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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Thatcher, Reagan relationship altered history

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Bipartisianship

Comments: 0

Margaret Thatcher's first official visit to the United States was in 1967 when, as a young member of Parliament, she toured the country as part of a State Department exchange program. The six-week trip acquainted her with the USA from Miami to Los Angeles, but it wasn't until she met Ronald Reagan that she found her political "soulmate" and formed an alliance that would alter history.

Thatcher first met Reagan one-on-one in April 1975 at the House of Commons in London. Reagan, then the governor of California, wrote a thank-you note to Thatcher, then the Conservative Party's opposition leader in Parliament.

"Please know," Reagan wrote, "you have an enthusiastic supporter out here in the 'colonies.'"

Thatcher recalled that meeting decades later in a 1997 speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"As soon as I met Governor Reagan, I knew that we were of like mind, and manifestly so did he," Thatcher said. "We shared a rather unusual philosophy and we shared something else rather unusual as well: We were in politics because we wanted to put our philosophy into practice."

Thatcher's tenure as prime minister coincided with Reagan's time in the White House.

The Ronald Reagan library identifies Thatcher as Reagan's most prolific correspondent among heads of state and notes that they exchanged hundreds of letters, messages and telephone calls.

Both worked to dismantle government bureaucracies and deregulate key industries. At one meeting, Reagan and Thatcher had a sharp discussion about U.S. barriers to the denationalization of British Airways.

"Ronnie and Margaret were political soulmates, committed to freedom and resolved to end communism," former first lady Nancy Reagan recalled in a statement Monday. "As prime minister, Margaret had the clear vision and strong determination to stand up for her beliefs at a time when so many were afraid to 'rock the boat.' As a result, she helped to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the

That feisty determination was on display in a private meeting between Thatcher and Reagan at Camp David, Md., on Dec. 22, 1984, where notes indicate she gave a detailed account of her meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Thatcher called Gorbachev charming, open to debate and much less constrained than the typical Russian.

"The prime minister noted that she often says to herself the more charming the adversary, the more dangerous," the notes said.

Still, she told Reagan, she'd asked Gorbachev pointed questions during his visit to London, including why the Soviet Union denied its people the right to emigrate. She suggested to him that it was a "sign of weakness to feel the need to keep one's people in," the notes said.

As their political careers dimmed and a new generation of politicians blamed Thatcher for Britain's economic woes, it was Thatcher who stood amid criticism to burnish Reagan's legacy even while her own was called into question. Calling the former president "my old friend Ronald Reagan," Thatcher praised him in a 1997 Heritage Foundation speech as "one of the great men of our time, and one of the greatest American presidents of all time."

"If that is not fully appreciated today, and sadly it is not, it isn't really surprising," she said. "After all, so many people have been proved wrong by Ronald Reagan that they simply daren't acknowledge his achievement. Forests have already been pulped to print the revisionist analyses of the '80s."

Photo: Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan share a laugh during a break from a session at the Ottawa Summit on July 21, 1981, at Government House in Ottawa, Canada. AP File.

Link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/08/thatcher-reagan-political-soulmates/2063671/

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