During Ronald Reagan’s time in office he was often referred to as “The Great Communicator”. If given a choice between reading one of his speeches or watching him deliver it, take the time to watch the video. His passion comes through in video more powerfully than when reading his speech transcripts. The videos below are excerpts of speeches where he expressed his unique and revolutionary nuclear weapons policy – the necessity to both rid the world of nuclear weapons, while simultaneously creating a shared missile defense shield.
Candidate Reagan’s 1976 Concession Speech
When Reagan took the podium at the 1976 Republican National Convention to give his concession speech after losing to President Gerald Ford, it has been said that the audience realized they had just nominated the wrong candidate. What most people forget is that the impromptu, unscripted speech he gave that night was about how important it was for us to find a way out of the threat of nuclear destruction.
President Reagan’s 1985 Second Inaugural Address
In his 1985 second inaugural address, President Reagan announces his intention “to seek the total elimination one day, of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.” He also challenged the previously accepted doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, and outlined his creative alternative solution; negotiating a reduction in nuclear weapons in combination with an investment in a missile defense solution to provide a security shield that would render nuclear weapons obsolete.
President Reagan’s 1984 State of the Union Address
In Reagan’s 1984 State of the Union Address, he devoted several paragraphs to the people of the Soviet Union where he famously said, “there is only one sane policy, for your country and mine, to preserve our civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
President Reagan’s 1988 Historic Address at the Moscow State University
In response to a Russian university student question, President Reagan said, “my dream has always been that once we started down this road, we can look forward to a day … when there will be no more nuclear weapons in this world at all.”
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson of Two Futures Project
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson is the founder of the Two Futures Project. Tyler is an impassioned speaker who reminds us that we have the ability to choose between two futures.
Robert McNamara on the Cuban Missile Crisis
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was at President Kennedy’s side during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In this interview excerpt from the 2003 film, The Fog of War, he makes the point, “At the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear wars…. The major lesson of the Cuban Crisis is this: The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.”