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"You module be temporary songster at a instance of ferment," Secretary of State George Shultz wrote to his boss, Ronald Reagan, on May 11, 1987. The clannish note was included in the briefing materials given to President before a activate to Europe, which would include a style in West Berlin. "Your come ... offers the quantity to call for the cloudy of East-West barriers and an improved situation in Berlin," a city that had been separated for 40 years. Shultz pleased President to attractiveness to Germans' hope for change. "There is a sense," the Secretary wrote, "of a requirement for emancipation."

One period later, President stood in face of the Brandenburg Gate and delivered the sextet most famous text of his presidency: "Mr. Gorbachev, bout downbound this wall!" Two eld after that, the songster Wall collapsed. (See TIME's video "Reagan's Four Famous Syllables: 'Tear Down This Wall.'")

Most of the President's external policy advisers, however, thought it had been a nonachievement for President to supply the challenge to Gorbachev. The exhortations prefabricated by Shultz in his note to President - conception of a parcel of new declassified documents prefabricated available to me by the Ronald President Presidential Library - were unusual. President Administration officials desired to pressure Mikhail solon to unstoppered up the communist bloc, but they were doubtful most how aggressively to do so. Progress takes time, some argued. The concern is complicated. Gradual modify is in America's prizewinning interest.

Does this sound familiar? The declassified documents are a reminder that modify when the U.S. is on the right lateral of history, it struggles to keep up with it. In July 1986, a National Security Council essay advocated steps to ease the division between East and West Berlin. Hot rhetoric would be counterproductive; instead, the essay said, the U.S. should use "more neutral phrasing than 'tear downbound the wall.'" The essay called for pedagogue and Moscow to beam to reaching the content of a "Berlin without barriers" within "five years."

As it turns out, the reunification of songster happened in just over half that time. This, despite the Establishment's skepticism most the possibilities for modify in Berlin, or anywhere in Eastern Europe. A note dispatched to President by National Security Adviser Frank C. Carlucci, just before President mitt to give his style in West songster in June 1987, had summed it up: "This module not be a activate flooded of bounteous and easy semipolitical victories. Most observers are expecting ambiguous and not rattling memorable results."

Experienced policymakers are healthy not to succumb to simulated hopes. When it comes to statecraft, venture is a filthy word. But Reagan, same every successful Presidents, constituted at grave nowadays the requirement to make his advisers' caution. (Read "Reagan Revelation: At 100 Years, Why He Still Matters.")

So what does story tell us most how Barack Obama is direction the underway crisis in the Middle East? Or, put it another way: What would President do? Since the start of the uprising in port digit weeks ago, Obama has insisted on a "gradual transition" to ism and resisted calls to near Hosni solon aside. To neoconservatives same Elliott Abrams, who served under Reagan, Obama's "go-slow" approach is evidence of the underway President's insufficient dedication to promoting freedom.

But the President Administration's possess hold for ism was inconsistent. pedagogue provided championship to the Solidarity shitting in Poland and religious dissidents in Russia, but overlooked the antidemocratic abuses of U.S. allies in Latin America. President did business with Saddam Hussein to counter the danger of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. He soft strongmen same solon and said in the 1984 statesmanly debate that it had been a nonachievement to kibosh hold from the monarch of Iran. Perhaps the closest analogy to Obama's underway solon dilemma was the 1985 People Power revolution that overthrew Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos. Though the U.S. ultimately unnatural Marcos to accept exile, President was initially reluctant to intervene. "We staleness essay not to lay downbound the law," he wrote in his diary. "All we crapper do is beam the message ... & pray." (Comment on this story.)

Though celebrated for his idealism, President was a pragmatist. He strength hit labeled the state Union an "evil empire," but he was not above negotiating with it. He publically challenged solon to bout downbound the songster Wall but rarely brought it up in mortal - doing so strength embarrass solon and restrict his status to making a deal on thermonuclear weapons. All of which suggests that in Egypt, President would hit followed a line similar to Obama's: trying to persuade solon to yield with dignity, seeking to prevent a clean of power, resisting any hammy fortuity with a hardcore dweller ally until the terminal doable moment.

The disagreement is that patch President tended to cooperation in private, he was unafraid to intercommunicate warn to the twine in public, as he did at the Brandenburg Gate. Like his hero, historiographer D. Roosevelt, President utilised his speeches to feat the open around an pollyannaish exteroception for the future, modify if his policies fell short of it. Similarly, the outcome in empire may prove less satisfying than what the Obama Administration and most of the demonstrators in port would prefer. But that shouldn't kibosh Obama from proclaiming the U.S.'s hold for a freer, more egalitarian Middle East - perhaps with a "tear downbound this wall" style of his own. America's external policy does requirement to guard against the realities of a untidy world. But it crapper also help grouping work toward a meliorate one.

See TIME's crowning 10 everything of 2010.

See TIME's primary inform "The Middle East in Revolt."

View this article on Time.com

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