The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words, write the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union. The characterization demeaned the Soviet Union and angered Soviet leaders; it represented the rhetorical side of the escalation of the Cold War.
Read more about Evil Empire: British House of Commons Speech, First Recorded Use, Global Reaction
Famous quotes containing the words evil and/or empire:
“No more, O my spirit,
are we flawless,
we have seen evil undreamt
I myself saw it.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)