Ronald Reagan, the United States' 40th president, is widely perceived as the man who "brought down" the Soviet Union. Increasingly, that ranks him high in many a pollster's list of top American presidents.
Many Reagan detractors maintain that the actor-turned-president was simply the last in a long line of Cold Warrior presidents, and that he benefited from the policy of containment upheld by his predecessors, from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter. (Not to mention the proxy wars many of those presidents waged against Soviet satellite countries, like North Korea and North Vietnam.)
Still others claim that the Soviet Union was destined to die on its own, killed by the rot of Communism which stifled entrepreneurship, personal incentive, and technological growth. They say that Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush, were just in office at the right time to reap the benefits of Communism's demise.
Regardless of which view of Reagan you hold -- aggressive Cold Warrior or passive Cold War beneficiary -- it is true that Reagan gave America's role in the Cold War new impetus with a document known as National Security Decision Directive 75.

Soviet Succession Crisis

At this writing, it has been just over 30 years since the National Security Council drafted NSDD 75 in January 1983. While Reagan had been in office two years and had made no secret he wanted to see the Soviet Union fall, NSDD 75 took advantage of a crisis in the Soviet Union.
That crisis was the death of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982. Brezhnev had taken over the leadership of the Soviet Union in 1964 on the death of Nikita Khrushchev. Brezhnev's 18-year tenure was second only that of World War II leader Josef Stalin.
NSDD 75 predicted internal turmoil during Brezhnev's succession. "This may be a particularly opportune time for external forces to affect the policies of Brezhnev's successors," the document states.
The NSC understood that "the Soviet Union will be engaged in the unpredictable process of political succession to Brezhnev. The U.S. will not seek to adjust its policies to the Soviet internal conflict, but rather try to create incentives (positive and negative) for the new leadership to adopt policies less detrimental to the U.S. interests." Indeed, Brezhnev's succession was "unpredictable." Yuri Andropov immediately succeeded Brezhnev, only to die little more than a year later. Andropov was succeeded by Constantine Chernenko, who also died just over a year in office. Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who lead the Soviet Union through glasnost and perestroika and to its demise, took over in 1985.

Rollback -- Not Containment

NSDD 75 was based on a policy known as "rollback." Rollback was counter to the official U.S. policy of containment. U.S. diplomat George Kennan, who had spent much of World War II in the American embassy in Moscow, advised soon after the war that the U.S. should mount a "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment" of the Soviet Union. Simply, the U.S. and its allies should hold the Soviet Union in territories it occupied at the close of World War II. (For example, it had occupied all of Eastern Europe and northern Korea at war's end.)
Containment, as codified by the Truman Doctrine in 1946, became the main pillar of U.S. foreign policy. John Foster Dulles, who would become President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state in 1953, advocated another policy, however. That policy was rollback -- pushing the borders of Soviet client states back to prewar lines.
Dulles was also the man who coined the phrase "massive retaliation" for any American response to a Soviet attack on the U.S. or its allies. In his rhetoric, Dulles practiced "brinkmanship," seemingly pushing Communist countries to the brink of war to prove American steadfastness.
Ultimately, Dulles' ideas, including rollback never became official policy. Truman had tried it in Korea with disastrous results. U.S. and U.N. troops nearly succeeded in wresting North Korea from Communist control in 1950, but they drew Chinese troops into the war who forced them back into South Korea. In Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson fought a limited war for fear of escalating the conflict and drawing China -- or the Soviets -- into that war.
But in NSDD 75, Reagan and the NSC decided to quietly (the document was top secret in 1983) adopt a policy of rollback without the Dulles dramatics of brinkmanship.

When President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 75 (NSDD 75) in January 1983, he started the process of rolling back the Soviet Union which he had long espoused. NSDD 75 would go beyond the policy of containment of the Soviet Union that the U.S. had held since 1946.
NSDD 75, drafted by Reagan's National Security Council, had three basic tenets. One, to pressure the Soviet Union externally with a military might and geographic positioning. Two, to exert internal pressure with an economic policy that moved the U.S.S.R. toward "a more pluralistic political and economic system in which the power of the privileged ruling elite is gradually reduced." Three, engage the Soviet Union in negotiations that exploited any gains achieved by the first two objectives.

Military Strength

Much of NSDD 75 was based on American military strength, which, in 1983, needed a great deal of repair. "The U.S. must modernize its military forces - both nuclear and conventional - so that Soviet leaders perceive that the U.S. is determined never to accept a second place or a deteriorating military posture," NSDD 75 states.
"Deteriorating military posture" was something of an understatement. A decade earlier, the U.S. had left Vietnam after its failed venture to prevent that country from going Communist. In 1975, just after South Vietnam fell to the Communist North, U.S. Marines were barely able to rescue the crew of the Mayaguez who had been captured by Cambodians of the Khmer Rouge. In 1979, an American military expedition failed to rescue Americans whom Islamic fundamentalists had taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.
True to the directive, Reagan presided over the largest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history. By 1985, military spending had jumped from $142 billion a year to $286 billion a year. That included updates of the M1 Abrams tank, stealth fighter and bomber production, and updates of Cruise missiles. The era also saw the nation's military branches acquiring higher quality recruits than in the immediate post-Vietnam days, and they began focusing on tactical studies that had been all but abandoned in the 1960s.
In economic policy, NSDD 75 endeavored to:

• "Ensure that East-West economic relations do not facilitate the Soviet military buildup. This requires prevention of the transfer of technology and equipment that would make a substantial contribution directly or indirectly to Soviet military power."

• "Avoid subsidizing the Soviet economy or unduly easing the burden of Soviet resources allocation decisions, so as not to dilute pressures for structural change in the Soviet system."

• "Minimize the potential for Soviet exercise of reverse leverage on Western countries based on trade, energy supply, and financial relationships."

• "Permit mutual beneficial trade - without Western subsidization or the creation of Western dependence - with the USSR in non-strategic areas, such as grains."

NSDD 75 also called for the United States to keep traditional allies in "industrial democracies" under its wing; continue to oppose Soviet inroads into Third World areas, such as Central America; and to exploit Soviet weaknesses in Eastern Europe (where Polish rebellions were nearly three years old), Cuba, and Afghanistan. (Anyone who has seen Charlie Wilson's War knows of American efforts to turn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan into the U.S.S.R.'s own "Vietnam.")
The directive suggested that "A continuing dialogue with the Soviets at Foreign Minister level facilitates necessary diplomatic communication with the Soviet leadership and helps to maintain Allied understanding and support for U.S. approach to East-West relations. A summit between President Reagan and his Soviet counterpart might promise similarly beneficial results." Reagan held a series of summit meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, first in Geneva, Switzerland, then in Reykjavik, Iceland, that paved the way to new openness between their countries.
Finally, NSDD 75 encouraged a reaffirmation of basic American tenets to underscore its goals. "U.S. policy must have an ideological thrust which clearly affirms the superiority of U.S. and Western values of individual dignity and freedom, a free press, free trade unions, free enterprise, and political democracy over the repressive features of Soviet Communism," the document states.
In countless speeches and appearances, Reagan stressed just that. Dressed in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie -- with his perennial American flag lapel pin -- Reagan was the embodiment of NSDD 75. In his hands, the document became one of the true milestones of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.