Steve Ensrik talks to the author and commentator Max Pot about the changing world order.
Steve Insarik, Host:
Like or not, the world is changing. President Trump’s re -election is just one of the many signs. His expected meeting with Russia’s leader may help us to learn more about what this new world is. In many NPR talks, we are trying to set the new world order. Today, we have a look at the former president at the time of change, Ronald Reagan.
(Soundbite from the Archiving Registration)
Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, demolishing this wall.
(acclaim)
Inskeep: He is the Republican President in the 1980s, who challenged the Soviet Union to remove the wall that divided Berlin. The biography of conservative writer Max Pot includes.
Max Boot: After the Vietnam War, Watergate, the crisis of Iran’s hostage, the recession, had made a terrible mistake. And America looked uninterrupted. It seemed out of control, its ability to decline. But Ronald Reagan had this kind of invincible faith in America as a bright city on a hill.
Inskeep: He was the leader of a conservative movement. He was a movie star, a seller for his case. Max Boot claims that he was also a strategic thinker.
Boot: I think this is one of the things that people do not understand about his success as a ruler of California and the President of the United States. They tend to focus on his very conservative speech and imagine that it was a kind of ideological carrier. But in reality, the exact opposite. It was a person not just great, but also the great equal.
Inskeep: I am thinking about the fact that he was criticized for his invitation to the Soviet Union is an evil empire. However, he was concerned about his aides by going to such lengths to try to make peace with the Soviets or make arms control deals.
Boot: This is completely true. There was a lot for Ronald Reagan more than people realized at the time, when they were mocking him as warm. It was secretly that the nuclear cancellation penalty was canceled. He was a person who wanted to get rid of all nuclear weapons. In fact, he separated in his second term from a strict confrontation with the Soviet Union, as he was in his first term, in fact in friendship with Gorbachev, reducing tensions and road space for the end of the Cold War.
Inskeep: I think we should notice that the Berlin Wall fell after Reagan’s departure from the office. But is there any doubt that Reagan was a major driver?
Boot: Well, as you know, the main engine was in many ways, of course, the people of Eastern Europe, the people of East Germany who did not want to live under a communist dictatorship. And I think Gorbachev also deserves a lot of credit because it did not interact with the way the rulers of China during the Tiananmen Square protest in the same year. He did not send tanks to the massacre of people. The Berlin wall was allowed to go down and thus end the Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe.
Inskeep: I am pleased to hear you in this way because a question is going on in my mind. We tend to think about the President of the United States, whatever it is, as the world’s main character. Our media are prepared in this way. All TV cameras indicate this way. People comment on every word. But listening to you, we can make a case that it was in fact the forces of history, and it does not matter much.
Boot: Well, I think it is important to the president. But I think you are fully right that the President of the United States was not necessarily the main driver in this drama. Reagan was definitely lucky at his timing. He had a good feeling to put Omar from the anti -communist discourse behind him and made a common issue with Communist 1 in the world, and this is not something that anyone expects at that time. However, I don’t think Reagan is the main driver in this historical drama.
Inskeep: So let’s advance now. What is the global system that President Trump faced?
Boot: Well, President Trump heads a more complex global system with China presenting the longest and important challenge to the American Authority. But Russia is a major threat, and Iran poses a threat and North Korea is a threat. So this is a very complex strategic account that the president must deal with, and I am not sure that President Trump is aware of enough nuances or the consequences of his actions.
Inskeep: For this particular reason, I wonder about the president’s actions that we can see as changing the world and which we can see is attention, if it is permissible to speak. Do you think he is behaving in a way that transforms the world?
Boot: I think it turns the world but not necessarily in a positive direction. I think the biggest change we see is to impose a tariff system on the whole world. It is mainly imposed on them using the executive authority, and I think there is a real reason to doubt whether he has this authority under the constitution. But it dates back 80 years from the United States in an attempt to promote free trade and low definitions. Trump actually raises definitions, thus raising the prices of American consumers and also creating barriers between the United States and our allies, who ignore all these definitions imposed.
Inskeep: Reagan, of course, a dominant figure in the eighties. President Trump can be considered several ways as a character in the eighties. It seems that many of his ideas come from that period when he was the younger adult. His attractiveness to definitions and his unwillingness to decline the American industry appears in the eighties of the last century, when steel factories were closed and so on. We can go through many other things that the president represents. It is in many ways a person at the same time as Ronald Reagan.
Boot: This is completely true. But one of the paradoxes with President Trump is that he now has a giant picture of President Reagan hanging in the Oval Office. However, at the time in the eighties of the last century, Donald Trump, the developer of real estate, was a Kurdish critic of President Reagan. It is clear that in the years that followed, he became the prominent figure in the Republican Party and the Republican Party took several ways in completely different directions from those adopted by President Reagan.
Inskeep: In the ongoing changes of the current president in the position and position towards other world leaders, towards various wars and other positions, do you see any possibility of something like you described with Reagan where he faced the Soviet Union and then reached another stage, and improves things?
Boot: Maybe this is what President Trump is trying to do. I mean, the problem is that President Trump is often very mercury in the way his agenda is implemented. He remembered this during his first term, as he moved from the threat to rain and anger on North Korea to talking about the amount of what Kim Jong Un loved, North Korea’s dictator. It was not caused by a deal. Nothing was caused by anything. We’ll see if he has more success with Putin. But at the present time, it is extremely difficult to know what his method is already gaining because, as you know, all in this field is, I think, very confusing not only for Americans, but also for other world leaders. I am not sure of what you’ve already achieved, but if it has a good result, it will be great.
Inskeep: Max Boot is the author of “RGAN: his life, legend” and other books. Thank you very much.
Shoe: Thank you for hosting me.
(Soundbite from Kendrick Lamar Song, “Ronald Regan Era”)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Please visit the pages of the terms of use and permissions on the website on www.nprr.org for more information.
The accuracy and availability of NPR texts may vary. The text text may be reviewed to correct errors or match updates with the sound. The sound may be released on NPR.org after the original broadcast or post. The official record of NPR programming is the audio record.