From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (141 page)

Conflict within the administration made the Vance-Brzezinski feud look like a love feast by comparison. Paraphrasing Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, hard-line NSC staffer Richard Pipes observed that while the Soviets were the adversary, "the enemy was State." For its part, Haig's State Department refused to share important documents with NSC.
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Reagan was isolated from the NSC by White House advisers and his wife, Nancy, who feared that the ideologues who staffed it would reinforce his hardline tendencies. Haig's efforts to crown himself the "vicar" of Reagan's foreign policy earned him the enmity of the White House staff, who sarcastically dubbed him CINCWORLD (commander in chief of the world)—and eventually got him fired. For more than six years, Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger waged as acrimonious a power struggle as ever seen in Washington over such issues as arms reduction, the proper response to terrorism, and the employment of U.S. military forces abroad. The NSC staff and Casey conducted operations bitterly opposed by both Shultz and Weinberger—when they knew about them. The policy process suffered from an excess of democracy, James Baker later recalled, "a witches' brew of intrigue, elbows, egos, and separate agendas."
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The most detached chief executive since Calvin Coolidge—whose portrait was restored to a place of prominence in his White House—Reagan refused to adjudicate the nasty disputes among his subordinates. He presided amiably over the chaos, reaping the whirlwind only in his second term when the ill-conceived and in some cases illegal shenanigans of his subordinates nearly made him a lame duck before his time. It was only in the last two years of his second term, following the Iran-Contra scandal, that some order was imposed on the policymaking process.

The Reagan policies reflected these conflicting forces. Anti-Communism was a constant. But the president's tough and occasionally bombastic talk was belied by a growing willingness to negotiate with the Soviets. Moreover, although the administration spoke loudly and through its massive arms buildup carried a big stick, it was generally cautious in sending military forces abroad. The major innovation was the so-called Reagan
Doctrine, a policy of using covert arms shipments to change the status quo in favor of the "free world." In that sense alone, it departed sharply from the policies of its predecessors.

The results were mixed. The Reagan administration engaged the United States in new and dangerous ways in the ever volatile Middle East. A not-so-covert war in Central America inflicted great destruction on that troubled region and came a cropper in the Iran-Contra scandal, for a time crippling the administration in its second term. On the positive side and to the dismay of his longtime conservative supporters, Reagan established the basis for a new relationship with the Soviet Union.

During the first term, the Cold War reescalated to a level of tension not equaled since the Cuban missile crisis. This process began with Carter, of course, but Reagan went well beyond his predecessor, openly repudiating detente and reasserting the moral absolutes of the Cold War as no one had since John Foster Dulles. Indeed, in the early years, Reagan seems to have reveled in unleashing verbal cannon shots against the Soviets. In a 1983 speech to Christian evangelicals, borrowing a phrase from the blockbuster 1977 movie
Star Wars,
he branded the Soviet Union "the evil empire" and accused it of being the "focus of evil in the modern world."
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Moscow reserved for itself the right to "commit any crime, to lie, to cheat" to achieve its sinister goals, he said on another occasion. He once dismissed Marxism-Leninism as a "gaggle of bogus prophecies and petty superstitions" and predicted, correctly as it turned out, that communism would be remembered as a "sad and rather bizarre chapter in human history." He condemned the Soviets for shooting down a South Korean airliner in September 1983—an episode that revealed more about their nervousness and inept air defenses than their hostile intentions—insisting with no proof, and incorrectly as it turned out, that they knew all along it was a civilian aircraft. The president may have revealed his deepest instincts when he jokingly—and inadvertently—broadcast into an open radio microphone in August 1984: "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
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During the first term, tough talk was sometimes backed by actions. The administration in 1981 threatened sanctions if the USSR used military force to put down mounting unrest in Poland. When the Polish government itself responded by instituting martial law—a "gross violation of
the Helsinki Pact," Reagan raged—the United States on Christmas Eve 1981 imposed sanctions on Poland.
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Ironically, although the Soviet Union had not used force, the administration subsequently placed sanctions on it as well, terminating Aeroflot flights to U.S. cities, refusing to renew scientific exchange agreements, and in June 1982 banning the sale of equipment and technology for construction of a Soviet gas pipeline to Western Europe, an action taken without consulting European allies that outraged them. In a move that at least bordered on pettiness and spite, the administration revoked Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's special parking place in the State Department garage.

From the beginning, however, the administration also displayed a pragmatic streak in dealing with the "evil empire." To appease U.S. farmers and satisfy his personal predilection for free trade, Reagan shortly after taking office scrapped Carter's embargo on grain shipments to the USSR. The administration's first major statement of Cold War strategy, National Security Decision Directive 75, approved in December 1982, was a compromise between hard-liners in the NSC and pragmatists in the Pentagon and the State Department. The United States would stand firmly against Soviet expansion. It would go beyond mere containment by using any means at its disposal to alter the Kremlin's behavior by inflicting costs that might exacerbate internal problems, increase reformist tendencies, and even bring about regime change. At the same time, the United States would negotiate agreements with the Soviet Union that served its interests.
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On crucial issues such as arms control, the administration in its early years was demonstrably hard-nosed. Here also, more than he was willing to admit, Reagan expanded on precedents set by Carter. Although he agreed to abide by its restrictions, he refused to resubmit to the Senate a "fatally flawed" SALT II agreement that did not provide for reductions in the two sides' nuclear arsenals. Even more than his predecessor, he rejected the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in favor of a strategy of deterrence through military superiority. Having used to advantage in the 1980 campaign the alleged "window of vulnerability" opened by a sustained Soviet buildup of nuclear and conventional weapons, the president vowed to seek "peace through strength." Ignoring campaign pledges to cut the federal budget, his administration expanded on Carter's huge buildup, increasing defense spending by 7 percent a year between 1981 and 1986. The cost was $2 trillion in the first six years and produced Pentagon spending estimated at an incredible $28 million an hour. It provided for major
improvements in existing missiles and delivery systems, the addition of new systems such as the MX mobile land-based missile with ten independently targeted warheads, the humongous B-1 bomber that Carter had rejected, a six-hundred-ship navy capable of attacking Soviets ports in the event of war, and expanded salaries and benefits for military personnel.
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The buildup even revived emphasis on civil defense, this time in the form of plans to shift people from cities to small towns in time of nuclear crisis.
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In part to mute increasingly outspoken anti-nuclear protest in the United States and Western Europe, the administration evinced a willingness to talk with the Soviets, but the positions it took raised doubts about its eagerness for substantive negotiations. The appointment of hard-liners to key positions reflected its approach. As a staff aide to "Scoop" Jackson, Richard Perle had wreaked havoc with SALT; as Reagan's assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, he was in a position to shape policy. Ironically, and especially revealing, Cold Warrior Paul Nitze, the author of NSC-68, became known as the Reagan administration's arms control dove!

On the two major issues of intermediate nuclear forces (INF) stationed in Europe or aimed at Europe and longer range strategic weapons, the Reaganites insisted on much larger cuts in Soviet forces than their own. In the INF negotiations, they set forth a so-called zero option, agreeing not to deploy Pershing and Tomahawk missiles in Europe if the Soviets would dismantle their SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs, missiles with a range of 1,865 to 3,420 miles) and other intermediate-range missiles aimed at Western Europe. British and French missiles were exempted. The zero option also left out all sea- and air-based missiles, where the United States had a huge advantage. It was "loaded to Western advantage and Soviet disadvantage," Raymond Garthoff has concluded, "and it was clearly not a basis for negotiations aimed at reaching agreement."
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When Nitze and his Soviet counterpart, after a secret July 1982 "walk in the woods," actually came up with a compromise, Perle and the hard-liners sabotaged it. Public U.S. statements that nuclear war was both feasible and "winnable" caused a furor in Europe and nervousness in the USSR.
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Deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe in late 1983 provoked the Soviets to walk out of the talks.
The result was the most contentious and least constructive arms control talks in many years.
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The two sides fared no better with strategic weapons. In this area, the administration sharply departed from its predecessors, abandoning arms
limitation
for
reduction
—especially on the Soviet side. The new acronym START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) signified the change. After months of bitter internal wrangling, the United States finally adopted a negotiating position. While setting as the eventual goal the reduction of warheads to five thousand on each side, it demanded substantial decreases in Soviet warheads and land-based launchers while leaving its own cruise missiles, bombers, and submarines unaffected. "You want to solve
your
vulnerability problem by making
our
forces vulnerable," a Soviet general complained. In the lengthy discussions that followed, the United States backed off only slightly, provoking charges of "old poison in new bottles."
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Reagan complicated matters still further with a bombshell speech in March 1983 proposing a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a missile defense system employing lasers from space-based platforms that could intercept and destroy enemy missiles before they struck U.S. or allied soil. Controversial nuclear physicist, father of the hydrogen bomb, and ardent Cold Warrior Edward Teller first suggested the idea to the president in the fall of 1982. Reagan latched on to it with the unshakable faith that was an essential part of his being. It appealed to his longstanding and visceral hatred for nuclear weapons and the whole idea of MAD, which accepted Cold War stalemate—and which, he believed, the Soviets could not be trusted to adhere to. His enthusiasm may have been fed by a 1940 movie,
Murder in the Air,
in which he played FBI agent Brass Bancroft and U.S. scientists developed a secret weapon to neutralize enemy planes. He inserted the proposal into his speech before any discussion with allies and without full vetting from the bureaucracy—indeed, against the opposition of many top defense officials. He offered SDI to Americans as a "vision for the future," a way to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" and "offer hope for our children in the 21st century."
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SDI proved a typically Reaganesque stroke of political genius. Scientists and many national security experts promptly dismissed it as outrageously
costly and wildly impractical and dubbed it "Star Wars" to highlight its chimerical nature. But it also touched a responsive chord with the public. Reagan shrewdly couched his appeal for SDI as a way to restore the sense of security Americans had enjoyed before World War II. He affirmed that the technological genius that had made the nation great could be used to keep it safe. By repeatedly and eloquently stressing that the United States would not exploit its invulnerability to the detriment of others—it would never be the aggressor—he played to Americans' traditional belief in their innocence. The SDI proposal immediately shifted the agenda of the national security debate, undercutting an international movement to freeze nuclear weapons at existing levels. Reagan's public approval ratings soared. SDI encouraged public support for the rest of his enormously expensive defense program. It helped secure his reelection in 1984.
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SDI also intensified already pronounced Cold War tensions. It infuriated and alarmed Soviet leaders by raising the possibility that the United States could create a partially effective missile defense system that would give it a first-strike capability. At the end of 1983, the so-called Year of the Missile, for the first time in more than fifteen years, the two nations were not discussing arms control in any forum. By this time, Soviet-American relations had descended to their lowest point in years. Fears of nuclear Armageddon had risen to their highest level since the Cuban missile crisis. In Western Europe and the United States, concern about nuclear war rose in proportion to the failure of the arms control talks. The Soviets were increasingly agitated by Reagan's inflammatory rhetoric, U.S. handling of arms control negotiations, and especially SDI. American officials expressed outrage at the September 1 downing of the South Korean airliner, bitterly denouncing what they saw as a deliberate Soviet move. This incident "demonstrated vividly," Garthoff has written, "how deeply relations between the two countries had plunged. Each was only too ready to assume the worst of the other and rush not only to judgment but also to premature indictment."
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Later that month, a Soviet satellite mistakenly picked up the approach of five U.S. missiles, triggering a full nuclear alert. Perhaps only the bold and timely intervention of a forty-four-year-old lieutenant colonel who suspected an error and overrode the computers averted a counterstrike that could have killed as many as one hundred million Americans.
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In the tense and conflict-ridden atmosphere of late 1983, only a fool would have predicted that within five years the two Cold
War combatants would be negotiating major arms reduction agreements and within ten years the epic struggle would have ended.