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Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and
implemented by the United States under the Reagan
Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union
during the final years of the Cold War. While the doctrine lasted
less than a decade, it was the centerpiece of United States foreign
policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States provided overt and
covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements
in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed communist governments
in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to
diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the
administration's overall Cold War strategy.
Background
The Reagan Doctrine followed in the tradition of U.S. presidents
U.S. President Ronald Reagan
developing foreign policy "doctrines", which were designed to
reflect the challenges facing international relations of the times, and propose foreign policy solutions to them. The
practice began with the Monroe Doctrine of President James Monroe in 1823, and continued with the Roosevelt
Corollary, sometimes called the Roosevelt Doctrine, introduced by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.
The current postWorld War II tradition of Presidential doctrines started with the 1947 Truman Doctrine, under
which the United States provided support to the governments of Greece and Turkey as part of a Cold War strategy to
keep those two nations out of the Soviet sphere of influence. The Truman Doctrine was followed by the Eisenhower
Doctrine, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Johnson Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, and the Carter Doctrine, all of which
defined the foreign policy approaches of these respective U.S. presidents on some of the largest global challenges of
their administrations.
[1]
Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
decision to permit a Soviet naval and air presence on the Red Sea ports of Eritrea represented a strategic challenge to
U.S. security interests in the Middle East and North Africa.[6]
The Heritage Foundation and the Reagan administration also sought to apply the Reagan Doctrine in Cambodia. The
largest resistance movement fighting Cambodia's communist government was largely made up of members of the
former Khmer Rouge regime, whose human rights record was among the worst of the 20th century. Therefore,
Reagan authorized the provision of aid to a smaller Cambodian resistance movement, a coalition called the Khmer
People's National Liberation Front,[7] known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann; in an effort to force an end to
the Vietnamese occupation. Eventually, the Vietnamese withdrew, and Cambodia's communist regime fell.[8] Then,
under United Nations supervision, free elections were held.
While the Reagan Doctrine enjoyed strong support from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise
Institute, the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute opposed the Reagan Doctrine, arguing in 1986 that "most Third
World struggles take place in arenas and involve issues far removed from legitimate American security needs. U.S.
involvement in such conflicts expands the republic's already overextended commitments without achieving any
significant prospective gains. Instead of draining Soviet military and financial resources, we end up dissipating our
own." Wikipedia:Citation needed
Even Cato, however, conceded that the Reagan Doctrine had "fired the enthusiasm of the conservative movement in
the United States as no foreign policy issue has done in decades". While opposing the Reagan Doctrine as an official
governmental policy, Cato instead urged Congress to remove the legal barriers prohibiting private organizations and
citizens from supporting these resistance movements.[9]
Reagan Doctrine
Other advocates
Other early conservative advocates for the Reagan Doctrine included influential conservative activist Grover
Norquist, who ultimately became a registered UNITA lobbyist and an economic adviser to Savimbi's UNITA
movement in Angola,[12] and former Reagan speechwriter and current U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who
made several secret visits with the mujahideen in Afghanistan and returned with glowing reports of their bravery
against the Soviet occupation.[13] Rohrabacher was led to Afghanistan by his contact with the mujahideen, Jack
Wheeler.Wikipedia:Citation needed
Phrase's origin
In 1985, as U.S. support was flowing to the Mujahideen, Savimbi's UNITA, and the Nicaraguan contras, columnist
Charles Krauthammer, in an essay for Time magazine, labeled the policy the "Reagan Doctrine," and the name
stuck.[14]
Reagan Doctrine
its interests, and potentially help Pakistan in a feared new conflict with India. This led to Pakistani support for the
rise of the Taliban, who were later willing to become allies of Al-Qaeda.
Reagan Doctrine
Human Rights condemned Sandinista human rights violations, recording at least 2,000 murders in the first six
months and 3,000 disappearances in the first few years. It has since documented 14,000 cases of torture, rape,
kidnapping, mutilation and murder.[23] The UN International Commission of Jurists found that the Sandinista
Peoples Courts aimed to suppress all political opposition. The Permanent Commission on Human Rights identified
6,000 political prisoners. The Sandinistas admitted to forcing 180,000 peasants into resettlement camps.[24] Leading
Sandinistas saw the revolt as a popular uprising. The Contras became "a campesino movement with its own
leadership" (Luis Carrion); they had "a large social base in the countryside" (Orlando Nunez); "the integration of
thousands of peasants into the counterrevolutionary army" was provoked by "the policies, limitations and errors of
Sandinismo" (Alejandro Bendana); "many landless peasants went to war" to avoid the state collectives, and Contra
commanders "were small farmers, many of them without any ties to Somocismo, who had supplanted the former
[Somoza] National Guard officers" (Sergio Ramirez). Thus, it is not universally accepted that the majority of Contras
resorted to terroristic tactics.[25]
Jamie Glazov, comparing the Sandinistas to the Khmer Rouge, wrote, "the Sandinistas inflicted a ruthless forcible
relocation of tens of thousands of Indians from their land. Like Stalin, they used state-created famine as a weapon
against these 'enemies of the people.' The Sandinista army committed myriad atrocities against the Indian population,
killing and imprisoning approximately 15,000 innocent people..."[26]
Covert implementation
As the Reagan administration set about implementing the Heritage Foundation plan in Afghanistan, Angola, and
Nicaragua, it first attempted to do so covertly, not as part of official policy. "The Reagan government's initial
implementation of the Heritage plan was done covertly", according to the book Rollback, "following the
longstanding custom that containment can be overt but rollback should be covert." Ultimately, however, the
administration supported the policy more openly.
Congressional votes
While the doctrine benefited from strong support from the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation and
several influential Members of Congress, many votes on critical funding for resistance movements, especially the
Nicaraguan contras, were extremely close, making the Reagan Doctrine one of the more contentious American
political issues of the late 1980s.[27]
Reagan Doctrine
Thatcher's view
Among others, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of
the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, has credited
the Reagan Doctrine with aiding the end of the Cold
War. In December 1997, Thatcher said that the Reagan
Doctrine "proclaimed that the truce with communism
Soviet troops withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988, following a
was over. The West would henceforth regard no area of
nine-year occupation.
the world as destined to forego its liberty simply
because the Soviets claimed it to be within their sphere
of influence. We would fight a battle of ideas against communism, and we would give material support to those who
fought to recover their nations from tyranny".[31]
IranContra Affair
U.S. funding for the Contras, who opposed the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, was obtained from covert
sources. The U.S. Congress did not authorize sufficient funds for the Contras' efforts, and the Boland Amendment
barred further funding. In 1986, in an episode that became known as The IranContra affair, the Reagan
administration illegally facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo, in the hope that the arms
sales would secure the release of hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
Reagan Doctrine
Death of Savimbi
In February 2002, UNITA's Jonas Savimbi was killed by Angolan military forces in an ambush in eastern Angola.
Savimbi was succeeded by a series of UNITA leaders, but the movement was so closely associated with Savimbi that
it never recovered the political and military clout it held at the height of its influence in the late 1980s.
References
[1] Message on the Observance of Afghanistan Day (http:/ / www. reagan. utexas. edu/ archives/ speeches/ 1983/ 32183e. htm) by U.S. President
Ronald Reagan, March 21, 1983
[2] http:/ / www. globalissues. org/ article/ 258/ anatomy-of-a-victory-cias-covert-afghan-war
[3] Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback) by Peter Schweizer,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994 page 213
[4] "Think tank fosters bloodshed, terrorism", The Daily Cougar, August 22, 2008. (http:/ / thedailycougar. com/ 2008/ 08/ 22/
think-tank-fosters-bloodshed-terrorism/ )
[5] "The Coming Winds of Democracy in Angola," by Jonas Savimbi, Heritage Foundation Lecture #217, October 5, 1989. (http:/ / www.
heritage. org/ Research/ Africa/ HL217. cfm)
[6] "A U.S. Strategy to Foster Human Rights in Ethiopia, by Michael Johns, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #692, February 23, 1989. (http:/
/ www. heritage. org/ research/ MiddleEast/ bg692. cfm)
[7] Far Eastern Economic Review, December 22, 1988, details the extensive fighting between the U.S.-backed forces and the Khmer Rouge.
[8] "Cambodia at a Crossroads", by Michael Johns, The World and I magazine, February 1988. (http:/ / www. worldandi. com/ specialreport/
1988/ february/ Sa13957. htm)
[9] "U.S. Aid to Anti-Communist Rebels: The 'Reagan Doctrine' and Its Pitfalls," Cato Institute, June 24, 1986. (http:/ / www. cato. org/ pubs/
pas/ pa074. html)
[10] "In Reagan's Footsteps," Jewish World Review, November 14, 2003. (http:/ / www. jewishworldreview. com/ jeff/ jacoby111403. asp)
[11] "The Contras and Cocaine" (http:/ / prorev. com/ blum. htm), Progressive Review, testimony to U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence Hearing on the Allegations of CIA Ties to Nicaraguan Contra Rebels and Crack Cocaine in American Cities, October 23, 1996.
[12] "Savimbi's Shell Game," Bnet.com, March 1998 (http:/ / www. findarticles. com/ p/ articles/ mi_hb1367/ is_199803/ ai_n6384825)
Reagan Doctrine
[13] "Profile: Dana Rohrabacher," Cooperative History Research Commons, September 17, 2001. (http:/ / www. cooperativeresearch. org/ entity.
jsp?id=1521846767-2190)
[14] "The Reagan Doctrine" (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/ magazine/ article/ 0,9171,964873,00. html), by Charles Krauthammer, Time
magazine, April 1, 1985.
[15] The Man Who Won the Cold War, by [[Richard V. Allen (http:/ / www. hoover. org/ publications/ hoover-digest/ article/ 7398)]]
[16] "Think Tank Fosters Bloodshed, Terrorism," The Cougar, August 25, 2008. (http:/ / media. www. thedailycougar. com/ media/ storage/
paper1206/ news/ 2008/ 08/ 25/ Opinion/ Think. Tank. Fosters. Bloodshed. Terrorism-3401834. shtml)
[17] See Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda (Penguin, 2003), p59; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden
(Penguin, 2004), p87; Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (Free Press, 2006), pp60-1; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The
Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World (Penguin, 2006), p579n48.
[18] Grandin, Greg. Empires Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Henry Holt & Company 2007,
89
[19] Grandin, Greg. Empires Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Henry Holt & Company 2007,
90
[20] "Appraisals of the ICJ's Decision. Nicaragua vs United State (Merits)"
[21] Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schwebel, Nicaragua v. United States of America Merits, ICJ, June 27, 1986, Factual Appendix, paras. 15-8,
22-5. See also Sandinista admissions in Miami Herald, July 18, 1999.
[22] Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua (Transaction, 1993), pp116-8.
[23] John Norton Moore, The Secret War in Central America (University Publications of America, 1987) p143n94 (2,000 killings); Roger
Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua (Transaction, 1993), p193 (3,000 disappearances); Insight on the News, July 26,
1999 (14,000 atrocities).
[24] Humberto Belli, Breaking Faith (Puebla Institute, 1985), pp124, 126-8.
[25] Robert S. Leiken, Why Nicaragua Vanished (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp148-9, 159. See also Robert P. Hager, The Origins of the
Contra War in Nicaragua, Terrorism and Political Violence, Spring 1998.
[26] Glazov, Jamie, Remembering Sandinsta Genocide (http:/ / archive. frontpagemag. com/ readArticle. aspx?ARTID=25257), FrontPage
Magazine, June 5, 2002.
[27] A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990, Robert Kagan, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
[28] "It Was Reagan Who Tore Down That Wall," Dinesh D'Souza, Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2004.
[29] "Charlie Wilson's War Was Really America's War," by Michael Johns (http:/ / michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity. blogspot. com/ 2008/
01/ charlie-wilsons-war-was-really-americas. html), January 19, 2008.
[30] http:/ / hnn. us/ articles/ 5569. html
[31] "The Principles of Conservatism," by Margaret Thatcher, Lecture to the Heritage Foundation, December 10, 1997. (http:/ / www.
margaretthatcher. org/ speeches/ displaydocument. asp?docid=108376)
[32] Excerpted from The Reagan Doctrine: Third World Rollack, End Press, 1989. (http:/ / www. doublestandards. org/ gould1. html)
[33] "The Soviet Decision to Withdraw, 1986-1988" U.S. Library of Congress (http:/ / countrystudies. us/ afghanistan/ 96. htm).
Further reading
Meiertns, Heiko (2010). The Doctrines of US Security Policy: An Evaluation under International Law.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-76648-7.
External links
Description and history
"The Reagan Doctrine: The Guns of July" (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19860301faessay7785/
stephen-s-rosenfeld/the-reagan-doctrine-the-guns-of-july.html), by Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Foreign Affairs
magazine, Spring 1986.
Reagan Doctrine
Academic sources
The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War's Last Chapter (http://www.greenwood.
com/catalog/C4798.aspx), by Mark P. Lagon, Praeger Publishers, 1994.
The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (http://www.questia.com/PM.
qst?a=o&d=29069917), by Raymond L. Garthoff, Brookings Institution, 1994.
Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy (http://www.questia.com/PM.
qst?a=o&d=98521364), by James M. Scott, Duke University Press, 1996.
"Freedom fighters in Angola: Test Case for the Reagan Doctrine" (http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/
handle/10822/552556), The Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives, Georgetown University,
November 16, 1985.
"The Lessons of Afghanistan" (http://www.unz.org/Pub/PolicyRev-1987q2-00032), by Michael Johns, Policy
Review magazine, Spring 1987.
"A U.S. Strategy to Foster Human Rights in Ethiopia" (http://www.heritage.org/research/MiddleEast/bg692.
cfm), by Michael Johns, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder # 692, February 23, 1989.
"The Coming Winds of Democracy in Angola" (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Africa/HL217.cfm), by
Jonas Savimbi, Heritage Foundation Lecture # 217, October 4, 1989.
"Savimbi's Elusive Victory in Angola" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:E26OC9-320:), by
Michael Johns, Congressional Record, October 26, 1989.
"The Principles of Conservatism" (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.
asp?docid=108376), by Honorable Margaret Thatcher, Heritage Foundation Lecture, December 10, 1997.
"The Ash Heap of History: President Reagan's Westminster Address 20 Years Later" (http://www.
reagansheritage.org/html/reagan_panel_kraut.shtml), by Charles Krauthammer, Heritage Foundation Lecture,
June 3, 2002.
"U.S. Aid to Anti-Communist Rebels: The 'Reagan Doctrine' and its Pitfalls" (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/
pa074es.html), by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Policy Analysis # 74, Cato Institute, June 24, 1986.
"The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations" (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/
nsaebb2.htm), by Gary Webb, National Security Archive, George Washington University, August 1996.
"How We Ended the Cold War" (http://www.thenation.com/article/how-we-ended-cold-war), by John Tirman,
The Nation, October 14, 1999.
"Think Tank Fosters Bloodshed, Terrorism" (http://thedailycougar.com/2008/08/22/
think-tank-fosters-bloodshed-terrorism/), The Daily Cougar, August 25, 2008.
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