Join the Wilson Center for a talk with Simon Miles on his book, "Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War."

The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. Simon Miles argues in "Engaging the Evil Empire" that Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As U.S. grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried for a number of reasons to reduce tensions between the two nations. Miles's narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Prague and East Berlin.

RSVP is requested; info can be found at this link.

Speaker:

Simon Miles, assistant professor, Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University