American History

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An Anti-Communist Foreign Policy

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A Massive Defense Buildup

M VIDEO: Collapse of the Soviet Union

CORE OBJECTIVE

4. Explain how Reagan’s Soviet strategy helped end the Cold War.

On a flight to Detroit, Michigan, to accept the Republican party’s presidential nomination in the summer of 1980, Ronald Reagan was asked why he wanted to be president. He answered: “To end the Cold War.” As president, Reagan systematically promoted what he called his “peace through strength” strategy. Through a series of bold steps, he would build up U.S. military strength to the point at which it would overwhelm the Soviet Union, both financially and militarily. At the same time, Reagan launched a widespread “war of ideas” against communism by charging that the Soviet Union was “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

What came to be called the Reagan Doctrine revived and expanded the old notion of “containment” by pledging to combat Soviet adventurism throughout the world, even if it meant working with brutal dictatorships to do so. Reagan believed that aggressive CIA-led efforts to stalemate Soviet expansionism would eventually cause the unstable Soviet system to implode “on the ash heap of history.”

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The arms race and bankrupting the

Soviet Union

Reagan’s conduct of foreign policy reflected his belief that trouble in the world stemmed mainly from Moscow, the capital of what he called the “evil empire.” Reagan had

long believed that former Republican presidents Nixon and Ford—following the advice of Henry Kissinger—had been too soft on the Soviets. Kissinger’s emphasis on détente, he said, had been a “one-way street” favoring the Soviets.

By contrast, Reagan first wanted to convince the Soviets that they could not win a nuclear war. To do so, he and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger embarked upon a major buildup of nuclear and conventional weapons. During Reagan’s two presidential terms, defense spending came to represent a fourth of all federal government expenditures. Reagan claimed that such military spending would bankrupt the Soviets by forcing them to spend much more on their own military budgets.

In 1983, Reagan escalated the nuclear arms race by authorizing the Defense Department to develop the controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), featuring a complex anti-missile defense system using satellites with laser weapons to “intercept and destroy” Soviet missiles in flight. The media, many scientists, and even government officials insisted that such a “Star Wars” defense system could never be built (Secretary of State George Shultz called it “lunacy”). Nevertheless, Congress approved the first stage of funding, which in turn forced the Soviets to

STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE President Reagan addresses the nation on March 23, 1983, promoting the development of a space-age shield to intercept Soviet missiles.

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The Americas

The Iran-Contra Affair

launch an expensive research-and-development effort of their own to keep pace. As a Soviet foreign minister later admitted, Reagan’s commitment to SDI “made us realize we were in a very dangerous spot.”

Fighting the Communist threat in

Central America

Reagan’s foremost international concern was Central America, where he detected the most serious Communist threat. The tiny nation of El Salvador, caught up since 1980 in a brutal struggle between Communist-supported

revolutionaries and right-wing militants, received U.S. economic and military assistance. Critics argued that U.S. involvement ensured that the revolutionary forces would gain public support by capitalizing on “anti-Yankee” sentiment. Supporters countered that allowing a Communist victory in El Salvador would lead all of Central America into the Communist camp (a new “domino” theory). By 1984, however, the U.S.-backed government of President José Napoleón Duarte had brought some stability to El Salvador.

Even more troubling to Reagan was the situation in Nicaragua. The State Department claimed that the Cuban-sponsored Sandinista socialist government, which had seized power in 1979, was sending Soviet and Cuban weapons to leftist Salvadoran rebels. In response, the Reagan administration ordered the CIA to train anti-Communist Nicaraguans, or Contras (short for counterrevolutionaries), who staged attacks on Sandinista bases from sanctuaries in Honduras.

In supporting these “freedom fighters,” Reagan sought not only to impede the traffic in arms to Salvadoran rebels but also to replace the Sandinistas with a democratic government in Nicaragua. Critics accused the Contras of being mostly right-wing fanatics who killed indiscriminately. They also feared that the United States might eventually commit its own combat forces, leading to a Vietnam-like intervention. Reagan warned that if the Communists prevailed in Central America, “our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of our homeland would be jeopardized.”

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During the fall of 1986, Democrats regained control of the Senate. They also increased their already comfortable margin in the House to 259–176. This meant that Reagan would face an oppositional Congress during the last two years of his presidency.

What was worse, reports surfaced in late 1986 that the United States had been secretly selling arms to Iran (which Reagan had called an “outlaw state”) in the hope of securing the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by extremist groups sympathetic to Iran. Such action contradicted Reagan’s promise that his administration would never negotiate with terrorists.

At the center of what came to be called the Iran-Contra affair was U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Oliver North, a swashbuckling aide to the National Security Council who specialized in counterterrorism. Working from the basement of the White House, North had been secretly selling military supplies to Iran and using the proceeds to support the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua at a time when Congress had voted to ban such aid.

IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS Admiral John Poindexter listens to a question from the investigation committee with apprehension on July 21, 1987.

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North’s illegal activities, it turned out, had been approved by Reagan’s national security adviser Robert McFarlane; McFarlane’s successor, Admiral John Poindexter; and CIA director William Casey. Both Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger criticized the arms sale to Iran, but their objections were ignored. On three occasions, Shultz threatened to resign over the “pathetic” scheme. After information about the secret dealings surfaced in the press, North and others erased incriminating computer files and destroyed documents. McFarlane attempted suicide, Poindexter resigned, and North was fired.

Under increasing criticism, Reagan appointed a three-member commission, led by former Republican senator John Tower, to investigate the scandal. The Tower Commission issued a devastating report early in 1987 that placed much of the responsibility for the bungled Iran-Contra affair on Reagan’s loose management style.

THE IRAN-CONTRA COVER-UP In Paul Szep’s 1987 cartoon, political figures, including President Ronald Reagan, Robert McFarlane, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini attempt to deflect blame for the Iran-Contra Affair. On whom did the Tower Commission place the blame after their 1987 investigation, and how were those involved ultimately punished for their actions?

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A Historic Treaty

The investigations led to six indictments in 1988. A Washington jury found Oliver North guilty of three relatively minor charges but innocent of nine more serious counts, apparently reflecting the jury’s reasoning that he had acted as an agent of higher-ups. His conviction was later overturned on appeal. Of those involved in the affair, only John Poindexter received a jail sentence—six months for obstructing justice and lying to Congress.

The most positive diplomatic achievement at the end of Reagan’s second term was a surprising arms-reduction agreement with the Soviet government. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, the Soviets pursued renewed détente with the United States so that they could reduce military spending related to the Cold War and focus on more pressing problems, especially a notoriously inefficient economy and a losing war in Afghanistan.

In October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss ways to reduce the threat of nuclear war. During ten hours of intense negotiations, Reagan shocked the Soviets by saying, “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons.” Equally shocking was Gorbachev’s reply: “We can do that.” By the end of the meeting, however, the two sides remained so far apart on the details that they had given up on any agreement.

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MIKHAIL GORBACHEV Serving first as deputy chairman and later as president of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev took major strides to improve relations with the United States.

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Reagan’s Global Legacy

The logjam in the disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union suddenly broke in 1987, when Gorbachev announced that he was willing to consider mutually reducing nuclear weaponry. After nine months of strenuous negotiations, Reagan and Gorbachev met amid much fanfare in Washington, D.C., on December 9, 1987, and signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an agreement to eliminate intermediate-range (300- to 3,000-mile) missiles. Reagan’s steadfast show of strength against the Soviets and a new kind of Soviet leader in Mikhail Gorbachev combined to produce the most sweeping reduction in nuclear weaponry in history.

The INF treaty marked the first time that the two nations had agreed to destroy a whole class of weapons systems. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States would destroy 859 missiles, and the Soviets would eliminate 1,752. Still, the reductions represented only 4 percent of the total nuclear-missile count on both sides.

Gorbachev’s efforts to liberalize Soviet domestic life and improve East-West relations cheered Americans. The Soviets suddenly began stressing cooperation with the West in dealing with hot spots around the world. In the Middle East, they urged the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 to represent the Palestinian people, to recognize Israel’s right to exist and advocated a greater role for the United Nations in the volatile Persian Gulf. Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of a thawing Cold War was the phased withdrawal of 115,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan, which began in 1988.

Reagan achieved the unthinkable by helping end the Cold War. Although his massive defense buildup almost bankrupted the United States, it did force the Soviet Union to the bargaining table. By negotiating the nuclear disarmament treaty and lighting the fuse of democratic freedom in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, he set in motion events that would cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. In June 1987, Reagan visited the huge concrete and barbed wire Berlin Wall and, in a dramatic speech, called upon the Soviet Union to allow greater freedom within the countries under its control. “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!”