A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s
By Anthony M. Eames.
University of Massachusetts Press, 2023.
Paperback, 272 pages, $29.95.
Reviewed by Dr. Jason C. Phillips.
Anthony M. Eames currently serves as the director of scholarly initiatives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and as a lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He is a well-published expert on nuclear and national security issues. His latest book, A Voice in Their Own Destiny, takes a transnational approach to the nuclear 1980s by examining the strategic coordination of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher during the waning days of the Cold War.
Of course, this era only appears to be the waning days with modern hindsight. At the time, the Anglo-American leaders were losing ground to the forces of the antinuclear movement. The Euromissile Crisis and the Nuclear Freeze Movement were straining international relations, influencing a younger generation shaped by a memory of Vietnam and other Cold War excesses rather than a memory of World War II and the Marshall Plan. For this new generation, disarmament was far more favorable to any “peace through strength” rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. Hopped up on the apocalyptic visions of transatlantic movies like The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984), the emerging antinuclear movement was winning public opinion and posing a threat to American and British security interests.
Eames argues that in response to this, the Anglo-American leaders “conceived of public diplomacy as a means to reconcile Cold War culture and Cold War strategy.” This realization would lead to a revolution in public diplomacy, the art of influencing both domestic and foreign opinion. Thatcher and Reagan would work in tandem, alongside an emerging network of advocates, allies, and think tanks, to perfect their messaging and win public support. This would prove vital to the eventual Western triumph in the Cold War. As Eames put it, “At the end of the Cold War, the most important battle of ideas was not between the western and eastern blocs but between western public diplomacy operations and the peace movement that made the Anglo-American nuclear experience an axis in the growth of the transnational public sphere…the fundamental of American and British democracy were irrevocably altered by the nuclear debates of the 1980s.”
The antinuclear movement had several means at its disposal in the battle over public opinion. Eames is especially convincing when discussing the importance of science diplomacy. During the 1980s, scientists became more vocal in asserting themselves in the debate between deterrence and disarmament. In Great Britain, this new road was first traversed by the Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) in January 1981. SANA sought to campaign against Thatcher’s defense plans by appealing directly to the people. They provided advocacy and scientific studies to various anti-nuclear organizations in Great Britain.
One of SANA’s more significant contributions was helping spur the Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) movement. The NWFZ movement became a transatlantic phenomenon in the early 1980s, migrating to major American localities like Hawaii County, Hawaii, Garrett Park, Maryland, and even Chicago. All of this was spurred on by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which was the major British anti-nuclear organization. The United States would also see similar science-based organizations and many scientists, most prominently Carl Sagan, become the public face of the American antinuclear movement. This new era of science diplomacy was joined by anti-nuclear advocacy groups and movements from both religious and political perspectives.
How were Reagan and Thatcher to combat this increasingly organized transatlantic anti-nuclear movement? Eames begins his work by highlighting a public debate between Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, and British anti-nuclear intellectual and celebrated historian E.P. Thompson at the Oxford Union on February 27, 1984. This debate, which can be found on YouTube, is certainly an entertaining watch for one interested in the topic. Eames sees far more significance in it, arguing that it was the first direct confrontation between a member of Reagan’s cabinet and the British anti-nuclear movement. The two were supposed to debate the motion that “there is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the USA and the USSR.”
However, the debate quickly turned to a debate over disarmament vs. deterrence. Thompson reached a fairly predictable position for the anti-nuclear disarmament camp: the U. S. was belligerent and had thereby destroyed any claim to morality they might have once had, resulting in a case of no morality. According to Eames, Weinberger “countered that deterrence had in fact guaranteed U.S. moral superiority over the Soviet Union. Weinberger justified the U.S. nuclear buildup as a way to maintain the credibility of deterrence, suggesting that it was based not on U.S. aggression but on a calculation of what would deter the men in the Kremlin from asserting their immoral philosophy over Western Europe and the rest of the free world.” Perhaps most surprisingly, Weinberger won the debate according to the assembled audience. Eames’s book argues that this debate was representative of the nuclear 1980s due to the arguments leveled by both sides, the shared Anglo-American posture, and the emphasis on utilizing public diplomacy to steer public opinion.
Eames spends as much time highlighting the growth and development of the deterrence movement as he does the disarmament movement. On the one hand, you had official government agencies like the United States Information Agency, National Security Council, Department of Defense, State Department, White House communications team, and others crafting reports and engaging in public diplomacy. Eames especially emphasizes the role of Charles Wick, the director of USIA from 1981-1987, in leading the charge in the realm of public diplomacy. This process was largely duplicated in Thatcher’s government.
It is not at all shocking that a government would utilize its agencies to sell its message. What is a little more surprising, and one of the great strengths of Eames’s work, is how involved Reagan and Thatcher’s governments were with pronuclear private sector affiliates. As Eames put it, “the campaign created a common cause for conservative journalists, fundraisers, and movement organizations, thus contributing to the rise of the transatlantic New Right.” Eames holds the Heritage Foundation and the Coalition for Peace Through Strength as two of the more prominent and influential organizations in the struggle over public diplomacy in the nuclear 1980s.
Eames’s work goes far beyond being just a study of the pronuclear Heritage Foundation and Coalition for Peace Through Strength opposing the antinuclear Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and public intellectuals like Sagan and Thompson. A Voice in Their Own Destiny details numerous other individuals and organizations, providing a balanced picture of the importance of public diplomacy during the nuclear 1980s. Eames shows how the Reagan and Thatcher administrations utilized public diplomacy in pursuing deterrence, ultimately leading to the end of the Cold War.
There are a few points of criticism that must be made, though. For one, Eames tends to disregard SDI and argues that by 1986, the Soviets were no longer worried about it, but William Inboden’s recent masterpiece, The Peacemaker, provides a stronger picture of SDI’s importance. Perhaps a far more blatant error comes when Eames is discussing the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 tragedy of September 1983. Eames is certainly correct that Reagan’s response to this disaster was somber and that Reagan and Thatcher sought to utilize it in the wider context of public diplomacy. Eames should also be credited for mentioning that the flight carried Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald, a very important detail to the tragedy that is almost always left out when historians discuss the KAL 007 tragedy. However, Eames incorrectly identifies McDonald as a Republican. While McDonald was certainly one of the more conservative and hawkish members of Congress, he was, from the start of his career to his untimely death, a Democrat.
However, these are minor points of criticism that do not detract from Eames’s overall thesis. A Voice in Their Own Destiny is an important contribution to the current resurgence in the study of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and administration. It will appeal to both scholars and non-scholars.
Jason Phillips is Associate Professor of History at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska. He received his PhD from the University of Arkansas in 2019.
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