One reads over Jim Baker's article for the new Newsweek, looking for acknowledgement of President Ronald Reagan's crucial role in bringing down the Berlin Wall in 1989. It turns out that Reagan is mentioned by Baker, but only in passing. Others are credited more.

But it was Reagan who rebuilt America's military might, confronted the Soviets around the world, promoted Star Wars and revived the American economy while the Soviet's command economy was crumbling. In diplomacy, it was Reagan who pursued "peace through strength" when dealing--brilliantly--with Mikhail Gorbachev.

It was Ronald Reagan who stood before the Wall in 1987 and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The famous declaration was made in the teeth of advice from his own White House staff and top State Department officials that he not provoke the Russians and embarrass the Germans. The famous line, writes Steven Hayward in his fine new history of the time, The Age of Reagan, actually was extracted from early drafts of the speech text several times by would-be in-house censors. The President kept putting it back in. Hayward describes a conversation between the President and his aide, Kenneth Duberstein, in which Reagan actually has to remind his own staffer that he is the President and the staffer is not!

Ronald Reagan does not deserve all of the credit for the end of "The Evil Empire," as he called it (also famously, and to the howls of his domestic critics). But he deserves a lot of the credit, along with Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher, one should say, and, of course, countless Eastern European martyrs to freedom and such luminary intellects as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. So, yes, give credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, to George H. Bush, and, by the way, to Jim Baker, too. But without Ronald Reagan it probably would not have happened.

James Baker was Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush at the time the wall came down, ten months after Reagan left office. (He was Chief of Staff in the Reagan White House in the early years.) I well recall Mr. Baker's reaction the day in 1989 that the wall first was pried open by East German youth. I was watching TV, thrilled, tears coming to my eyes.

Secretary Baker was asked (by CNN, I think) for his reaction. He said he thought it was "a good first step." I couldn't get over that tepid reaction. I said to the television: "A good first step, Jim? The Berlin Wall is coming down!"

It is likely that the Mr. Baker was just being professionally cautious. After all, he must have thought it important not to celebrate too much in public while the Soviets could still use troops to quell the change.

Still, Jim Baker seemed as surprised as anyone.

In contrast was Ronald Reagan, who often had predicted the defeat of communism. He worked most of his adult life to that end. He also and a very few others also saw ahead to the fall of the Wall. Give him due credit.

PLEASE NOTE: I will have the pleasure of introducing Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan, at Discovery Institute headquarters, 208 Columbia, Seattle at 4:30 p.m. Monday--the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Email Mollie Tschida at molliet@discovery.org if you'd like to join us.