That is relieving, isn’t it?
It is relieving if you care to think long term.
For time being, in the heat of the moment, we do sometimes find it doubtful whether something is on the right side history or wrong. Read the following examples to make a judgment for yourself, or, if you will, leave it to history:
1. Historians continue to debate the impact that individuals can have on their time period. In looking at the period 1985-1989, specifically the overlapping of Reagan’s second term with the rise to power of Gorbachev, and the almost immediate easing of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, the reasons for the subsequent end of the Cold War have varied from Reagan's consistent economic pressure that allegedly bankrupted the Soviet Union to Gorbachev’s internal reforms that allowed for private ownership and governmental transparency. Many have argued that Reagan single-handedly won the Cold War. Others that Gorbachev deserves all the credit.
But those arguments, though important to the story of the end of the Cold War, leave out, I think, the most important factor in bringing the cold war to an end. Instead of Reagan’s economic pressure and massive defense spending that bankrupted the Soviet Union, or Gorbachev's internal reforms that westernized the Soviet Union, the private and mostly top-secret correspondence between Reagan and Gorbachev forced the two leaders to continue to talk, debate, argue, disagree, but also offer proposals even when they thought no agreement would be possible. Both Reagan and Gorbachev recognized that change was coming, and both wanted to be on the right side of history. But they needed to find a way to overcome forty years of Cold War ideology. They needed to find a way to trust each other. It was this trust, established through twelve detailed and frank letters that provided the basis for their first meeting in Geneva, in November 1985, just eight months after Gorbachev came to power. And 15 more letters that provided the basis for their next meeting, in Reykjavik, not even a year later. Though the Geneva and Reykjavik meetings failed to produce any arms control agreements, or really agreements on anything, their shared belief that they needed to continue to do everything in their power to prevent a nuclear war kept them talking, and kept them writing.
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