatest rhetorical triumph." FitzGerald never establishes the validity of that premise.

Preparing to write a book about public policy requires the author to ask herself: How much context is necessary? In this instance, I believe most readers would have accepted as given "Reagan's ignorance of policy issues, his disengagement from the work of government, his distance from other people." She could, therefore, have started with chapter four, entitled, "Space Defense Enthusiasts." The 1980 Republican national campaign's defense platform called for the U.S. "to achieve overall military and technical superiority over the Soviet Union" and "to create a strategic and civil defense which would protect the American people against nuclear war at least as well as the Soviet population is protected." But missile defense was deliberately kept out of Reagan's speeches during the campaign. In October 1981, the White House announced that it was pursuing research and development of ground- and space based defenses "but today ballistic missile defense technology is not at the state where it could provide an adequate defense against Soviet missiles." That official policy statement, which was reported in the national media, is the effective starting point of FitzGerald's study and establishes the principal issue for the remainder of the book: Between October 1981 and the end of the Reagan administration in January 1989, did ballistic missile defense technology advance to the where point where it could have provided an adequate defense against Soviet missiles?

Reagan had been long convinced, perhaps in defiance of the facts, that the Soviets had achieved nuclear-weapons superiority. In January 1982, a small group of missile-defense advocates met with the president. According to FitzGerald, some participants believed Reagan was committed to, at the very least, a research program, while others were of the opinion that the "White House response to their work was distinctly and surprisingly cool." One concern might have been cost: During the campaign, Reagan had promised tax cuts, a balanced budget, and higher defense spending. The administration was planning to spend almost $1.5 trillion in five years for its defense build-up. But, according to FitzGerald: "Reagan had taken to saying, `Defense is not a budget item. You spend what you need.'"

Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in a speech on March 23, 1983. In FitzGerald's view, Reagan never gave the technical issues much personal consideration; "his job, as he saw it, was to sell [his administration's] policies to the public." The concept apparently simmered for most of the next one and one-half years. The Pentagon created an independent entity to study missile defense early in 1984, but, according to FitzGerald, "many in the Pentagon, and in particular the [research and development] chiefs, had voiced considerable skepticism about the President`s project." What followed was a period of technical controversies known as the "science wars." FitzGerald writes that, during the 1984 presidential campaign, Democrat Walter Mondale "condemned Star Wars as a dangerous hoax that would cost untold billions, speed up the arms race and fail to provide any real protection." But S.D.I. was not a major issue in that election, and Reagan, of course, crushed Mondale to win a second term.

The technical debate continued, and opponents of S.D.I. were denounced by Reagan administration officials as "traditional thinkers" and people "congenitally opposed to new ideas." One of the traditionalists was former President Nixon who expressed the essential problem in a nutshell: "With 10,000 of those damned things [nuclear warheads] there is no defense." The director of the Pentagon's S.D.I. office was forced to concede that "though Reagan's vision was the goal 'we may well find it unachievable," and, according to FitzGerald, the chairman of the Defense Technologies Study Team concluded that no missile defense stem could defend the total U.S. population: "There is no such thing as a nuclear umbrella."

If, as FitzGerald puts it, "an umbrella defense of the United States was a virtual impossibility," what accounts for S.D.I.'s continuing vitality through the end of the Reagan administration? Reagan apparently believed that, even if significant reductions of offensive weapons could be negotiated, missile defense was necessary "as a safety valve against cheating." Others wanted to have S.D.I. available as a bargaining chip to be used in those negotiations. And others supported it simply as a research program. FitzGerald asserts that S.D.I. was the first military program Congress ever funded "knowing full well that what the public expected from it could not possibly be achieved." The annual cost for research alone was $3 billion.

In arms-control discussions in the mid-1980s, missile defense was a contentious issue. The official Soviet position was that a missile-defense system in space might, in fact, be used for offensive purposes, to launch a first strike. It is equally clear that the Soviets did not want to be pressured to undertake the expense of researching the enormously complicated technical issues. (During one summit meeting, Gorbachev told Reagan: "I think you're wasting money. I don't think it will work. But if that's what you want to do, go ahead....We're moving in another direction....And we think we can do it less expensively and with greater effectiveness.") After the end of the Cold War, Reaganites took the position that the challenges created by the Reagan defense build-up, including research into S.D.I., had pushed the Soviet economy into crisis. There does not appear to have been any real possibility of developing and deploying an effective missile defense system in the 1980s.

Whether one accepts or rejects FitzGerald's main premise probably depends upon the reader's ideology. Reagan admirers, who believe that his efforts to rebuild American defenses helped end of the Cold War, will energetically reject FitzGerald's perspective. Those who believe that S.D.I. was a costly exercise in futility probably will be embrace her indictment. If I had been FitzGerald's editor, I would have encouraged her to reduce the length of the text from about 500 pages to under 350 and to focus on the following questions: (1) Was effective ballistic missile defense technologically feasible in the mid-1980s? (2) What would have been the cost of development and deployment? and (3) If deployed, what would S.D.I. have protected? FitzGerald suggests that the short answers to those questions were: (1) Probably no; (2) At least $1 trillion; and (3) At best, S.D.I. would have offered some protection for American strategic forces, but it never would have provided population defense. According to FitzGerald, the Reagan administration was not honest with the American people about any of those essential points. That, in my opinion, should have been the narrow theme of her book.