Introduction: The Reagan Moment

Abstract

The relationship between the United States and the world changed radically in the 1980s, and the figure of Ronald Reagan towered over these developments. The contours and consequences of U.S. foreign relations and international history in the 1980s merit sustained, focused scholarly treatment, and this volume endeavors to provide it. Key themes and touchstones bind its chapters together. The first set centers on the Cold War. It is vital to distinguish between the subject as a geo-ideological conflict and as a time period. The second set of themes flow from Reagan’s heroic idealism. A third set of themes relates to liberalism, the package of political constructs – democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and capitalism – whose adherents, however diverse their philosophical outlooks or policy orientations, seek to enumerate the rights and obligations of private actors and public authorities in the belief that individual self-expression ranks utmost, and that, in the absence of clear discrimination, the total, voluntary actions of individuals will redound to the greater good. How Ronald Reagan will be remembered will depend on how long the conception of America that his speeches, his policies, and his administration tried to conjure into being survives and prospers, at home and abroad. Thirty years since Reagan vacated the Oval Office, we are still living through his moment. Scholars, policymakers, and students the world over will wrestle with its legacies for decades more to come.

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