This Dream Team, it turns out, has nothing to do with basketball and more to do with Cold War geopolitics—and an extraterrestrial invasion. Imagine the joint force of the Soviet Red Army and the U.S. military teaming up to take down an alien attack on our planet. Ronald Reagan sure did.
And, predating the movie “Independence Day” by more than a decade, he pitched the idea to his Soviet counterpart during a 1985 summit—the first time the two men ever met in person.
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As a guest on a 2009 episode of Charlie Rose, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev made an appearance to commemorate the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. During the subsequent interview, Gorbachev made a number of interesting statements, but perhaps 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.”
President Ronald Reagan "Tear Down This Wall" Speech at Berlin Wall
The former (and final) Soviet leader also said he considered Ronald Reagan to be a great leader, but that wasn’t the most memorable reflection, either.
Joining Gorbachev on the show that day was Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz, who brought up Reagan and Gorby’s famous 1985 Lake Geneva Summit during the broadcast. Schultz admitted he wasn’t present when the two leaders ducked out to a nearby cabin to talk. But 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, it turns out, 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.” As the Leader of the Free World, it’s kind of natural for him to think of what he would do if he were Commander-in-Chief during an alien invasion.
So 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 would even inform his policies. 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. 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 also 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” he said. “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 forged on the shores of Lake Geneva 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.
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