Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  Stepping back, the president commented on what the American people thought of him. “The problem is how I am perceived. I was a hawk in Vietnam because I believe if you ask people to die you should give them a chance to win. The best way to prevent war is to get to the problem early. Can I do something without adding to the perception of me as a hawk?”

  Reagan closed the meeting by returning to the subject of Cuba, albeit obliquely. “Let’s talk about others, not Cuba,” he said of the speech he might give. “Let’s isolate them. It’s the only state that is not American. Let’s give Cuba a chance to rejoin the Western Hemisphere.” He said this topic wasn’t for the speech in question but for a broader venue, with a larger aim. “North and South America together equals China, a pretty big colossus if we were all buddies.”

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  REAGAN ESCHEWED ALARMISM, but he was plenty concerned. “Central America is really the world’s next hotspot,” he wrote in his diary. “Nicaragua is an armed camp supplied by Cuba and threatening a communist takeover of all of Central America.” A short while later he reiterated: “There is no question but that all of Central America is targeted for a communist takeover.”

  To prevent the takeover, Reagan launched a campaign of covert operations. The Caribbean Basin Initiative was the public face of the administration’s policy; its funding required congressional approval, which would take time. To prevent the communists from capturing Central America before Congress acted, Reagan turned to his shadow warriors. “We have decided on a plan of covert actions, etc., to block the Cuban aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador,” he wrote in his diary in November 1981. The covert measures included arming anti-Sandinista Nicaraguans known as contras; the contras were supposed to keep the Sandinistas occupied at home and thereby hinder their aiding leftist rebels in El Salvador. Progress came slowly. “We have problems with El Salvador,” Reagan wrote in February 1982. “The rebels seem to be winning.” This was bad news for the region. “Guatemala could go any day,” he said. “And of course Nicaragua is another Cuba.”

  The president took a briefing by the CIA on El Salvador. “The guerrillas have a really sophisticated set-up,” he noted afterward. “I’d never suspected their organization and communications. They have divided the country into sections with a separate command group for each section and a network of permanent camps, well fortified.” He added, “Now we must find a way to counter it.” American critics of the administration’s policy weren’t helping. “Ed Asner and some performers show up in Washington with $25,000 they’ve raised for the guerrillas.”

  REAGAN UNDERSTOOD THAT in foreign policy “covert” and “secret” aren’t synonyms. He knew that the targets of America’s shadow campaign would learn about it; in fact he intended that they learn about it. The purpose of the campaign was to get the Sandinistas and other regional leftists to change their ways. The covert campaign—which was covert only as to details and in being unacknowledged—would cease when they had done so.

  Fidel Castro was the ultimate target of Reagan’s campaign, and to assess how it was working upon the Cuban leader, the president dispatched Vernon Walters, a veteran American troubleshooter, to Havana. Walters had orders to discuss three topics: Cuban arms aid to the government of Nicaragua, Cuban support for antigovernment guerrillas in El Salvador, and the possible repatriation of Cuban criminals and mental patients included in the mass exodus of Cuban refugees from Mariel harbor in 1980. The subtext of the message Walters was to convey was that the American government was newly serious about cleaning up the Caribbean.

  Reagan didn’t expect miracles. He appreciated that Castro hadn’t remained in power in Cuba for two decades accidentally. But the president judged a shot across the Cuban bow long overdue. And he could hope for movement on the Mariel problem. “Maybe we’ll be sending Castro back his jailbirds and maniacs,” he wrote in his diary.

  In the event, nothing of substance came of the Walters mission. Cuba continued to support its allies in Central America, and the Mariel refugees remained in the United States. But Reagan thought the effort wasn’t wasted. “They are uptight thinking we may be planning an invasion,” he wrote of Castro and his comrades. “We aren’t but we’ll let them sweat.”

  In late February 1982, Reagan decided the time was ripe for the speech the NSC had argued about. He ventured the few blocks from the White House to the headquarters of the Organization of American States and addressed a gathering of the group’s permanent council, along with other persons interested in Latin America. The first part of his speech was as innocuous as Jim Baker wanted it to be. “In the commitment to freedom and independence, the peoples of this hemisphere are one,” Reagan said. “In this profound sense we are all Americans.” He proposed economic reforms to encourage prosperity among the countries of the Caribbean basin, starting with the elimination of tariffs on imports to the United States from the countries of the region. To this he would add tax incentives for American firms to invest in the Caribbean basin and $350 million of new economic aid. “It is an integrated program that helps our neighbors help themselves, a program that will create conditions under which creativity and private enterprise and self-help can flourish,” Reagan said.

  The second part of the speech invoked the sterner themes Bill Clark and Bill Casey wanted. “A new kind of colonialism stalks the world today and threatens our independence,” Reagan asserted. “It is brutal and totalitarian. It is not of our hemisphere, but it threatens our hemisphere and has established footholds on American soil for the expansion of its colonialist ambitions.” The Caribbean was at a crossroads. One route led toward a bright future of democracy, already embraced by two-thirds of the region’s countries. The other went a very different way. “The dark future is foreshadowed by the poverty and repression of Castro’s Cuba, the tightening grip of the totalitarian left in Grenada and Nicaragua, and the expansion of Soviet-backed, Cuban-managed support for violent revolution in Central America.”

  Reagan asserted that the economic reforms he proposed could take place only in a political and military framework that addressed the region’s security threats. “Our economic and social program cannot work if our neighbors cannot pursue their own economic and political future in peace, but must divert their resources, instead, to fight imported terrorism and armed attack. Economic progress cannot be made while guerrillas systematically burn, bomb, and destroy bridges, farms, and power and transportation systems—all with the deliberate intention of worsening economic and social problems in hopes of radicalizing already suffering people.” He shared some of the intelligence Casey had presented at the NSC meeting. “Last year, Cuba received 66,000 tons of war supplies from the Soviet Union—more than in any year since the 1962 missile crisis. Last month, the arrival of additional high performance MIG-23 Floggers gave Cuba an arsenal of more than 200 Soviet warplanes—far more than the military aircraft inventories of all other Caribbean Basin countries combined.” The Nicaraguan Sandinistas assisted the Cubans in their terrorist purposes. “For almost two years, Nicaragua has served as a platform for covert military action. Through Nicaragua, arms are being smuggled to guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala.”

  El Salvador was in grave peril, Reagan said. “Very simply, guerrillas armed and supported by and through Cuba are attempting to impose a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the people of El Salvador as part of a larger imperialistic plan.” The Salvadoran guerrillas, purporting to speak for the people of the country, opposed an election empowering the people. “More than that, they now threaten violence and death to those who participate in such an election,” Reagan said. “Can anything make more clear the nature of those who pretend to be supporters of so-called wars of liberation?”

  The United States had no choice but to move decisively against the agents of subversion. “If we do not act promptly and decisively in defense of freedom, new Cubas will arise from the ruins of today’s conflicts. We will face more totalitarian regimes tied militarily to the Soviet Union.” Listeners fa
miliar with the origins of America’s Cold War containment policy heard echoes of the Truman Doctrine when Reagan declared, “I believe free and peaceful development of our hemisphere requires us to help governments confronted with aggression from outside their borders to defend themselves. For this reason, I will ask the Congress to provide increased security assistance to help friendly countries hold off those who would destroy their chances for economic and social progress and political democracy.” This might be just the beginning. “Let our friends and our adversaries understand that we will do whatever is prudent and necessary to ensure the peace and security of the Caribbean area.”

  REAGAN’S CRITICS RECOILED at his bellicose rhetoric. “If he had just given the first half of the speech, I would have left the hall with a different feeling,” the Reverend Joseph Eldridge said. Eldridge spoke for the Washington Office on Latin America, one of many groups that had been protesting the administration’s Central American policy. Eldridge and the other critics, including the Reverend J. Bryan Hehir of the United States Catholic Conference, thought Reagan grossly misrepresented the causes of unrest in the region. “The conflict in El Salvador is rooted in longstanding patterns of injustice and denial of fundamental rights for the majority of the population,” Hehir said.

  Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, deemed Reagan’s remarks uninformed and unhelpful. “To blame the Cubans for everything that happened since 1960 is ridiculous,” Dodd said. “I’m willing to agree that Cubans have not been shy about exploiting the situation, but to say they caused it is ridiculous. If the president really wanted bipartisan support, he should have gotten away from that kind of thing.” Democratic congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar represented Cleveland, the home of two of four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador by persons alleged, and later proven, to be linked to the government of José Napoleon Duarte. Oakar resented even the economic side of Reagan’s initiative, asserting that it would encourage additional killings. “I wish he would send that $350 million in economic aid to Cleveland.” Columnist Anthony Lewis likened El Salvador to Vietnam, declaring, “As in Vietnam, our policy is based on ignorance of history. Washington sees in El Salvador a sudden threat, mounted from outside, that is susceptible to instant military remedies. But what is happening is a response to decades of oppressive history in El Salvador, and no American policy can neatly determine the result.”

  Reagan chalked up the complaints to misguided liberalism and concentrated on the reaction of most of those in the hall where he gave the speech. “It was extremely well received, and remarks from the ambassador relayed to me afterward were to the effect that it was the most impressive presentation ever made to the OAS,” he wrote in his diary. He added that initial soundings of Congress were positive as well. “I think we may have support on this,” he noted after meeting with the leaders of both parties. “Jim Wright”—the Democratic majority leader in the House—“seemed darn right enthused.”

  THE PROTRACTED BUDGET negotiations delayed congressional action on the Caribbean initiative but didn’t deter the administration from moving forward on the covert side. “Met with National Security Council Planning Group re a former Nicaraguan rebel leader who has left the government there and wants to head up a counter revolution,” Reagan wrote in his diary in early April. The counterrevolutionary was Edén Pastora, the flamboyant “Comandante Cero” of the Sandinista revolution, who had grown disillusioned with corruption in the new regime. The CIA began assisting him and his contra army, which included former members of the Nicaraguan national guard and Miskito Indians and initially operated from camps in Honduras and Costa Rica.

  The contra campaign appeared promising in the summer and early autumn of 1982. “Within a relatively short period of time the Moskitos will have comparatively free rein throughout the underpopulated eastern portion of Nicaragua,” the CIA’s Central America specialist, Duane Clar ridge, told Reagan and the NSC at a November meeting. “Two columns of Pastora elements will have moved into Nicaragua from the south, and 1200 Nicaraguans who have been in the Honduran camps will be operating in Nicaragua.” Pastora’s units in northern Nicaragua would soon join the struggle. “This group is small but politically very important as it is hoped that Pastora’s presence will lead to the defection of both individuals and units to his cause.” At Bill Casey’s prompting, Clarridge provided additional details on the numerical strength of the insurgency. Some 1,200 armed contras were operating inside Nicaragua; 200 to 300 were being sent out of the country to Honduras for training. Between 4,000 and 6,000 peasants who lived in the coffee regions in the mountains of northern Nicaragua were thought to be likely recruits. The Honduran camps contained 1,700 Miskitos awaiting arms. “When fully deployed we can anticipate that the Moskito troop level will rise to 4800,” Clarridge said.

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  THE WORLD HAS a habit of springing surprises on presidents. This was less so before the 1940s, when Americans and their chief executives often ignored what happened beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific. But after Pearl Harbor discredited hemispheric isolationism and the country adopted a global approach to national security, presidents frequently found themselves having to respond to sudden events in distant countries, whether they wanted to or not.

  By contrast to Central America, which Reagan considered a central theater in the struggle against communism, the Middle East meant little to him when he assumed the presidency. To be sure, it had oil, necessary for the smooth operation of Western economies. And it was the home of Israel, America’s special partner and responsibility since the 1960s. But Reagan was an ideologist, not a geopolitician, and so the battle of organizing philosophies meant more to him than any contest for natural resources. And though his theology occasionally made him wonder if Armageddon was nigh and might start where Zion had regathered, he wasn’t holding his breath.

  Yet the Middle East came to mean a great deal to Reagan. His reeducation began in his first year in office when he wrestled with the Israeli government over the sale to Saudi Arabia of American military hardware, especially AWACS aircraft, equipped with enhanced radar and air control capabilities, and upgrades for F-15 fighter planes. Reagan intended for the weaponry to bolster Saudi Arabia as an ally against communism, but Israeli officials complained that it strengthened the Arab anti-Israel front. Israel’s supporters in the American media and on Capitol Hill took up the cudgels and battered the administration for endangering the security of America’s only true friend in the Middle East.

  The vehemence of the response caught Reagan by surprise. “I’m disturbed by the reaction and the opposition of so many groups in the Jewish community,” he wrote to himself. “It must be plain to them they’ve never had a better friend of Israel in the White House than they have now.” The president thought his critics misconstrued his purposes. “We are striving to bring stability to the Middle East and reduce the threat of a Soviet move in that direction. The basis for such stability must be peace between Israel and the Arab nations. The Saudis are a key to this. If they can follow the counsel of Egypt the rest might fall in place. The AWACS won’t be theirs until 1985. In the meantime much can be accomplished toward furthering the Camp David format. We have assured the Israelis we will do whatever is needed to see that any help to the Arab states does not change the balance of power between them and the Arabs.”

  The uproar caused the president to postpone sending the Saudi aid package to Congress. He didn’t want to distract the legislators from his tax and budget proposals, and he hoped the fuss would dissipate. Yet he considered the arms sales important, and hardly had the economic measures cleared their hurdles on the Hill when he informed Congress that he was pushing forward with the AWACS and the F-15 parts. “I am convinced that providing Saudi Arabia with this equipment will improve the security of our friends, strengthen our own posture in the region, and make it clear both to local governments and to the Soviet leadership that the United States is determined to assist in preserving security and stability in So
uthwest Asia,” he declared in a cover letter to the aid proposal. “I am aware that information from a variety of sources has been circulating on Capitol Hill regarding this sale and that many members have been under some pressure to take an early position against it. I hope that no one will prejudge our proposal before it is presented. We will make a strong case to the Congress that it is in the interest of our country, the Western Alliance and stability in the Middle East.”

  Reagan did make his case, repeatedly. “I have proposed this sale because it significantly enhances our own vital national security interests in the Middle East,” he told a gathering of reporters. “By building confidence in the United States as a reliable security partner, the sale will greatly improve the chances of our working constructively with Saudi Arabia and other states of the Middle East toward our common goal—a just and lasting peace. It poses no threat to Israel, now or in the future. Indeed, by contributing to the security and stability of the region, it serves Israel’s long-range interests. Further, this sale will significantly improve the capability of Saudi Arabia and the United States to defend the oil fields on which the security of the free world depends.”

  The president warned Israel to step back. “As president, it’s my duty to define and defend our broad national security objectives. The Congress, of course, plays an important role in this process. And while we must always take into account the vital interests of our allies, American security interests must remain our internal responsibility. It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy.”