{"id":1693,"date":"2015-08-20T04:23:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T04:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/americanyawphist118x15x1\/?post_type=chapter&p=1693"},"modified":"2015-08-20T04:23:29","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T04:23:29","slug":"the-new-right-abroad-2","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-ushistory2ay\/chapter\/the-new-right-abroad-2\/","title":{"raw":"The New Right Abroad","rendered":"The New Right Abroad"},"content":{"raw":"If the conservative movement recovered lost ground on the field on gender and sexual politics, it captured the battlefield on American foreign policy in the 1980s\u00ad\u2014\u00adfor a time, at least. Ronald Reagan entered office a committed Cold Warrior. He held the Soviet Union in contempt, denouncing it in a 1983 speech as an \u201cevil empire.\u201d And he never doubted that the Soviet Union would end up \u201con the ash heap of history,\u201d as he said in a 1982 speech to the British Parliament. Indeed, Reagan believed it was the duty of the United States to speed the Soviet Union to its inevitable demise. His \u201cReagan Doctrine\u201d declared that the United States would supply aid to anti-communist forces everywhere in the world. To give this doctrine force, Reagan oversaw an enormous expansion in the defense budget. Federal spending on defense rose from $171 billion in 1981 to $229 billion in 1985, the highest level since the Vietnam War. He described this as a policy of \u201cpeace through strength,\u201d a phrase that appealed to Americans who, during the 1970s, feared that the United States was losing its status as the world\u2019s most powerful nation. Yet the irony is that Reagan, for all his militarism, helped bring the Cold War to an end. He achieved it not through nuclear weapons but through negotiation, a tactic he had once scorned.\r\n\r\nReagan\u2019s election came at a time when many Americans feared their country was in an irreversible decline. American forces withdrew in disarray from South Vietnam in 1975. The United States returned control of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1978, despite protests from conservatives. Pro-American dictators were toppled in Iran and Nicaragua in 1979. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan that same year, leading conservatives to warn about American weakness in the face of Soviet expansion. Such warnings were commonplace in the 1970s. \u201cTeam B,\u201d a group of intellectuals commissioned by the CIA to examine Soviet capabilities, released a report in 1976 stating that \u201call evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to\u2026global Soviet hegemony.\u201d The Committee on the Present Danger, an organization of conservative foreign policy experts, issued similar statements. When Reagan warned, as he did in 1976, that \u201cthis nation has become Number Two in a world where it is dangerous\u2014if not fatal\u2014to be second best,\u201d he was speaking to these fears of decline.\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_972\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"Ronald<\/a> Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, leaders of two of the world\u2019s most powerful countries, formed an alliance that benefited both throughout their tenures in office. Photograph of Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan at Camp David, December 22, 1984. Wikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe Reagan administration made Latin America a showcase for its newly assertive policies. Jimmy Carter had sought to promote human rights in the region, but Reagan and his advisers scrapped this approach and instead focused on fighting communism\u2014a term they applied to all Latin American left-wing movements. Reagan justified American intervention by pointing out Latin America\u2019s proximity to the United States: \u201cSan Salvador [in El Salvador] is closer to Houston, Texas, than Houston is to Washington, DC,\u201d he said in one speech, adding, \u201cCentral America is<\/i>America.\u201d And so when communists with ties to Cuba overthrew the government of the Caribbean nation of Grenada in October 1983, Reagan dispatched the United States Marines to the island. Dubbed \u201cOperation Urgent Fury,\u201d the Grenada invasion overthrew the leftist government after less than a week of fighting. Despite the relatively minor nature of the mission, its success gave victory-hungry Americans something to cheer about after the military debacles of the previous two decades.\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_974\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"Parachuters<\/a> Operation Urgent Fury, which the U.S. invasion of Grenada came to be called, was broadly supported by the U.S. public, even though it was violation of international law. This support was in large part due to incorrect intelligence disseminated by the U.S. government. This photograph shows the deployment of U.S. Army Rangers into Grenada. Photograph, October 25, 1983. Wikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nGrenada was the only time Reagan deployed the American military in Latin America, but the United States also influenced the region by supporting right-wing, anti-communist movements there. From 1981 to 1990, the United States gave more than $4 billion to the government of El Salvador in a largely futile effort to defeat the guerillas of the Farabundo Mart\u00ed National Liberation Front (FMLN). Salvadoran security forces equipped with American weapons committed numerous atrocities, including the slaughter of almost 1,000 civilians at the village of El Mozote in December 1981. The United States also supported the contras, a right-wing insurgency fighting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Reagan, overlooking the contras\u2019 brutal tactics, hailed them as the \u201cmoral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe Reagan administration took a more cautious approach in the Middle East, where its policy was determined by a mix of anti-communism and hostility to the Islamic government of Iran. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the United States supplied Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with military intelligence and business credits\u2014even after it became clear that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons. Reagan\u2019s greatest setback in the Middle East came in 1982, when, shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon, he dispatched Marines to the Lebanese city of Beirut to serve as a peacekeeping force. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines stationed in Beirut. Congressional pressure and anger from the American public forced Reagan to recall the Marines from Lebanon in March 1984. Reagan\u2019s decision demonstrated that, for all his talk of restoring American power, he took a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. He was unwilling to risk another Vietnam by committing American troops to Lebanon.\r\n\r\nThough Reagan\u2019s policies toward Central America and the Middle East aroused protest, it was his policy on nuclear weapons that generated the most controversy. Initially Reagan followed the examples of presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter by pursuing arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union. American officials participated in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force Talks (INF) that began in 1981 and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in 1982. But the breakdown of these talks in 1983 led Reagan to proceed with plans to place Pershing II nuclear missiles in Western Europe to counter Soviet SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. Reagan went a step further in March 1983, when he announced plans for a \u201cStrategic Defense Initiative,\u201d a space-based system that could shoot down incoming Soviet missiles. Critics derided the program as a \u201cStar Wars\u201d fantasy, and even Reagan\u2019s advisors harbored doubts. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the technology to say this,\u201d Secretary of State George Shultz told aides. These aggressive policies fed a growing \u201cnuclear freeze\u201d movement throughout the world. In the United States, organizations like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy organized protests that culminated in a June 1982 rally that drew almost a million people to New York City\u2019s Central Park.\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_971\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"Artist's<\/a> President Reagan proposed space- and ground-based systems to protect the United States from nuclear missiles in his 1984 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Scientists argued it was unrealistic or impossible with contemporary technology, and it was lambasted in the media as \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Indeed, as this artist's representation of SDI shows, it was rather ridiculous. Created October 18, 1984. Wikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nProtests in the streets were echoed by opposition in Congress. Congressional Democrats opposed Reagan\u2019s policies on the merits; congressional Republicans, though they supported Reagan\u2019s anti-communism, were wary of the administration\u2019s fondness for circumventing Congress. In 1982 the House voted 411-0 to approve the Boland Amendment, which barred the United States from supplying funds to overthrow Nicaragua\u2019s Sandinista government. A second Boland Amendment in 1984 prohibited any funding for the anti-Sandinista contra movement. The Reagan administration\u2019s determination to flout these amendments led to a scandal that almost destroyed Reagan\u2019s presidency. Robert MacFarlane, the president\u2019s National Security Advisor, and Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council, raised money to support the contras by selling American missiles to Iran and funneling the money to Nicaragua. When their scheme was revealed in 1986, it was hugely embarrassing for Reagan. The president\u2019s underlings had not only violated the Boland Amendments but had also, by selling arms to Iran, made a mockery of Reagan\u2019s declaration that \u201cAmerica will never make concessions to the terrorists.\u201d But while the Iran-Contra affair generated comparisons to the Watergate scandal, investigators were never able to prove Reagan knew about the operation. Without such a \u201csmoking gun,\u201d talk of impeaching Reagan remained talk.\r\n\r\nThough the Iran-Contra scandal tarnished the Reagan administration\u2019s image, it did not derail Reagan\u2019s most significant achievement: easing tensions with the Soviet Union. This would have seemed impossible in Reagan\u2019s first term, when the president exchanged harsh words with a succession of Soviet leaders\u2014Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko. In 1985, however, Chernenko\u2019s death handed leadership of the Soviet Union to Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev, a true believer in socialism, nonetheless realized that the Soviet Union desperately needed reform. He instituted a program of perestroika<\/i>, which referred to the restructuring of the Soviet system, and of glasnost<\/i>, which meant greater transparency in government. Gorbachev also reached out to Reagan in hopes of negotiating an end the arms race that was bankrupting the Soviet Union. Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Switzerland in 1985 and Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, where, although they could not agree on anything concrete\u2014thanks to Reagan\u2019s refusal to limit the Strategic Defense Initiative\u2014they developed a rapprochement unprecedented in the history of US-Soviet relations. This trust made possible the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, which committed both sides to a sharp reduction in their nuclear arsenal.\r\n\r\nBy the late 1980s the Soviet empire was crumbling. Some credit must go to Reagan, who successfully combined anti-communist rhetoric\u2014such as his 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, where he declared, \u201cGeneral Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace\u2026tear down this wall!\u201d\u2014with a willingness to negotiate with Soviet leadership. But the real causes of collapse lay within the Soviet empire itself. Soviet-allied governments in Eastern Europe tottered under pressure from dissident organizations like Poland\u2019s Solidarity and East Germany\u2019s Neues Forum; some of these countries were also pressured from within by the Roman Catholic Church, which had turned toward active anti-communism under Pope John Paul II. When Gorbachev made it clear that he would not send the Soviet military to prop up these regimes, they collapsed one by one in 1989\u2014in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. Within the Soviet Union, Gorbachev\u2019s proposed reforms, rather than bring stability, instead unraveled the decaying Soviet system. By 1991 the Soviet Union itself had vanished, dissolving into a \u201cCommonwealth of Independent States.\u201d","rendered":"

If the conservative movement recovered lost ground on the field on gender and sexual politics, it captured the battlefield on American foreign policy in the 1980s\u00ad\u2014\u00adfor a time, at least. Ronald Reagan entered office a committed Cold Warrior. He held the Soviet Union in contempt, denouncing it in a 1983 speech as an \u201cevil empire.\u201d And he never doubted that the Soviet Union would end up \u201con the ash heap of history,\u201d as he said in a 1982 speech to the British Parliament. Indeed, Reagan believed it was the duty of the United States to speed the Soviet Union to its inevitable demise. His \u201cReagan Doctrine\u201d declared that the United States would supply aid to anti-communist forces everywhere in the world. To give this doctrine force, Reagan oversaw an enormous expansion in the defense budget. Federal spending on defense rose from $171 billion in 1981 to $229 billion in 1985, the highest level since the Vietnam War. He described this as a policy of \u201cpeace through strength,\u201d a phrase that appealed to Americans who, during the 1970s, feared that the United States was losing its status as the world\u2019s most powerful nation. Yet the irony is that Reagan, for all his militarism, helped bring the Cold War to an end. He achieved it not through nuclear weapons but through negotiation, a tactic he had once scorned.<\/p>\n

Reagan\u2019s election came at a time when many Americans feared their country was in an irreversible decline. American forces withdrew in disarray from South Vietnam in 1975. The United States returned control of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1978, despite protests from conservatives. Pro-American dictators were toppled in Iran and Nicaragua in 1979. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan that same year, leading conservatives to warn about American weakness in the face of Soviet expansion. Such warnings were commonplace in the 1970s. \u201cTeam B,\u201d a group of intellectuals commissioned by the CIA to examine Soviet capabilities, released a report in 1976 stating that \u201call evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to\u2026global Soviet hegemony.\u201d The Committee on the Present Danger, an organization of conservative foreign policy experts, issued similar statements. When Reagan warned, as he did in 1976, that \u201cthis nation has become Number Two in a world where it is dangerous\u2014if not fatal\u2014to be second best,\u201d he was speaking to these fears of decline.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Ronald<\/a><\/p>\n

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, leaders of two of the world\u2019s most powerful countries, formed an alliance that benefited both throughout their tenures in office. Photograph of Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan at Camp David, December 22, 1984. Wikimedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Reagan administration made Latin America a showcase for its newly assertive policies. Jimmy Carter had sought to promote human rights in the region, but Reagan and his advisers scrapped this approach and instead focused on fighting communism\u2014a term they applied to all Latin American left-wing movements. Reagan justified American intervention by pointing out Latin America\u2019s proximity to the United States: \u201cSan Salvador [in El Salvador] is closer to Houston, Texas, than Houston is to Washington, DC,\u201d he said in one speech, adding, \u201cCentral America is<\/i>America.\u201d And so when communists with ties to Cuba overthrew the government of the Caribbean nation of Grenada in October 1983, Reagan dispatched the United States Marines to the island. Dubbed \u201cOperation Urgent Fury,\u201d the Grenada invasion overthrew the leftist government after less than a week of fighting. Despite the relatively minor nature of the mission, its success gave victory-hungry Americans something to cheer about after the military debacles of the previous two decades.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Parachuters<\/a><\/p>\n

Operation Urgent Fury, which the U.S. invasion of Grenada came to be called, was broadly supported by the U.S. public, even though it was violation of international law. This support was in large part due to incorrect intelligence disseminated by the U.S. government. This photograph shows the deployment of U.S. Army Rangers into Grenada. Photograph, October 25, 1983. Wikimedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Grenada was the only time Reagan deployed the American military in Latin America, but the United States also influenced the region by supporting right-wing, anti-communist movements there. From 1981 to 1990, the United States gave more than $4 billion to the government of El Salvador in a largely futile effort to defeat the guerillas of the Farabundo Mart\u00ed National Liberation Front (FMLN). Salvadoran security forces equipped with American weapons committed numerous atrocities, including the slaughter of almost 1,000 civilians at the village of El Mozote in December 1981. The United States also supported the contras, a right-wing insurgency fighting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Reagan, overlooking the contras\u2019 brutal tactics, hailed them as the \u201cmoral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Reagan administration took a more cautious approach in the Middle East, where its policy was determined by a mix of anti-communism and hostility to the Islamic government of Iran. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the United States supplied Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with military intelligence and business credits\u2014even after it became clear that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons. Reagan\u2019s greatest setback in the Middle East came in 1982, when, shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon, he dispatched Marines to the Lebanese city of Beirut to serve as a peacekeeping force. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines stationed in Beirut. Congressional pressure and anger from the American public forced Reagan to recall the Marines from Lebanon in March 1984. Reagan\u2019s decision demonstrated that, for all his talk of restoring American power, he took a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. He was unwilling to risk another Vietnam by committing American troops to Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Though Reagan\u2019s policies toward Central America and the Middle East aroused protest, it was his policy on nuclear weapons that generated the most controversy. Initially Reagan followed the examples of presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter by pursuing arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union. American officials participated in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force Talks (INF) that began in 1981 and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in 1982. But the breakdown of these talks in 1983 led Reagan to proceed with plans to place Pershing II nuclear missiles in Western Europe to counter Soviet SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. Reagan went a step further in March 1983, when he announced plans for a \u201cStrategic Defense Initiative,\u201d a space-based system that could shoot down incoming Soviet missiles. Critics derided the program as a \u201cStar Wars\u201d fantasy, and even Reagan\u2019s advisors harbored doubts. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the technology to say this,\u201d Secretary of State George Shultz told aides. These aggressive policies fed a growing \u201cnuclear freeze\u201d movement throughout the world. In the United States, organizations like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy organized protests that culminated in a June 1982 rally that drew almost a million people to New York City\u2019s Central Park.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Artist's<\/a><\/p>\n

President Reagan proposed space- and ground-based systems to protect the United States from nuclear missiles in his 1984 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Scientists argued it was unrealistic or impossible with contemporary technology, and it was lambasted in the media as \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Indeed, as this artist’s representation of SDI shows, it was rather ridiculous. Created October 18, 1984. Wikimedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Protests in the streets were echoed by opposition in Congress. Congressional Democrats opposed Reagan\u2019s policies on the merits; congressional Republicans, though they supported Reagan\u2019s anti-communism, were wary of the administration\u2019s fondness for circumventing Congress. In 1982 the House voted 411-0 to approve the Boland Amendment, which barred the United States from supplying funds to overthrow Nicaragua\u2019s Sandinista government. A second Boland Amendment in 1984 prohibited any funding for the anti-Sandinista contra movement. The Reagan administration\u2019s determination to flout these amendments led to a scandal that almost destroyed Reagan\u2019s presidency. Robert MacFarlane, the president\u2019s National Security Advisor, and Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council, raised money to support the contras by selling American missiles to Iran and funneling the money to Nicaragua. When their scheme was revealed in 1986, it was hugely embarrassing for Reagan. The president\u2019s underlings had not only violated the Boland Amendments but had also, by selling arms to Iran, made a mockery of Reagan\u2019s declaration that \u201cAmerica will never make concessions to the terrorists.\u201d But while the Iran-Contra affair generated comparisons to the Watergate scandal, investigators were never able to prove Reagan knew about the operation. Without such a \u201csmoking gun,\u201d talk of impeaching Reagan remained talk.<\/p>\n

Though the Iran-Contra scandal tarnished the Reagan administration\u2019s image, it did not derail Reagan\u2019s most significant achievement: easing tensions with the Soviet Union. This would have seemed impossible in Reagan\u2019s first term, when the president exchanged harsh words with a succession of Soviet leaders\u2014Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko. In 1985, however, Chernenko\u2019s death handed leadership of the Soviet Union to Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev, a true believer in socialism, nonetheless realized that the Soviet Union desperately needed reform. He instituted a program of perestroika<\/i>, which referred to the restructuring of the Soviet system, and of glasnost<\/i>, which meant greater transparency in government. Gorbachev also reached out to Reagan in hopes of negotiating an end the arms race that was bankrupting the Soviet Union. Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Switzerland in 1985 and Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, where, although they could not agree on anything concrete\u2014thanks to Reagan\u2019s refusal to limit the Strategic Defense Initiative\u2014they developed a rapprochement unprecedented in the history of US-Soviet relations. This trust made possible the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, which committed both sides to a sharp reduction in their nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

By the late 1980s the Soviet empire was crumbling. Some credit must go to Reagan, who successfully combined anti-communist rhetoric\u2014such as his 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, where he declared, \u201cGeneral Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace\u2026tear down this wall!\u201d\u2014with a willingness to negotiate with Soviet leadership. But the real causes of collapse lay within the Soviet empire itself. Soviet-allied governments in Eastern Europe tottered under pressure from dissident organizations like Poland\u2019s Solidarity and East Germany\u2019s Neues Forum; some of these countries were also pressured from within by the Roman Catholic Church, which had turned toward active anti-communism under Pope John Paul II. When Gorbachev made it clear that he would not send the Soviet military to prop up these regimes, they collapsed one by one in 1989\u2014in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. Within the Soviet Union, Gorbachev\u2019s proposed reforms, rather than bring stability, instead unraveled the decaying Soviet system. By 1991 the Soviet Union itself had vanished, dissolving into a \u201cCommonwealth of Independent States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div>