with National Security Advisor William Clark in briefing the president; staffed scores of NSC meetings on arms control; and participated in senior-level interdepartmental advisory group discussions. He was the NSC staff representative in fourteen or more active arms control interdepartmental groups, as chairman of major arms control public diplomacy groups, and in meeting with U.S. negotiation teams. He also regularly participated in Alliance discussions on arms control and defense, often accompanying the Secretary of Defense. His special focus was on arms control negotiations, compliance issues, and related U.S. defense requirements, Congressional and Alliance consultations, public diplomacy, and outreach efforts including those to academics and clergy.

 

Freedom Fighters. The author recognizes that while Reagan and his principled proactive Cold War strategy encountered strong opposition, vital unfailing support was given by a network of committed public policy experts. They enabled the Reagan Revolution to succeed in overcoming strong bureaucratic, diplomatic, Congressional, media and academic opposition to Reagan’s front line efforts to rebuild U.S. military, diplomatic, intelligence and economic strengths to take on and take down the Soviet ideology, regime, and empire. Of those leading supportive American officials and private sector leaders the author knew first hand, he recognizes some as particularly important in breaking illusions, speaking truth to power and contributing early to the content and strategic momentum of Reagan’s new U.S. strategy. They most notably included path-breaking NSC Advisors Richard Allen and Judge William Clark; White House Counselor Edwin Meese; Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger; CIA Director William Casey; senior NSC staff members Richard Pipes, Kenneth De Graffenreid, Roger Robinson, Constantine Menges, and Gus Weiss; Presidential speech writers like Anthony Dolan; Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official William Schneider; Department of Defense officials Caspar Weinberger, Fred Ikle, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, Mark Schneider, Henry Cooper, Andrew Marshall; Generals Daniel Graham and James Abrahamson, and John Lehman; ACDA’s Fred Eimer and the GAC’s Charles Kupperman; Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and soldier-diplomats like Vernon Walters; a bipartisan network of Members of Congress and Congressional staff members Margo Carlisle, John Carbaugh, and Michelle van Cleave; and institutional leaders like Jay Lovestone, Edwin Feulner, Frank Barnett, Herman Pirchner, Robert Pfalzgraff, and Midge Decter and other stalwarts at the NSC, in the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and national media. Abroad, vital support for Reagan’s far-reaching peace and freedom principles was provided by anti-Communist foreign leaders notably including Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Pope John Paul II, two forward-looking Russian advisors to Mikhail Gorbachev (Alexander Yakolev and Eduard Shevardnadze) and a wide range of extraordinary Soviet and “Socialist Camp” dissidents like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Anatoly Sharansky, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.

 

Jack Kemp and “The American Idea.” In September 1987 the author joined Representative Jack F. Kemp (R-NY), an inspirational “Lincoln Republican,” as senior advisor on foreign and defense policy on his Congressional staff until January 1989. He was invigorated by Kemp’s Reaganesque years of leadership, faith, and care in applying what he called the “American Idea” in a freedom-centered opportunity society to deal with problems and injustices at home and abroad across all political, racial, class, and geographical lines. Internationally too, Kemp was exceptionally knowledgeable and active in his moral and strategic national security concerns about the defense and expansion of human rights, peace, and freedom at home and abroad—especially in taking on the Soviet Union’s global Cold War challenge.

 

Post-Cold War Private Sector Work, Teaching, and Reentering Government Service. As Reagan predicted, but his critics had thought impossible, the Soviet Union and its empire began under Reagan’s unrelenting pressures, programs, and proposals to unravel as Reagan was preparing to leave office. The final Soviet dissolution occurred in December 1991 during the administration of George H.W. Bush. During this period and throughout the 1990s the author gained important post-Cold War experience and insights while working independently as a professor and a consultant. From 1995 until 2009 he encountered a new generation of students and concepts in teaching a graduate seminar on “U.S. National Security Strategy, Arms Control, and Emerging Threats.” From a few weeks after the Al-Qaeda terror attacks of 9/11/01 until mid-2005 he reentered the U.S. government in the Senior Executive Service (SES) in the Office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an advisory capacity focused on national security strategy, organization, research, and Department of Defense international educational programs for senior officers and officials. The opportunity to counsel, teach, and learn expanded the author’s understanding of America’s past and present ideals, principles, and challenges. It also highlighted both the difficulties and opportunities faced by American presidents and large government institutions in understanding and dealing with high-stakes issues of peace and war.