On the Brink: Reagan, Freeze, and the Nuclear Weapons Debate (1981-1984)

Abstract

This article examines the nature of what motivated Reagan’s disarmament policy and what influence the Freeze movement had on it during his first term. It challenges the conventional view posited by scholars such as Lawrence S. Wittner and Angela Santese that early in his administration, Reagan was not interested in disarmament and that the Freeze movement, via public pressure and efforts in Congress, forced Reagan to soften his bellicose rhetoric and alter his approach to disarmament policy. By examining Freeze documents from the State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO), executive branch documents from the Reagan Library, and the State Department Office of the Historian, as well as pertinent memoirs, this article offers a more complex and nuanced analysis of what drove Reagan’s thinking during this crucial period in the Cold War. In contrast to Wittner and Santese, it asserts that Reagan genuinely sought nuclear arms reductions throughout his first term and that any tactical adaptation in his approach resulted from an evolution in his mindset toward the Soviets caused by the cumulative effect of the attempt on his life, relationship with Ambassador Dobrynin, the Pentecostalist case, and NATO’s Able Archer exercise, and was only tangentially related to the Freeze movement.