The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War Volume 474

In February 1999 key players in U.S. foreign policy during the 1980s gathered in Washington to discuss the policies and initiatives undertaken by the Reagan administration to challenge Soviet power. The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War is a collection of essays based on presentations made at that historic event.

-Richard V. Allen, President Reagan's first national security adviser, recounts the origins of the president's views regarding the Soviet Union and how it led him to reject the policy of containment.
-William P. Clark, Reagan's second national security adviser, discusses the details of recently declassified documents, including National Security Decision Directives 32, 66, and 75, which established a policy designed to roll back Soviet power and weaken the Soviet bloc through economic warfare.
-Fred C. Iklé, undersecretary of defense during the Reagan administration, describes the massive U.S. defense buildup and how it led Moscow to seek accommodation with the United States.
-Edwin Meese, counselor to the president and later attorney general, explains the role that renewing U.S. intelligence capabilities and support for anti-Soviet forces ("the Reagan Doctrine") played in the strategy.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall offers a fresh perspective and new insights into the most dramatic international development of the second half of the twentieth century: the collapse of the Soviet bloc.