Escalation of the Cold War to 26 different countries during his presidency. (June 8, 1982), Reagan predicted
Marxism-Leninism would end up on the "
ash heap of history" Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which had begun in 1979 after the
Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Reagan feared that the Soviet Union had gained a military advantage over the United States, and the Reagan administration hoped that heightened military spending would grant the U.S. military superiority and weaken the Soviet economy. Reagan ordered a massive buildup of the
United States Armed Forces, directing funding to the
B-1 Lancer bomber, the
B-2 Spirit bomber,
cruise missiles, the
MX missile, and the
600-ship Navy. In response to Soviet deployment of the
SS-20, Reagan oversaw
NATO's deployment of the
Pershing missile in West Germany. The president also strongly denounced the Soviet Union and Communism in moral terms, describing the Soviet Union as an "
evil empire". Despite this heavy rhetoric, the Reagan administration continued arms control talks with the Soviet Union in the form of "
START". Unlike the "
SALT" treaties of the 1970s, which set upper limits on the size of nuclear arsenals, the proposed START treaty would require both sides to reduce their existing nuclear arsenals.
Strategic Defense Initiative In March 1983, Reagan introduced the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a defense project that would have used ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. Reagan believed that this defense shield could make
nuclear war impossible. Many scientists and national security experts criticized the project as costly and technologically infeasible, and critics dubbed SDI as "Star Wars" in reference to a
popular film series of the same name. Ultimately, the SDI would be canceled in 1993 due to concerns about its cost and effectiveness as well as a changing international situation. However, the Soviets became concerned about the possible effects SDI would have and viewed its development as a violation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In protest of SDI, the Soviet Union broke off arms control talks, and U.S.-Soviet relations descended to their lowest point since the early 1960s. The Cold War tensions influenced works of popular culture such as the films
The Day After and
WarGames (both 1983), and the song "
99 Luftballons" (1983) by
Nena, each of which exhibited the rising public anxiety for the possibility of a nuclear war.
Reagan Doctrine in the Oval Office, 1983 Under a policy that came to be known as the
Reagan Doctrine, the Reagan administration provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist
resistance movements in an effort to "
rollback" Soviet-backed communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Eastern Europe, the CIA provided support to the Polish opposition group,
Solidarity, ensuring that it stayed afloat during a
period of martial law. Reagan deployed the CIA's
Special Activities Division to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the CIA was instrumental in training, equipping, and leading
Mujahideen forces against the Soviet Army in the
Soviet–Afghan War. By 1987, the United States was sending over $600 million a year, as well as weapons, intelligence, and combat expertise to Afghanistan. The Soviet Union announced it would withdraw from Afghanistan in 1987, but the U.S. was subjected to
blowback in the form of the
Taliban and
al-Qaeda, two groups that arose out of the Mujahideen and that would oppose the United States in future conflicts. Although leading conservatives argued that Reagan's foreign policy strategy was essential to protecting their security interests, critics labeled the initiatives as aggressive and imperialistic, and chided them as "warmongering". Reagan was also heavily criticized for backing
anti-communist leaders accused of severe
human rights violations, such as
Hissène Habré and
Efraín Ríos Montt. Montt was the
president of Guatemala and the
Guatemalan military was accused
of genocide for massacres of members of the
Ixil people and other indigenous groups. Reagan had said that Montt was getting a "bum rap", Previous human rights violations had prompted the United States to cut off aid to the Guatemalan government, but the Reagan administration unsuccessfully appealed to Congress to restart military aid. However, the administration successfully provided nonmilitary assistance such as the
United States Agency for International Development.
Central America and the Caribbean of
Dominica in the
Oval Office about ongoing events in
Grenada The Reagan administration placed a high priority on the Central America and the
Caribbean Sea, which it saw as a key front in the Cold War. Reagan and his foreign policy team were particularly concerned about the potential influence of
Cuba on countries such as
Grenada,
Nicaragua, and
El Salvador. To counter the influence of Cuba and the Soviet Union, Reagan launched the
Caribbean Basin Initiative, an economic program designed to aid countries opposed to Communism. He also authorized covert measures, such as the arming of Nicaragua's
Contras, to minimize Cuban and Soviet influence in the region. The administration provided support to right-wing governments throughout Latin America, disregarding humans rights abuses in countries like
Argentina and El Salvador.
Invasion of Grenada Tensions rose between the left-wing
Grenadan government of
Maurice Bishop and the U.S. because Cuban construction workers were building an airfield on the island. On October 16, 1983, pro-Communist forces of
Hudson Austin led a coup against Bishop, who was subsequently arrested and executed. Reagan dispatched approximately 5,000 U.S. soldiers to
invade Grenada nine days after. After two days of fighting that resulted in the deaths of 19 Americans, 45 Grenadans, and 24 Cubans, Austin's government was overthrown. Reagan then declared, "Our days of weakness are over. Our military forces are back on their feet and standing tall." While the invasion enjoyed public support in the United States and Grenada, it was criticized by the United Kingdom, Canada and the
United Nations General Assembly as "a flagrant violation of
international law".
Iran–Contra affair on the
Iran–Contra affair, 1987 In 1979, a group of left-wing rebels in Nicaragua known as the
Sandinistas overthrew the president of Nicaragua and installed
Daniel Ortega as the country's leader. Fearing that Communists would take over Nicaragua if it remained under the leadership of the Sandinistas, the Reagan administration authorized CIA Director William J. Casey to arm the right-wing
Contras. Congress, which favored negotiations between the Contras and Sandinista, passed the 1982
Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA and Defense Department from using their budgets to provide aid to the Contras. Still intent on supporting the Contras, the Reagan administration raised funds for the Contras from private donors and foreign governments. When Congress learned that the CIA had secretly placed
naval mines in Nicaraguan harbors, Congress passed a second Boland Amendment that barred granting any assistance to the Contras. During his second term, Reagan sought to find a way procure the release of
seven American hostages held by
Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group supported by Iran. The Reagan administration decided to sell American arms to Iran, then engaged in the
Iran–Iraq War, in hopes that Iran would pressure Hezbollah to release the hostages. Secretary of Defense Weinberger and Secretary of State Shultz both opposed the arrangement, so it was handled by National Security Advisor
Robert McFarlane and McFarlane's successor,
John Poindexter. The Reagan administration sold over 2000 missiles to Iran without informing Congress; Hezbollah released four hostages but captured an additional six Americans. On the initiative of
Oliver North, an aide on the National Security Council, the Reagan administration redirected the proceeds from the missile sales to the Contras. The transactions became public knowledge by early November 1986. Reagan initially denied any wrongdoing, but on November 25 he announced that Poindexter and North had left the administration and that he would form the
Tower Commission to investigate the transactions. A few weeks later, Reagan asked a panel of federal judges to appoint a
special prosecutor who would conduct a separate investigation, and the panel chose
Lawrence Walsh. The Tower Commission, chaired by former Republican senator
John Tower, released a report in February 1987 that confirmed that the administration had traded arms for hostages and sent the proceeds of the weapons sales to the Contras. The report laid most of the blame for the operation on North, Poindexter, and McFarlane, but it was also critical of Regan and other White House staffers. In response to the Tower Commission report, Reagan stated, "Its findings are honest, convincing and highly critical...As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities." The
Iran–Contra scandal, as it became known, did serious damage to the Reagan presidency, raising questions about Reagan's competency and the wisdom of conservative policies. A poll taken in March 1987 showed that 85 percent of respondents believed that the Reagan administration had engaged in an organized cover-up, and half of the respondents believed that Reagan had been personally involved. The administration's credibility was also badly damaged on the international stage, as it had violated its own arms embargo on Iran. Congressional Democrats considered
impeaching, but decided that it would be an unwise use of political capital against a weakened president; Democrats were also somewhat mollified by Reagan's decision to replace Chief of Staff Regan with Howard Baker. The investigations into the Iran–Contra scandal continued after Reagan left office, but were effectively halted when President George H. W. Bush pardoned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before his trial began. Investigators did not find conclusive proof that Reagan had known about the aid provided to the Contras, but Walsh's report noted that Reagan had "created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others" and had "knowingly participated or acquiesced in covering up the scandal".
End of the Cold War at the White House, 1987 Three different
Soviet leaders died between 1982 and 1985, leaving the Soviets with an unstable leadership until
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. Although the Soviet Union had not accelerated military spending during Reagan's military buildup, their large military expenses, in combination with
collectivized agriculture and inefficient
planned manufacturing, were a heavy burden for the
Soviet economy. Gorbachev was less ideologically rigid than his predecessors, and he believed that the Soviet Union urgently needed economic and political reforms. In 1986, he introduced his twin reforms of
perestroika and
glasnost, which would change the political and economic conditions of the Soviet Union. Seeking to reduce military expenditures and minimize the possibility of nuclear war, he also sought to re-open negotiations with the United States over arms control. As his influence on domestic affairs waned during his second term, Reagan increasingly focused on relations with the Soviet Union. Reagan recognized the change in the direction of the Soviet leadership under Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a view to encourage the Soviet leader to pursue substantial arms agreements. Reagan's personal mission was to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, which according to
Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan's ambassador to Moscow, he regarded as "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization". Gorbachev and Reagan agreed to meet at the 1985
Geneva Summit, where they issued a joint statement indicating that neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union would "seek to achieve military superiority". The two leaders began a private correspondence after the summit, and each became increasingly optimistic about arms control negotiations. Reagan's willingness to negotiate with the Soviets was opposed by many conservatives, including Weinberger; conservative columnist
George Will wrote that Reagan was "elevating wishful thinking to the status of a political philosophy". Various issues, including intelligence operations performed by both countries and tensions in Germany and Afghanistan, threatened to forestall the possibility of an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, both Gorbachev and Reagan agreed to continue arms control negotiations at the October 1986
Reykjavík Summit. At the summit, Gorbachev and Reagan closed in on an agreement to greatly reduce or eliminate the nuclear stockpiles of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union over a ten-year period, but the deal collapsed due to disagreements regarding SDI development. Reagan attacked Gorbachev in a
1987 speech delivered in
West Berlin, but negotiations continued. Gorbachev and Reagan broke the impasse by agreeing to negotiate separate treaties on intermediate nuclear forces (such as
intermediate-range ballistic missiles) and strategic arms (such as
intercontinental ballistic missiles). With the framework for an agreement in place, Reagan and Gorbachev met at the 1987
Washington Summit. They signed the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), which committed both signatories to the total abolition of their respective short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles. The agreement marked the first time that the United States and the Soviet Union had committed to the elimination of a type of nuclear weapon, though it provided for the dismantlement of only about one-twentieth of the worldwide nuclear weapon arsenal. The treaty also established an inspections regime designed to ensure that both parties honored the agreement. In addition to the INF Treaty, Reagan and Gorbachev discussed a potential strategic arms treaty, known as START, but SDI continued to be a major point of contention. In May 1988, the Senate voted 93-to-5 in favor of ratifying the INF Treaty. Though it was attacked by conservatives like Jesse Helms, the INF Treaty provided a major boost to Reagan's popularity in the aftermath of the Iran–Contra Affair. A new era of trade and openness between the two powers commenced, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union cooperated on international issues such as the
Iran–Iraq War. When Reagan visited Moscow for a
fourth summit with Gorbachev in 1988, he was viewed as a celebrity by the Soviets. A journalist asked the president if he still considered the Soviet Union the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era." At Gorbachev's request, Reagan gave a speech on free markets at the
Moscow State University. In December 1988, Gorbachev effectively renounced the
Brezhnev Doctrine, paving the way for democratization in Eastern Europe. In November 1989, ten months after Reagan left office, the
Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War was unofficially declared over at the
Malta Summit the following month.
Honoring German war dead at Bitburg, Germany Reagan came under much criticism in 1985 when he was accused of honoring Nazi war criminals at a cemetery in West Germany. In February 1985, the administration accepted an invitation for Reagan to visit a German military cemetery in
Bitburg and to place a wreath alongside West German chancellor
Helmut Kohl. Deaver was given assurances by a German head of protocol that no war criminals were buried there. It was later determined that the cemetery held the graves of 49 members of the
Waffen-SS. What neither Deaver nor other administration officials initially realized was that many Germans distinguished the regular SS, who typically were composed of Nazi true believers, and the Waffen-SS which were attached to military units and composed of conscripted soldiers. As the controversy brewed in April 1985, Reagan issued a statement that called the Nazi soldiers buried in that cemetery as themselves "victims", a designation which ignited a stir over whether Reagan had equated the SS men to victims of
the Holocaust.
Pat Buchanan, Reagan's director of communications, argued that the president did not equate the SS members with the actual Holocaust, but as victims of the ideology of Nazism. Now strongly urged to cancel the visit, the president responded that it would be wrong to back down on a promise he had made to Chancellor Kohl. On May 5, 1985, President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl first visited the site of the former Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and then the Bitburg cemetery where, along with two military generals, they did place a wreath.
Middle East with Reagan in a joint press conference at the White House, 1981
Lebanon A
civil war had broken out in
Lebanon in 1975, and both
Israel and
Syria undertook military action within Lebanon in 1982. After Israel
invaded Southern Lebanon, Reagan faced domestic and international pressure to oppose the Israeli invasion, but Reagan was reluctant to openly break Israel. Reagan sympathized with Israeli's desire to defeat
PLO forces that had struck Israel from Lebanon, but he pressured Israel to end its invasion as casualties mounted and Israeli forces approached the Lebanese capital of
Beirut. American diplomat
Philip Habib arranged a cease-fire in which Israel, Syria, and the PLO, all agreed to evacuate their forces from Lebanon. As Israel delayed a full withdrawal and violence continued in Lebanon, Reagan arranged for a
multinational force, including
U.S. Marines, to serve as peacekeepers in Lebanon. In October 1983,
two nearly-simultaneous bombings in Beirut killed 241 American Marines and 58 French soldiers. The international peacekeeping force was withdrawn from Lebanon in 1984. In reaction to the role Israel and the United States played in the Lebanese Civil War, a
Shia militant group known as
Hezbollah began to take American hostages, holding eight Americans by the middle of 1985. The Reagan administration's attempts to release these hostages would be a major component of the Iran-Contra Scandal. In response to the U.S. intervention in Lebanon, the Defense Department developed the "
Powell Doctrine", which stated that the U.S. should intervene militarily as a last resort and should set clear and limited goals in such interventions. Though termed the Powell doctrine, the policy was originally developed by Secretary of Defense Weinberger, who was influenced not only by Lebanon but also by the experience of the Vietnam War.
Libya bombing (here walking with President Reagan at
Camp David in 1986) granted the U.S. use of British airbases to launch the Libya attack Relations between Libya and the United States under President Reagan were continually contentious, beginning with the
Gulf of Sidra incident in 1981; by 1982, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi was considered by the CIA to be, along with USSR leader
Leonid Brezhnev and Cuban leader
Fidel Castro, part of a group known as the "unholy trinity" and was also labeled as "our international public enemy number one" by a CIA official. These tensions were later revived in early April 1986, when
a bomb exploded in a West Berlin discothèque, resulting in the injury of 63 American military personnel and death of one serviceman. Stating that there was irrefutable proof that Libya had directed the terrorist bombing, Reagan authorized the use of force against the country. In the late evening of April 15, 1986, the United States launched a series of
airstrikes on ground targets in Libya. at the
White House. Habré was supported by the Reagan administration as an ally against Gaddafi's Libya Britain's prime minister,
Margaret Thatcher, allowed the U.S. Air Force to use Britain's air bases to launch the attack, on the justification that the UK was supporting America's right to self-defense under Article 51 of the
United Nations Charter.
South Africa in 1984 During Ronald Reagan's presidency South Africa continued to use a non-democratic system of government based on racial discrimination, known as
apartheid, in which the minority of white South Africans exerted nearly complete legal control over the lives of the non-white majority of the citizens. In the early 1980s the issue had moved to the center of international attention as a result of events in the townships and outcry at the death of
Stephen Biko. Reagan administration policy called for "
constructive engagement" with the apartheid government of South Africa. In opposition to the condemnations issued by the U.S. Congress and public demands for diplomatic or economic sanctions, Reagan made relatively minor criticisms of the regime, which was otherwise internationally isolated, and the U.S. granted recognition to the government. South Africa's military was then engaged in an occupation of
Namibia and
proxy wars in several neighboring countries, in alliance with Savimbi's UNITA. Reagan administration officials saw the apartheid government as a key anti-communist ally. Finding the Reagan Administration unresponsive to its calls for more stringent economic sanctions, anti-apartheid activists undertook a
divestment campaign, aimed at moving individuals and institutions to sell their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. By late 1985, facing escalating public and congressional opposition to his administration's tolerant attitude toward the South African government's policy of apartheid, Reagan made an "abrupt reversal" on the issue and proposed sanctions on the South African government, including an
arms embargo. However, these sanctions were seen as weak by anti-apartheid activists, and as insufficient by the president's opponents in Congress, including 81 House Republicans. In August 1986, Congress approved the
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which included tougher sanctions. Reagan vetoed the act, but this was overridden by a bipartisan effort in Congress. By 1990, under Reagan's successor George H. W. Bush, the new South African government of
F. W. de Klerk was introducing widespread reforms, though the Bush administration argued that this was not a result of the tougher sanctions.
Free trade During his 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan proposed the creation of a
common market in North America. Once in office, Reagan signed the
Trade and Tariff Act of 1984, which granted the president "
fast track" authority in negotiating
free trade agreements. In 1988, Reagan and Canadian prime minister
Brian Mulroney signed the
Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement, which greatly reduced trade barriers between the United States and Canada. This trade pact would serve as the foundation for the
North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. ==Age and health==