Reagan Doctrine
Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other The Reagan Doctrine was a United States foreign policy strategy implemented by the administration of President Ronald Reagan to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War.
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 pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The policy of aiding the mujahideen in their war against the Soviet occupation was originally proposed by Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and was implemented by U.S. intelligence services.
Avrakotos and Wilson charmed leaders from various anti-Soviet countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and China to increase support for the rebels.
Avrakotos hired Michael G. Vickers, a young paramilitary officer, to enhance the guerilla's odds by revamping the tactics, weapons, logistics, and training used by the mujahideen.
Heritage targeted nine nations for regime change: Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, and Vietnam".
Addressing The Heritage Foundation in October 1989, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi called the its efforts "a source of great support.
Johns and Heritage also argued that Mengistu's decision to permit 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.
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, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann; in an effort to force an end to the Vietnamese occupation.
"[13] 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.
Seeking to expand congressional support for the doctrine in his 1985 State of the Union Address in February 1985, Reagan said: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives ... on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua ... to defy Soviet aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.
Other early conservative advocates for the Reagan Doctrine included influential activist Grover Norquist, who ultimately became a registered UNITA lobbyist and an economic adviser to Savimbi's UNITA movement in Angola,[18] and former Reagan speechwriter and former 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.
[20] 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.
In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War.
One perceived benefit of the Reagan Doctrine was the relatively low cost of supporting guerrilla forces compared to the Soviet Union's expenses in propping up client states.
Another benefit was the lack of direct involvement of American troops, which allowed the United States to confront Soviet allies without sustaining casualties.
"[27] Professor Frederick H. Gareau has written that the Contras "attacked bridges, electric generators, but also state-owned agricultural cooperatives, rural health clinics, villages, and non-combatants".
– may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA unconventional warfare operations area, but extensive precautions must insure that the people "concur" in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.Similarly, former diplomat Clara Nieto, in her book Masters of War, charged that "the CIA launched a series of terrorist actions from the "mothership" off Nicaragua's coast.
The U.S. later blocked the enforcement of the judgment by exercising its veto power in the United Nations Security Council and so prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any actual compensation.
[33] As the Reagan administration set about implementing The Heritage Foundation's plan in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua, it first attempted to do so covertly, not as part of official policy.
[36] Among others, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, credited the Reagan Doctrine with aiding the end of the Cold War.
[38] Bush also noted a presumed peace dividend to the end of the Cold War with economic benefits of a decrease in defense spending.
