Foreign policy of the Reagan administration
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The Foreign policy of the Reagan Administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1981 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan during his Administration. It was characterized by a strategy of "peace through strength" followed by a warming of relations with the Soviet Union once the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power and a peaceful end to the Cold War.
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[edit] Foreign Policy and the Cold War
Please see Cold War for a fuller analysis of the Cold War.
[edit] Confrontation
Reagan escalated the Cold War with the Soviet Union, marking a sharp departure from the policy of détente by his predecessors Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. The Administration implemented a new policy towards the Soviet Union through NSDD-32 (National Security Decisions Directive) to confront the USSR on three fronts: decrease Soviet access to high technology and diminish their resources, including depressing the value of Soviet commodities on the world market; increase American defense expenditures to strengthen the U.S. negotiating position; and force the Soviets to devote more of their economic resources to defense. Most visible was the massive American military build-up.
The administration revived the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration and began production of the MX "Peacekeeper" missile. In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing II missile in West Germany to gain a stronger bargaining position to eventually eliminate that entire class of nuclear weapons. Reagan's position was that if the Soviets did not remove the SS-20 missiles (without a concession from the US), America would simply introduce the Pershing II missiles for a stronger bargaining position, and both missiles would be eliminated.
One of Reagan's more controversial proposals was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a program of state-subsidies for private industry, under the cover of a defense project. Reagan believed this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible, but the unlikelihood that the technology could ever work led opponents to dub SDI "Star Wars." Critics of SDI argued that the technological objective was unattainable, that the attempt would likely accelerate the arms race, and that the extraordinary expenditures amounted to a military-industrial boondoggle. Supporters responded that SDI gave Reagan a stronger bargaining position. Indeed, Soviet leaders became genuinely concerned.
Reagan supported anti-communist groups around the world. In a policy which became known as the Reagan Doctrine, his administration funded "freedom fighters" such as the Contras in Nicaragua, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, RENAMO in Mozambique, and UNITA in Angola. When the Polish government suppressed the Solidarity movement in late 1981, Reagan imposed economic sanctions on the People's Republic of Poland.
Reagan argued that the American economy was on the move again while the Soviet economy had become stagnant. For a while the Soviet decline was masked by high prices for Soviet oil exports, but that crutch collapsed in the early 1980s. In November 1985, the oil price was $30/barrel for crude, in March 1986 it had fallen to $12.[1]
Reagan's militant rhetoric inspired dissidents in the Soviet Empire, but also startled allies and alarmed critics. In a famous address on June 8, 1982, he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" that would be consigned to the "ash heap of history." After Soviet fighters downed Korean Airlines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983, he labeled the act an "act of barbarism... [of] inhuman brutality."
On March 3 of 1983, Reagan predicted that Communism would collapse: "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose — last pages even now are being written."Cite error 3; Invalid <ref> tag; invalid names, e.g. too many [1] He elaborated on June 8 of 1982 to the British Parliament. Reagan argued that the Soviet Union was in deep economic crisis, and stated that the Soviet Union "runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens."
This was before Gorbachev rose to power in 1985. Reagan later wrote in his autobiography "An American Life" that he did not see the profound changes that would occur in the Soviet Union after Gorbachev rose to power. To confront the Soviet Union's serious economic problems, Gorbachev implemented bold new policies for freedom and openness called glasnost and perestroika.
[edit] End of the Cold War
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By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as twenty-five percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors. (LaFeber 2002, 332) But the size of the Soviet armed forces was not necessarily the result of a simple action-reaction arms race with the United States. (Odom) Instead, Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments can be understood as both a cause and effect of the deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which accumulated at least a decade of economic stagnation during the Brezhnev years. (see Economy of the Soviet Union) Soviet investment in the defense sector was not necessarily driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges. (LaFeber 2002, 335)
By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. (LaFaber 2002, 331-333) (Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of the Soviet Union's total export earnings.) (LaFeber 2002, 332) To restructure the Soviet economy before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid reform. (see perestroika and glasnost) Reform required Gorbachev to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe.
Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race (LaFeber, 2002), but Ronald Reagan recognized the real change in the direction of the Soviet leadership, and Reagan shifted to skillful diplomacy, using his sincerity and charm to personally push Gorbachev further with his reforms.[2]
Reagan sincerely believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to simply look at the prosperous American economy, they too would embrace free markets and a free society. [3] Gorbachev, facing severe economic problems at home, was swayed.
At the Berlin Wall, Reagan pushed Gorbachev further: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
The East-West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz, a former economics professor at Stanford, privately instructed Gorbachev on free market economics. At Gorbachev’s request, Reagan gave a speech on free markets at Moscow University. [4]
When Reagan visited Moscow, he was viewed as a celebrity by Russians. A journalist asked the president if he still considered the Soviet Union the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era." [5]
In his autobiography "An American Life," Reagan expressed his optimism about the new direction they charted, his warm feelings for Gorbachev, and his concern for Gorbachev's safety because Gorbachev pushed reforms so hard. "I was concerned for his safety," Reagan wrote. "I've still worried about him. How hard and fast can he push reforms without risking his life?" Events would unravel far beyond what Gorbachev originally intended.
[edit] Make World Safe from Nuclear War
According to several scholars and biographers, including Paul Lettow (Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), John Lewis Gaddis (The Cold War: A New History), and Richard Reeves (President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination), Reagan quietly worked to make the world safer from the threat of nuclear war, which he also stated in his autobiography "An American Life." Reagan had morally opposed nuclear weapons since 1945 and sincerely feared the biblical Armageddon. He wrote in his autobiography that he believed John Kennedy's MAD policy (mutually assured destruction) to be wrong. He even proposed to Gorbachev that, if a missile shield could be built, that all nukes be eliminated and the missile shield technology shared.
Beth B. Fischer in her book The Reagan Reversal, argues that a Soviet near-panic reaction to a routine NATO exercise in November 1983 called ABLE ARCHER 83 had a profound effect on President Reagan, and it forced him to a policy of rapprochement.
[edit] Iran-Iraq War
Initially neutral in the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. became increasingly involved. The U.S. supported both nations at various times — "Too bad they both can't lose," Henry Kissinger said — but mainly sided with Iraq, believing that Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini threatened regional stability more than Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials feared that an Iranian victory would embolden Islamic fundamentalists in the Arab states, perhaps leading to the overthrow of secular governments—and damage to Western corporate interests—in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait. After initial Iraqi military victories were reversed and an Iranian victory appeared possible in 1982, the American government initiated Operation Staunch to attempt to cut off the Iranian regime's access to weapons (notwithstanding their later shipment of weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair). The U.S. provided intelligence information and financial assistance to the Iraqi military regime. The U.S. also allowed the shipment of "dual use" materials, that could be used for chemical and biological weapons, ostensibly for agriculture, medical research, and other civilian purposes, but they were diverted for use in Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs.
On April 18, 1988 Reagan authorized Operation Praying Mantis, a one-day naval strike against Iranian naval ships, boats, and command posts in retaliation for the mining of a U.S. guided missile frigate. One day later, Reagan sent a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. [2] USS Simpson (FFG-56) is mentioned in firing on Iranian F-4 Phantom II Fighters built by the United States.
In 1986, the U.S. also sold arms to Iran to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan professed ignorance of the plot's existence and quickly called for an Independent Counsel to investigate. Ten officials in the Reagan Administration were convicted, and others were forced to resign. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger was indicted for perjury and later received a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush, days before the trial was to begin. In 2006, historians ranked the Iran-Contra affair as the ninth-worst mistake by a U.S. president.[6]
[edit] State visits
Reagan had close friendships with many political leaders across the globe, especially Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Brian Mulroney in Canada. In 1985 Reagan visited the Kolmeshohe Cemetery near Bitburg at the urgent request of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, to pay respects to the soldiers interred there. Controversy arose because 49 of the graves contained the remains of men who had served in the Waffen-SS. The cemetery also contained remains of about 2,000 other German soldiers who had died in both World Wars, but no Americans. Some Jewish and veterans' groups opposed this visit. Reagan went because of his need to support Kohl and ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Reagan also visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he cited Anne Frank and ended his speech with the words, "Never again."[7]
[edit] Collapse of USSR after Reagan
According to David Remnick in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire," Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms opened Pandora's Box of freedom. Once the people experiences reforms, they wanted more. "Once the regime eased up enough to permit a full-scale examination of the Soviet past," Remnick wrote, "radical change was inevitable. Once the System showed itself for what it was and had been, it was doomed." Without a tyrant in control anymore, like Gorbachev's predecessors, nothing could hold the Soviet Empire together anymore.
In December 1989, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declared the Cold War officially over at a summit meeting in Malta. [8] The Soviet alliance system was by then on the brink of collapse, and the Communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were losing power. On March 11, 1990 Lithuania, led by newly elected Vytautas Landsbergis, declared independence from the Soviet Union. The gate to the Berlin Wall was opened and Gorbachev approved. Gorbachev proposed to President George Bush, Sr. massive troop reductions in Eastern Europe. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev tried to reform the party to destroy resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the state and union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year old monopoly on state power. Soviet hardliners rebelled and staged a coup against Gorbachev, but it failed. Boris Yeltsin rallied Russians in the street while Gorbachev was held hostage. By December of 1991, the union-state had dissolved, breaking the USSR up into fifteen separate independent states. Boris Yeltsin became leader of the new Russia. (see Dissolution of the USSR)
In her eulogy to Ronald Reagan at his funeral, Margaret Thatcher said, "Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.... Yes, he did not shrink from denouncing Moscow's 'evil empire.' But he realized that a man of goodwill might nonetheless emerge from within its dark corridors. So the President resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to collapse beneath the combined weight of these pressures and its own failures. And when a man of goodwill did emerge from the ruins, President Reagan stepped forward to shake his hand and to offer sincere cooperation."
Gorbachev, for his role, received the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award and the Nobel Peace Prize.
[edit] References
- ^ Glenn E. Schweitzer, 1989 Techno-Diplomacy: U.S.-Soviet Confrontations in Science and Technology (1989) 63ff, 81.
- ^ Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, Jack Matlock (2004).
- ^ President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, Lou Cannon (1991).
- ^ The Cold War: A New History, John Lewis Gaddis (2005).
- ^ Gorby Had the Lead Role, Not Gipper - The Globe and Mail, June 10, 2004
- ^ U.S. historians pick top 10 presidential errors - Associated Press, February 18, 2006
- ^ Samantha Power: "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, pg. 163
- ^ "Cold War," A Dictionary of World History. Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
Administration · Foreign policy · Reagan Doctrine · Foreign interventions · Scandals
