The foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1981 to 1989. It was characterized by a strategy of "peace through strength" followed by a warming of relations with the Soviet Union, and resulting in an end to the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power.
As part of the policies that became known as the "Reagan Doctrine," the United States also offered financial and logistics support to the anti-communist opposition in central Europe and took an increasingly hard line against socialist and communist governments in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.[1]
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In early June 1982, after the PLO created a nonsub-state in southern Lebanon to launch both infiltration and katyusha attacks on northern Israel's population centers, Israel invaded Lebanon with massive force, driving all the way to Beirut and putting the Palestinian fighters and residents, as well as the Lebanese civilian population of that city, under siege. On June 6, the United States joined a unanimous U.N. Security Council Resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from Lebanon and that the border cease-fire be observed by all parties. Amidst a great international furor the scene was set for a common American-French-Italian military intervention, Israel justified its breech of the previous cross-border cease-fire by citing the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London and a build-up of Palestinian armaments in South Lebanon.
In August, an agreement between the Lebanese government and the United States defined the mandate for a Multinational Force (including 800 U.S. Marines) as "to provide appropriate assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces as they carry out" responsibilities for the safe evacuation of the departing PLO, the safety "of the persons in the area" (generally interpreted to mean the Palestinian non-combatants remaining in Beirut), and to "further the restoration of the sovereignty and authority of the Government of Lebanon over the Beirut area." The deployment was to be for 30 days or less.
On August 25, the Marines went ashore in Beirut, four days after the French troops arrived. The PLO evacuation was completed without significant incident. The Marines redeployed to their ships on September 10. Following September 16, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut by members of a Lebanese Phalangist Christian militia.
On September 20 President Reagan announced the formation of a new Multinational Force in consultation with France and Italy. He defined the mission as "enabling the Lebanese Government to resume full sovereignty over its capital." Reagan continued that for the Multinational Force "to succeed it is essential that Israel withdraw from Beirut." The president said that the purpose of this Force was "not to act as a police force, but to make it possible for the lawful authorities of Lebanon to do so themselves."
The deployment of the 1,800 United States Marines began on September 29. A day before, President Reagan told a press conference: "And the Marines are going in there into a situation with a definite understanding as to what we're supposed to do. I believe that we are going to be successful in seeing the other foreign forces leave Lebanon. And then at such time as Lebanon says that they have the situation well in hand, why, we'll depart."
On April 18, 1983, a car bomb exploded at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 17 U.S. foreign service and military personnel and over 40 Lebanese employees and citizens. The technique employed driving a vehicle packed with explosives to the front entrance for detonation there by a suicide bomber.
The result of intense American diplomatic efforts, on May 17, Lebanon and Israel signed an agreement ending the State of War between the two countries and providing for a phased Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, contingent on the withdrawal of Syrian and Palestinian forces.
On October 23, just after dawn, 241 US military personnel, mostly Marine enlisted men, died when a truck packed with explosives destroyed a Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport. At that same moment a similar explosion occurred in a French military barracks a few kilometers away, killing 56 French troops. The October 23 suicide bombers used the identical technique that had been used six months earlier to blow up the American embassy.
The attack was extremely demoralizing for the United States, and although Reagan initially stated he would "resist those who seek to drive us out of that area", the continued Marine presence in Lebanon became very unpopular among the American public, who compared the military mission in the former French colony with the Vietnam War. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan announced that he had asked for a plan for redeployment of the Marines from Beirut to ships offshore. On February 7 and 8, more than 100 U.S. embassy employees and all embassy dependents were evacuated from Beirut. On February 26, redeployment of the last Marines serving with the Multinational Force from their positions in Beirut to ships offshore was completed.
The United States maintained consular relations with the Papal States from 1797 to 1870 and diplomatic relations with the Pope, in his capacity as head of the Papal States, from 1848 to 1868, though not at the ambassadorial level. These relations lapsed with the loss of all papal territories in 1870.
From 1870 to 1984, the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Several presidents, however, designated personal envoys to visit the Holy See periodically for discussions of international humanitarian and political issues. Myron C. Taylor was the first of these representatives, serving from 1939 to 1950. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan also appointed personal envoys to the Pope.
The United States and the Holy See announced the establishment of diplomatic relations on January 10, 1984. On March 7, 1984, the Senate confirmed William A. Wilson as the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Ambassador Wilson had been President Reagan's personal envoy to the Pope since 1981. The Holy See named Archbishop Pio Laghi as the first Apostolic Nuncio (equivalent to ambassador) of the Holy See to the U.S.
The invasion of the Caribbean island Grenada in 1983, ordered by President Reagan, was the first major foreign event of the administration, as well as the first major operation conducted by the military since the Vietnam War. President Reagan justified the invasion by stating that the cooperation of the island with communist Cuba posed a threat to the United States, and stated the invasion was a response to the illegal overthrow and execution of Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop by communist rebels. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) appealed to the United States, Barbados, and Jamaica, among other nations, for assistance due to the ongoing military rule in the country. In the end, U.S. forces suffered nineteen fatalities and 116 injuries, as the defenders were said to be well prepared, but the United States was victorious. Grenada's Governor-General, Paul Scoon, announced the resumption of the constitution and appointed a new government, and U.S. forces withdrew that December.
During the 1980s the Reagan administration sponsored an anti-Sandinista guerilla movement known as the Contras (a proxy paramilitary based in Honduras and Costa Rica, largely consisting of northern highlanders known as the Milpas and led by former Somoza regime soldiers) against the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The resulting war killed over 50,000 people, mostly civilians.
Under the Carter Administration, the Sandinistas had received tacit U.S. support in their coup against the previously U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty, which had ruled the country for several decades. An interim coalition, Junta, took power in 1979 and in 1984 leader of the FSLN party, Daniel Ortega became Nicaragua's first elected President who ruled under the name of the Sandinista revolution. As the years progressed, the Ortega government was accused of becoming more authoritarian, with the more moderate factions of the coalition being expelled from government. Allegations of suppression of political dissent increased, as did accusations of state-sponsored human rights abuses. However, these accusations of human rights abuses were not accurate, according to Human Rights Watch: "Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras." [1] As well, Ortega was a supporter of Fidel Castro's Cuba and many members of the Sandinista government sought to model Nicaragua along similar lines. Cuba sent doctors and technicians to Nicaragua and the Soviet Union shipped some military equipment, including some Hind helicopters.
The leftist nature of the Sandinista government and its support for Cuba distressed many in the Reagan administration, who viewed the country as a key Cold War battleground, in danger of becoming a Communist proxy state. As a result, covert support began to flow to the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels, whom Reagan had described as "the moral equal of our founding fathers."
Under the direction of the CIA, the largest Contra army, the FDN, attacked collective farms and other civilian targets, as well as murdered, tortured and mutilated civilians and committed other war crimes, as documented by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. [2] The Contras were also accused of being involved in illicit drug-trafficking. In 1986 a CIA-written training manual detailing methods of terrorism and assassination was discovered to have been issued to the Contras.
The proxy army followed Washington orders to attack "soft targets" such as farm cooperatives[3] and health clinics.[4] Commander of the U.S. Southern Command General John Galvin explained the motivation for the instructions by noting that prospects for the contras should improve if, instead of "trying to duke it out with the Sandinistas directly," they opt to "attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sort of things" so that "the Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the peasants, cannot develop its project".[5]
When asked in the US Congress in April 1985 to define US policy in Nicaragua, former CIA Director Stansfield Turner responded “state-sponsored terrorism”.[5]
The World Court would find that this constituted state sponsorship of terrorism and an attempt to overthrow an elected government. Nicaragua decided to take their case to the World Court in Nicaragua v. United States. In an unprecedented decision in the history of world justice, the World Court sanctioned the U.S. for "unlawful use of force" for "sponsoring paramilitary activity in and against Nicaragua", ordering the U.S. government to pay billions of U.S. dollars in compensation. The World Court ordered Reagan to terminate his campaign, but the Reagan White House dismissed the ruling and then vetoed two Security Council resolutions affirming the Court ruling and calling on all nations to observe international law. The FSLN then took its case to the General Assembly and the General Assembly ruled in its favor, with only the US, Israel, and El Salvador dissenting. Father Miguel D'Escoto, Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government, supposes that the U.S. owes his country between 20 and 30 billion U.S. dollars. [3]
Due to the pressures of the covert Contra war, the Sandinista President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, eventually held the country's second elections, which he and his party lost, thus ending Nicaragua's brief period of socialist rule. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, a former Junta member who led a 19-party "anti-Sandinista" alliance was elected in his place.
Through its desire to combat leftist governments and Marxist insurgencies in the region the Reagan administration was accused of sponsoring right-wing military dictatorships throughout Latin America. The CIA and U.S.-based School of the Americas, similarly were accused by some as having trained Honduran and other Latin American military officers and future death squad paramilitary members in torture and assassination techniques to fight insurgencies.
Reagan increased funding to many other Central and South American states throughout his two terms. Financial aid to Colombia's military and right-wing paramilitary groups skyrocketed in the eighties, even as Colombia compiled one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere. A similar situation existed for El Salvador. Congress attempted to put constraints on aid to the government of El Salvador and make it contingent on human rights progress. Even as tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered by government and governmentally-allied forces in the early eighties Reagan stated that El Salvador was making "progress." Elliott Abrams, an administration official indicted in the Iran Contra Affair, also denied the existence of human rights violations and massacres in El Salvador like the El Mozote massacre. When congress tried to renew the human-rights stipulation to aid for El Salvador Reagan vetoed the bill.
This pattern of funding right-wing military and paramilitary groups would continue in Guatemala. In 1999 a report on the Guatemalan Civil War from the UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification stated that “the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques” was a “key factor” in the “genocide…Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerillas protection.” According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the Guatemalan government—financed and trained by the US—destroyed four hundred Mayan villages and butchered 200,000 peasants (1).
In Panama this funding was more covert. Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, was on the payroll of the CIA as of 1967. By 1971 his involvement in the drug trade was well known by the DEA but he was an important asset of the CIA and so was well-protected. CIA Director George H. W. Bush arranged to give Noriega a raise in 1976 to a six-figure salary. The Carter administration dropped the future dictator from its payroll but he was reinstated by the Reagan administration and his salary peaked in 1985 at $200,000 (2). Noriega allowed CIA listening stations in his country, provided funding for the Contras, and protected covert U.S. and U.S.-funded air shipments of supplies to the Contras(3).
Reagan offered controversial support to the rightist El Salvador government throughout his term; he feared a takeover by the FMLN during the El Salvador Civil War which had begun in the late 1970s. The war left 75,000 people dead, 8,000 missing and one million homeless; some one million Salvadorans, fleeing the war and government backed right-wing death squads, immigrated to the United States. He backed attempts at introducing democratic elections with mixed success.
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). 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. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Reagan deployed CIA Special Activities Division Paramilitary Officers to train, equip and lead the Mujihadeen forces against the Red Army.[6][7] Although the CIA in general and Charlie Wilson, a Texas Congressman, have received most of the attention, the key architect of this strategy was Michael G. Vickers, a young Paramilitary Officer.[8] President Reagan's Covert Action program has been given credit for assisting in ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[9][10] 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.[11]
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, 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."[12] 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.
Reagan spent much of his presidency time trying to stop the cold war. By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built a military that consumed as much as 25% of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.[13] But the size of the Soviet armed forces was not necessarily the result of a simple action-reaction arms race with the United States.[14] 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.[15] 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.[16]
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.[17] (Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of the Soviet Union's total export earnings.)[13] To restructure the Soviet economy before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid reform, based upon what he called perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (liberalization, openness). 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,[18] but Ronald Reagan recognized the real change in the direction of the Soviet leadership, and Reagan shifted to skillful diplomacy to personally push Gorbachev further with his reforms.[19]
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.[20]
At a speech given at the Berlin Wall on the city's 750th birthday,[21] Reagan pushed Gorbachev further in front of 20,000 onlookers: "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 last sentence became "the four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency."[21] Reagan later said that the "forceful tone" of his speech was influenced by hearing before his speech that those on the East side of the wall attempting to hear him had been kept away by police.[21] The Soviet news agency wrote that Reagan's visit was "openly provocative, war-mongering."[21]
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 University, privately instructed Gorbachev on free market economics. At Gorbachev’s request, Reagan gave a speech on free markets at Moscow University.[22]
When Reagan visited Moscow, he was viewed as a celebrity by the Soviets. 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."[23]
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.
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.
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."[24]
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 experienced 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.[25] 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 H.W. Bush 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 1991, the union-state had dissolved, breaking the USSR up into fifteen separate independent states. Boris Yeltsin became leader of the new Russia.[26]
In her eulogy to Ronald Reagan at his funeral, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom Reagan worked very closely with during his tenure in office, 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."
For his role, Gorbachev received the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.
When the Iran–Iraq War broke out following the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979, the United States initially remained neutral in the conflict. However, as the war intensified, the Reagan administration would covertly intervene to maintain a balance of power, supporting both nations at various times. The U.S. 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. [4] USS Simpson (FFG-56) is mentioned in firing on Iranian F-4 Phantom II Fighters built by the United States.
Perhaps his most controversial foreign action was the administration's support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua; the attempts of certain members of the White House national security staff to circumvent Congressional proscription of covert military aid to the Contras ultimately resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Two members of administration, National Security Advisor John Poindexter and Col. Oliver North worked through CIA and military channels to sell arms to the Iranian government and give the profits to the anti-Communist Contras guerillas in Nicaragua, who were engaged in a bloody civil war. Both actions were contrary to acts of Congress. Reagan professed ignorance of the plot, but admitted that he had supported the initial sale of arms to Iran, on the grounds that such sales were supposed to help secure the release of Americans being held hostage by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Reagan quickly called for the appointment of an Independent Counsel to investigate the wider scandal; it found that the President was guilty of the scandal, only in that his lax control of his own staff resulted in the arms sales. The failure of these scandals to have a lasting impact on Reagan's reputation led Representative Patricia Schroeder to dub him the "Teflon President", a term that has been occasionally attached to later Presidents and their scandals. Ten officials in the Reagan Administration were convicted, and others were forced to resign. Secretary of Defense Caspar 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.[27]
Upon becoming President, Reagan moved quickly to undermine Soviet efforts to subdue the government of Afghanistan, which the Soviet Army had invaded in 1979.
Islamic mujahideen guerrillas were covertly supported and trained, and backed in their jihad against the occupying Soviets by the CIA. The agency sent billions of dollars in military aid to the guerrillas, in what came to be known as "Charlie Wilson's War".
Reagan praised the mujahadeen as freedom fighters battling an evil empire, stating, "To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson—that there are things in this world worth defending. To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors." (March 21, 1983 [5]).
During Ronald Reagan's presidency South Africa continued to use a non-democratic system of government based on racial discrimination, known as apartheid, in which the minority of white South Africans exerted nearly complete legal control over the lives of the non-white majority of the citizens. In the early 1980s the issue had moved to the center of international attention as a result of events in the townships and outcry at the death of Stephen Biko. Reagan administration policy called for "constructive engagement" with the apartheid government of South Africa. In opposition to the condemnations issued by the US Congress and public demands for diplomatic or economic sanctions, Reagan made relatively minor criticisms of the regime, which was otherwise internationally isolated, and the US granted recognition to the government. South Africa's military was then engaged in an occupation of Namibia and proxy wars in several neighboring countries, in alliance with Savimbi's UNITA. Reagan administration officials saw the apartheid government as a key anti-communist ally.[28]
By late 1985, facing hostile votes from Congress on the issue, Reagan made an "abrupt reversal" on the issue and proposed sanctions on the South African government, including an arms embargo.[29] This led on to the American Disinvestment from South Africa campaign, and his attempt in 1986 to veto the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act failed. By 1990 the new government of F. W. de Klerk was introducing widespread reforms.
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