Even in the US, let alone in the West or the world more widely, Ronald Reagan was a deeply controversial figure, rising to be a President loved and hated with extraordinary intensity.

His role as ardent Cold War warrior won him the adulation of US hawks and the abiding gratitude of those - primarily East Europeans - who benefited from the collapse of the Soviet Union which he had memorably branded "The Evil Empire". Leftists and pacifists considered him a dangerous warmonger whose policy of superpower confrontation threatened to plunge the world into a nuclear apocalypse commensurate with the "Armageddon" of his Biblical-literalist religious beliefs.

His domestic agenda was no less combative, based as it was on overturning the Keynesian economic consensus that had dominated post-World War II Western societies, replacing bureaucratic management with deregulation, privatization, disinflation and reliance on the market. More particularly, he inaugurated the "supply side" revolution that continues to energize the US economy, focusing on stimulating growth by liberalizing the business climate rather than attempting to guide economic activity through "demand management", redistributionist tax-policies or detailed government controls.

Reagan's enemies considered him mentally limited and ideologically reactionary, but his supporters delighted in the simplicity of his message, which emphasized the inevitable triumph of liberty, disdaining the pessimistic sophistication which had led the US into economic stagnation and morbid self-doubt - reaching its nadir in the ghastly presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Because Reagan contributed so hugely to the renaissance of US power, it is perhaps inevitable that those - both at home and abroad - who are suspicious about the country's international role will view his Presidency unfavourably. It is to be expected that effective patriots are rarely popular outside their homelands.

Beyond partisan squabbling, however, it seems uncontroversial to judge Ronald Reagan - along with China's Deng Xiaoping and Britain's Margaret Thatcher - as one of the three most significant leaders of the second half of the 20th century. Within a single miraculous two-year period - from 1979-1980 - each of these leaders introduced a radical break from the previous economic orthodoxy in their respective societies, re-directing their countries in the direction of the market, leading to spectacular economic successes and an overall resurgence of confidence, openness and influence.

The world economy of today, driven by free-trade, liberalizing economic reform and market rationality is the inheritance of these three leaders, and the triumph of this vision - supported by its indubitable practical success - has been such that it opponents have little to offer in its place except stubborn obstructionism, incoherent resentment or even suicidal rage.

With market-oriented economic thinking now predominating within all of the world's most important political traditions and regions the important issues have become merely technical ones, concerned with the pace and detail of specific reform processes. The pre-eminence of the market as an economic distributive mechanism is no longer seriously in question, having become a truism in all but the most retrogressive circles. This is a situation no one but the most starry-eyed prophet could have imagined in 1978.

Ronald Reagan played a crucial part in making this new world. Love him or hate him, his greatness is assured.

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