This project examines the origins, drafting, and effects of Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire speech. My dissertation introduces this important address by exploring Reagan’s political ideology during his pre-presidential years. His ideological polemics coexisted with his pragmatic governing style. I subsequently explain how ending the foreign policy of détente with the Soviet Union led to the rise of the Nuclear Freeze movement, a broad-based, bipartisan, interfaith, international peace group. The dissertation centers on the reaction by peace activists, evangelical Christians, the Kremlin, and the mainstream news media to rhetorical rearmament, Reagan’s Manichean and moralistic characterization of his foreign policy ideology. My project concludes by studying the political phenomenon of “evil empire” over the past quarter century.
The importance of the study derives from the political mobilization of the White House against this incarnation of the peace movement among religious voters, in the news media, and from the bully pulpit. My dissertation examines the varying levels of support the Nuclear Freeze movement received from peace activists, the mainstream news media, and religious organizations. The president needed to counteract the movement’s popularity by creating a favorable national discourse on behalf of his military rearmament. Instead, Reagan’s oratory exacerbated the Cold War tensions by deeming the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” The president found himself caught between his desire for nuclear arms reductions and his unyielding belief in the inherent evil of Soviet Communism. Throughout his presidency, Reagan alternated between ideological and pragmatic approaches toward the Soviet Union. The Evil Empire speech was the height of ideology. Yet, soon after the address the president came to favor pragmatism than ideology. He embraced Mikhail Gorbachev and created the conditions necessary to end the Cold War. Rhetorical rearmament had the unintended consequences of galvanizing the Nuclear Freeze movement, hindering U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, and contributing to the end of the Cold War.