Ronald Reagan's Berlin Speech in 1987

Reagan at the Berlin Wall
In Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, two years before the Wall fell, Reagan made a direct challenge to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” It was a stunning challenge before the whole world at one of the most iconic places in the world—the Berlin Wall which for more than two decades had stood as a monument to the Cold War, to the tensions between the Communist capital in Moscow and the Capitalist U.S. Two-and-a-half decades prior, another U.S. President had come to the same wall to lament the callousness of Communism: John F. Kennedy. In many ways, Reagan’s speech was inspired by Kennedy’s speech at the Berlin Wall in 1961. This paper will show how.
Kennedy used the Berlin Wall as a political tool to show that he was both united with the common men and women of the world and hard on Communism. He identified as a Berliner in his speech, saying in German, “Ich eine Berliner!” (Kennedy, 1961). Reagan used this same term, “Berliner,” and the same idea in his speech when he stated, “Every man is a Berliner” (Reagan, 1987). Reagan was implying like Kennedy, that the people of Berlin represented the common man, torn between two cultures and opposing ideologies: on the one hand, Communism, on the other hand, liberty and democracy. Reagan was channeling Kennedy in his remarks, leading up to his firm stance against Communism when he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the wall.
Reagan’s speech was powerful in that it baited Gorbachev to do as he said he wanted to do in the crumbling Soviet Union—open up Russia to more liberalizing attitudes and ways. Reagan and the West viewed Gorbachev as a man who knew that the Soviet Union’s days were numbered, that its ideology had ultimately failed it; that its command and control economy had not worked. Reagan and the West seized on the opportunity to push Gorbachev in front of the whole world to take the next step and declare Communism dead. Reagan and the West did this by going to the Berlin Wall and making another tough political speech in front of the very symbol of Communism itself. Reagan used that symbol to essentially say that the Soviet Union was old and worn out and useless just like this wall and that it was high time for it to end. He likened it to a “scar” and basically described the Soviet Union as an ugly, shriveled up and decrepit state that no one wanted to look at any more. The scar had to be removed: he knew and he literally said that Gorbachev knew it, too. Reagan’s stern denouncement and challenge and tone gave his rhetoric a great deal of force.
The U.S.’s relations with Germany and Russia at the time were important to consider too. Reagan was pro-building up the military and reigniting the Cold War. Germany was caught in between the two countries and to show support for the German people and to get Germany to support the U.S.’s causes, Reagan went there to identify with Berlin’s struggles. He also went there to show Gorbachev that the Soviets were not going to win this fight.
Russia was indeed on the losing end of the Cold War. Its resources were sapped and it was in its twilight days. Reagan’s speech helped usher in the collapse of the Soviet Union as the last relic of its defiance in the face of the West—the Berlin Wall—was used by Reagan and the West as a cudgel to berate the Soviet leader one last time, belittle the Soviet ideology, and challenge the Soviet people to finally and at last open its arms to the liberalizing ideas and attitudes of the West. It worked: Reagan’s speech led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall just two years later.
References
Kennedy, J. F. (1961). Berlin Wall speech. Retrieved from
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/john-fitzgerald-kennedy/ich-bin-ein-berliner-speech-1963.php
Reagan, R. (1987). Speech at Berlin Wall. Retrieved from
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/berlin.html