Evil empire

The phrase evil empire was applied to the former Soviet Union by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and American conservatives, particularly conservative "hawks," who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the former Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities. Some contend that this depiction of the Soviet Union, in the mid to late-1980s, as "evil" marked a turning point in the Cold War, affording the U.S. a moral high ground that allowed it to take vastly more aggressive steps to deter and ultimately "rollback" the former Soviet Union's significant engagement in global affairs. Critics of the phrase, however, saw it as an escalation of anti-Soviet rhetoric that was further dividing the two superpowers, with potentially serious consequences for global peace, including the risk of nuclear war. Still others saw it as a meaningless piece of rhetoric.

British House of Commons speech

Reagan's chief speechwriter at the time, Anthony R. Dolan, reportedly coined the phrase for Reagan's use.^[1] The exact date Reagan first used it is uncertain. The Modern History Sourcebook, published by Fordham University in New York City, places it on June 8, 1982, in a speech to the British House of Commons in London.^[2] In fact, though, while Reagan referred twice to the evil of totalitarianism in his London speech, the exact phrase "evil empire" did not appear. Rather, the phrase "ash heap of history" appeared in this speech, used by Reagan to predict what he saw as the inevitable failure and collapse of global communism. Curiously enough, this latter phrase was coined by Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in November 1917 in the exactly opposite context, using it against his opponents (the Mensheviks) and suggesting that communism was the future.^[3]

National Association of Evangelicals speech

Reagan's March 8, 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida is his first recorded use of the phrase, in which Reagan said:

"In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."^[4]

The use of the phrase "evil empire" by Reagan and U.S. conservatives was intentionally designed to highlight the moral divide of the Cold War, depicting the Soviet Union as acting in ways that were "evil" and undermined conventional moral ethos. The depiction also proved useful to conservatives in justifying a significantly more aggressive defense and foreign policy stand against the Soviet Union. In addition to using the phrase "evil empire" to describe the former Soviet Union, Reagan also described the Soviet Union as "totalitarian." While his characterization of the former Soviet Union was heavily supported by conservatives and Cold War hawks, many others disagreed with its use, prompting a major global controversy and debate over Reagan's use of the phrase.

Global reaction

Michael Johns, writing for the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review magazine, prominently defended Reagan's assertion. In "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," Johns cited 208 acts by the Soviet Union that, he argued, demonstrated the Soviet leadership's evil inclinations.^[5] The Soviet Union, for its part, responded as it had for most of the Cold War, alleging that the United States was an imperialist superpower seeking to dominate the entire world, and that the Soviet Union was fighting against it in the name of freedom. During his second term in office, almost three years after using the term "evil empire," Reagan visited the new reformist General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. When asked by a reporter whether he still thought the Soviet Union was an "evil empire," Reagan responded that he no longer did, and that when he had employed the term it had been a "different era," referring to the period before Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms. Still, Reagan remained a harsh critic of the Soviet regime. Recent historians, such as Yale University's John Lewis Gaddis, have grown more favorable towards the use and influence of the phrase "evil empire" in describing the former Soviet Union. In his book, The Cold War, Gaddis argues that, in their use of the phrase "evil empire," Reagan and his conservative political allies were effective in breaking the détente tradition, thus laying the ground for the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Empire. Others, however, like Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, question this claim, declaring in 2007 that one of the greatest reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was its defeat in the Afghanistan war by the Afghan mujahideen resistance.^[6] In this statement, however, bin Laden did not mention the significant role of the United States and Saudi Arabia in providing extensive military aid to the mujahideen that may have proved critical in their ultimate success.

Later uses

Following Reagan's use of the phrase, the phrase "evil empire" took on a nearly icon status in global culture and was used in these and other contexts:

• The band Rage Against the Machine released a 1996 album titled Evil Empire, which featured songs generally critical of the United States government, including "People of the Sun" and "Bulls on Parade."
• "Evil Empire" is the name of a ska punk band.
• "Evil Empire Comedy" is the name of a comedy company in the San Francisco Bay Area. They perform improv comedy and focus on pop satire sketch comedy. The logo of the group is a pig face with devil horns.
• In recent years, the American professional baseball team, the New York Yankees, has been nicknamed the "evil empire" because of their huge team salaries and success in seemingly obtaining any player of their choice with lucrative contracts.
• Eurosceptics such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) have used the phrase to refer to the European Union.
• In 2002, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush frequently referred to an "axis of evil," comprised of the regimes of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (and sometimes also including Syria). This phrase, which also proved controversial and a subject of global debate, likely represents a double reference to the "evil empire" and also the Axis of World War II.
• A 2007 book, The Evil Empire, lists many major crimes committed by the British Empire and editorally makes the claim that the British acted in an evil fashion, particularly during their global colonial reign, but also afterwards, blaming the British solely for both the First World War, the Second World War and the Great Depression.
• The term "Evil Empire" is often used in geekspeak as a comic reference to the Microsoft Corporation.
• The term "Evil Empire" is sometimes used as a reference to the traditionally successful Duke University men's basketball program. Also in American sports, University of Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma used the phrase to describe the University of Tennessee's program in the heated collegiate women's basketball rivalry between the University of Connecticut and the University of Tennessee.
• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Evil Empire is a former political entity of the Ramtops meant to allude to the Soviet Union. After its breakup, one of the smaller states formed is Uberwald (Transylvania).
• In modern Russia term "Evil Empire" often considered to be badge of honor among revanchist intellectuals, due to dual meaning of the term in Russian language. "Evil Empire" (Russian: Империя зла) also means "Empire is angry".

Notes