This Dream Team has nothing to do with basketball. As a guest on a 2009 episode of Charlie Rose, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev commemorated the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. During the interview, Gorbachev made a number of interesting statements. His most interesting one should have been the fact that he wasn’t impressed with President Ronald Reagan’s now-iconic challenge to “tear down this wall.”
The former Soviet premier also said he considered Reagan a great leader, but that wasn’t the most memorable reflection, either. Joining Gorbachev on the show was Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz, who brought up Reagan and Gorby’s famous Lake Geneva Summit during the broadcast. Schultz admitted he wasn’t present when the two leaders ducked out to a nearby cabin to talk. That’s when Gorbachev made his most stunning recollection.
Because Gorbachev remembered their conversation very clearly.
“From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’
“I said, ‘No doubt about it.'”
“He said, ‘We too.'”
President Reagan was an avid fan of science fiction films like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and even once hosted an advance screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Reagan wasn’t ashamed of the question, and even repeated the story to a group of Maryland high school students after his return to the United States. It happened so often, in fact, that Deputy National Security Adviser Colin Powell used to review the President’s speeches and remove mentions of what he called “the little green men.”
The former president’s love of science fiction actually informed his policy. Literally. The Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy was a think tank and advocacy group from which Reagan often sought input on space and technology policy. The council was primarily composed of scientists, astronauts, and engineers, but also included the legendary sci-fi writers Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle.
Reagan would mention an alien invasion during his address to the 42nd session of the United Nations in 1987, discussing what, if any, external force could bring humanity together.
I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?
Luckily, aliens never invaded Earth, and the American-Soviet gentlemen’s agreement never came to fruition. In Reagan’s later remarks, he openly stated that the “aliens” were already here and threatening humanity, but not literally. The president made it clear that his alien threat was actually an allegory about nuclear weapons.
