USO DEL SUELO

The purpose of this analysis is not to chart the steps of Reagan’s Soviet policy nor to evaluate the role played by Reagan in “winning” the Cold War. There is a vast literature on this topic and it pushes well beyond the scope of this thesis.²¹Instead, this analysis focuses on a specific aspect of Reagan’s foreign policy and, in the following chapter, its application in one particular country. Complementing Reagan’s policy of increased direct confrontation with the Soviet Union was what is now commonly referred to as the Reagan Doctrine.

6.3.1 The Origins of the Reagan Doctrine: Rollback in the Developing World

The Reagan Doctrine stemmed from one of the deepest held beliefs of Reagan, and was a direct consequence of his worldview. While working as a corporate spokesman for General Electric in the 1960s, Reagan began to think about the US’s conduct of foreign affairs and formulated what he believed was a better US Cold War policy. He argued that due to the inherent nature of the Soviet Union to forever strive for expansion and domination, the policy

18 Reagan, R. (1981) “Question and Answer Session with Reporters”, August 13, The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library,

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/81381a.htm, accessed 08/07/2010

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 For example Mann, J. (2009) The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (London:

Viking); Gaddis, J.L. (2005) Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Matlock, J. (2004) Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House); Fischer, B. (2000) The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (London: University of Missouri Press); Oberdorfer, D. (1998) From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)

of containment formulated during the Truman administration was not now and had never been a viable strategy. The only option that was available to the United States was to try and roll back the communists. Speaking in an magazine interview in 1961, Reagan argued,

“Containment won’t save freedom on the home front any more than it can stop Russian aggression on the world front…we must roll back the network of encroaching control.”²² As mentioned earlier, the issue was about more than mere geo-strategic interests of the United States. Reagan questioned the very morality of a policy which accepted the Soviet Union as a legitimate international actor and sought accommodation with it. Reagan believed it was not acceptable to “say to a billion enslaved human beings behind the Iron Curtain – “Give up your hopes of freedom because we’ve decided to get along with your slave masters.”²³ Once elected to president, Reagan began formulating a policy of rollback, which he hoped would replace containment as the cornerstone of US national security strategy. However, Reagan was well aware that he was not the first policymaker to call for an attempt to rollback the Soviet Union. As Secretary of State under Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles had attempted to push US Soviet policy in a more aggressive direction.²⁴ The bipolar nature of the international system and the parity of military power between both states, however, meant that there was very little scope for direct superpower confrontation. Dulles and Eisenhower had learned this painfully when the US was left helpless in the face of Soviet intervention in Hungary during the 1956 revolution.²⁵ Reagan was well aware that with the threat of nuclear war an ever present, there was no way he would be able to challenge the Soviet Union militarily, let alone roll the Soviet Union back from Eastern Europe.

With this understanding of the balance of power, Reagan knew that US foreign policy and any policy of roll back would have to be tempered to the strategic realities facing the United States. As previously discussed, Reagan had been elected on the back of a campaign that had attacked Jimmy Carter for allowing the Soviet Union to expand its influence abroad.

Particularly, Reagan was worried about the increased involvement of the Soviet Union in developing countries, such as Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua. Reagan accused the Soviet Union of exploiting the US policy of détente in order to support revolutionary movements in third world countries who were trying, and often succeeding, in overthrowing the existing

22 in Lettow, P. (2005) Ronald Reagan and his Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York, Random House) p14

23 ibid p14

24 Immerman, R. (1990) ‘Introduction’ in Immerman, R. (eds) John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Oxford: Princeton University Press), p6

25 Ibid., p6

governments. With Reagan viewing international relations as a zero-sum game, these gains for the Soviet Union resulted in damaging losses for the United States. It was under these conditions that Reagan wished to formulate a policy of rollback. He wanted to see these revolutions overturned and believed the US was in a position to help. As we shall see in the following sections, the specific policy developed was one that promised aid to anti-communist rebel forces who were trying to overthrow the newly installed anti-communist government.

6.3.2 The Role of Reagan in Formulating the Doctrine: Freedom Fighters

At this point it will be useful to contextualise the above discussion. This chapter is not arguing that Reagan was the sole architect of US foreign policy in his administration. It will be shown that the Reagan Doctrine, and the specific policies that were enacted, took shape as a result of a complex process of bureaucratic decision-making at the highest levels of the executive, where the president was one of several important players, along with the inevitable involvement of Congress. However, what the preceding discussion has focused on is the extent to which Ronald Reagan’s earliest experiences with communists shaped his very particular worldview of international politics, especially his perception of the nature of the Soviet Union. As a result, Reagan came to office with a specific idea of how he wished US foreign policy to be conducted. He wanted the US to rearm in the face of Soviet aggression in order to be able to stand up to Soviet foreign policy, with the long-term goal of reducing the Soviet Union’s’ ability to influence world events in their favour. He wanted to achieve this by increasing US involvement in the Third World by giving aid to anti-communist rebels who were fighting against recently established revolutionary communist governments. The actual shape these policies took was obviously the result of the complex process of US foreign policy making. However, it was Reagan who came to office and set the agenda that these policies emanated from.

Previously we analysed the speeches and public remarks of the president in order to ascertain his worldview. As an actor, Reagan was fully aware of the important roles that speechmaking, public relations and appearance play in the functioning of the presidency.²⁶ During his first Inaugural Address Reagan articulated his worldview and announced the

26 Reagan, R. (1990) An American Life: The Autobiography (London: Simon and Schuster), p387; Reagan, R.

(1988) ‘Farewell Interview with David Brinkley’, December 22, ABC News; for further discussion see Cannon, L.

(2000) President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs), ‘Chapter 4 –The Acting President’, pp31-44

direction he wished to take US foreign policy: “as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.”²⁷ Reagan was using his speech to connect the ideas of domestic renewal, increased military power and the belief in American exceptionalism. He also began to develop his ideas for supporting allies abroad, which would eventually evolve into the Reagan Doctrine: “To those neighbours and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty.”²⁸ Reagan also issued a stark warning to “the enemies of freedom” that “peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will not negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.”²⁹ As we shall see, such an attitude of refusing to negotiate for peace would lead to the prolonged difficulties Reagan and his administration would have in dealing with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. However, what is important for the current analysis is that here we have a clear example of Reagan actively setting the agenda for US foreign policy during the course of his administration. He is stating that America is prepared to promote peace and freedom abroad in order to protect US national security and that the US “will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.”³⁰

Reagan’s inaugural address represented the broad brushstrokes that the president was using to fashion a distinct foreign policy. It was not until his speech to the British Parliament in 1982 that the development of the Reagan Doctrine began to take place. He called for a

“crusade for freedom” and declared the United States would strive to aid democratic movements around the world in order to “foster the infrastructure of democracy…which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.” Reagan claimed that if this strategy was adopted “the march of freedom and democracy... will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.”³¹ Here we see a clear progression in Reagan’s conceptualisation of US foreign policy. A year previously at his inaugural address he announced that the US would continue

27 Reagan, R. (1981) “Inaugural Address”, January 20, The Public Papers of the Presidents, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43130, accessed 08/08/2013

28 ibid

29 ibid

30 ibid

31 Reagan, R. (1982) “Address to Members of the British Parliament”, June 8, The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library,

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/60882a.htm, accessed 08/08/2013

to support their allies in freedom. Now, Reagan was announcing that the US was prepared to support those who were willing to fight against the “enemies of freedom” in the newly declared crusade for democracy. At this stage it was not clear whether this support would be restricted to governments only. By the time he delivered his State of the Union address in 1985, Reagan had made clear that his crusade included support for counter revolutionary groups. He declared, “support for freedom fighters is self-defence”. To justify this controversial claim he quoted the argument of Harry Truman, arguing, “our security and the world's hopes for peace and human progress ‘lie not in measures of defence or in the control of weapons, but in the growth and expansion of freedom and self-government.’”³² This is the clearest articulation of the Reagan Doctrine. It illustrates the extent to which Reagan’s worldview had been formulated into a set of ideas that Reagan was now declaring to be the foundation for a significant part of US foreign policy. It attempted to tap into the most important ideas of US identity and political culture, freedom and democracy, whilst confronting what Reagan believed to be the strategic realities of the international system. In doing so, Reagan set an agenda for what he wanted to achieve as president. This is important for the central argument of this thesis because it demonstrates the role of presidential agency.

US foreign policy was framed in terms of anti-communism and it was Reagan who continued to push for the development of rollback. What we shall now proceed to analyse is how Reagan tried to operationalise his doctrine as head of the executive.