Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  NEAR THE END of his speech Reagan departed from the usual annual-message script by addressing not simply Congress and the American people but a particular audience abroad. “I want to speak to the people of the Soviet Union,” he said, “to tell them it’s true that our governments have had serious differences, but our sons and daughters have never fought each other in war. And if we Americans have our way, they never will.” Avoidance of war, however, to be enduring required the active pursuit of peace. “People of the Soviet Union, there is only one sane policy, for your country and mine, to preserve our civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

  He paused to let this message sink in. He had been accused of wanting war, of believing the United States could win a nuclear war. He had never believed this, but neither had he stated his disbelief so clearly. Now it was on the record for all to hear and read.

  He drew the corollary. “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used,” he said. “But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” The answer, he said, lay with the Soviet people and their government. “Americans are a people of peace. If your government wants peace, there will be peace. We can come together in faith and friendship to build a safer and far better world for our children and our children’s children.”

  Reagan addressed the Soviet people, rather than the Soviet leadership, partly for rhetorical effect. The American people wanted peace, he said; the Soviet people presumably wanted the same thing. Governments should give their people what they wanted. But Reagan reached out to the Soviet people for another reason, more practical: he couldn’t tell, at this point, who the Soviet leadership was. In the wake of the Korean Air shoot-down, Yuri Andropov had disappeared. Illness was rumored, reported, then confirmed. Communications between the White House and the Kremlin languished. Finally, in February 1984, came word he had died.

  As Reagan awaited news of the succession, he reflected on a dawning revelation. “Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians. Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. In fact, I had difficulty accepting my own conclusion at first. I’d always felt that from our deeds it must be clear to anyone that Americans were a moral people who starting at the birth of our nation had always used our power only as a force of good in the world. After World War II, for example, when we alone had the atomic bomb, we didn’t use it for conquest or domination; instead, with the Marshall Plan and General MacArthur’s democratic stewardship of Japan, we generously rebuilt the economies of our former enemies.” By contrast, the Soviet Union had seemed bent on conquest. “We had limitless reasons to be wary of the Red Bear, because from the day it was born on the streets of Russia it was dedicated to consuming the democracies of the world.”

  Reagan’s preconceptions had accompanied him to the presidency. “During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike; because of this, and perhaps because of a sense of insecurity and paranoia with roots reaching back to the invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler, they had aimed a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons at us.”

  Reagan had belatedly recognized what political scientists dubbed the “security dilemma”: the paradoxical circumstance, especially acute in the nuclear age, that measures one side considers defensive are often seen as threatening by the other. America’s nuclear arsenal was originally designed to deter a Soviet conventional attack in Europe, but the Soviets deemed it threatening. To defend themselves they built their own arsenal, which the Americans considered threatening. And so on, to second-strike arsenals and Reagan’s projected Strategic Defense Initiative.

  His discovery of the security dilemma prompted Reagan’s reassurance to the Soviet people—and to his American and Western European critics—that he believed a nuclear war could never be won and therefore must never be fought. It also prompted him to pursue arms control with Andropov’s successor, Konstantin Chernenko.

  George Bush met Chernenko at Andropov’s funeral. The vice president returned with the impression that Chernenko might be easier to work with than Andropov had been. He said as much to Reagan, who hoped he was right. “I’d like to talk to him about our problems man to man and see if I could convince him there would be a material benefit to the Soviets if they’d join the family of nations etc.,” Reagan wrote in his diary. Yet he didn’t want to move too fast. “We don’t want to appear anxious, which would tempt them to play games and possibly snub us.”

  Chernenko wasn’t interested. He proved as adamant as Andropov had been, first lecturing Reagan on America’s provocations and then announcing that the Soviet Union would boycott the Los Angeles Olympics, as the United States had boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980. “They are utterly stonewalling us,” Reagan grumbled.

  He couldn’t really blame them. Reagan’s discovery of the security dilemma came wrapped in a newfound ability to imagine the world from Moscow’s perspective. Or perhaps the ability was simply newly exercised. To this point in his political career Reagan had been content to hurl imprecations at the Soviet Union, with the goal of affirming American rectitude and steeling American resolve for the defense buildup he deemed necessary. But now that he sought to engage the Soviet leadership in meaningful dialogue, it behooved him to put himself in their shoes. The Democrats in Congress continued to reject full funding for the MX missile, while antinuclear groups in Europe were pressing their governments to drop plans to allow the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles—Pershing IIs and cruise missiles—to counter recently deployed Soviet missiles. Reagan had proposed to forgo deployment of the American intermediate missiles if the Soviets would agree to dismantle their existing missiles, but Moscow rejected this so-called “zero option” as unacceptably asymmetric. The antinuclear activists denounced it as a sham, designed to be rejected. Reagan recognized the political difficulties he faced on the arms front, and he realized that Chernenko did too. “What would I think, I asked myself,” he wrote, “if I were a Soviet leader and saw this kind of fractiousness among the leaders of the United States and the Western alliance? I’d try to exploit it.”

  Which was just what the Kremlin did. Moscow continued to brand the Americans as warmongers, hoping to increase the antinuclear pressure in Europe and perhaps in the American Congress. When reports indicated that Chernenko was sick and might prove to have an even shorter tenure than Andropov, Reagan set aside hope of progress with the Soviets before the 1984 election.

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  REAGAN’S NEW APPRECIATION for the fear the Soviets might feel toward America was an insight he kept to himself. For public consumption he dwelled on the reasons Americans should fear the Soviets. “In the last fifteen years, the growth of Soviet military power has meant a radical change in the nature of the world we live in,” he told a national audience in May 1984. This didn’t mean that a nuclear war was imminent; it was not, as long as America kept its arsenal strong. But the communists were a threat nonetheless. “They are presently challenging us with a different kind of weapon: subversion and the use of surrogate forces.” In one developing country after another—Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador—Soviet proxies had either seized power or were sapping the strength of those who held power.

  Reagan focused this evening on Nicaragua, El Salvador, and their neighbors. Congress had funded the president’s Caribbean Basin Initiative but not at the level he desired, as Democrats in the House registered deep suspicion o
f the government of El Salvador and especially the Nicaraguan contras. Edward Boland of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sponsored amendments to defense appropriations bills forbidding the CIA, which was directing the contra war, to spend money for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. The administration and its allies responded that they weren’t trying to overthrow the Sandinistas, merely to get the Sandinistas to stop subverting the government of El Salvador. But the contras themselves were less discreet, and Congress approved the Boland amendments and slashed the administration’s request for Central America funding.

  Reagan judged the Boland amendments unwise and possibly unconstitutional. But rather than challenge the restrictions frontally, he reiterated that the objective of the contra war was merely to tame the Sandinistas, not to overthrow them. He asked Congress for new funding and directed the CIA to proceed as before. He approved a more vigorous anti-Sandinista offensive, which included planting mines in Nicaraguan harbors to disrupt supplies from the Soviet Union and Cuba and generally weaken the Nicaraguan economy.

  Reagan was pleased with the covert war until, in the spring of 1984, the mining operation burst into public view. At this point even some of the president’s staunchest backers expressed alarm. Barry Goldwater, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a scathing letter to William Casey, simultaneously releasing it to the press. “Dear Bill,” Goldwater wrote, “All this past weekend, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can most easily tell you my feelings about the discovery of the President having approved mining some of the harbors of Central America. It gets down to one, little, simple phrase: I am pissed!” Goldwater felt personally betrayed. “During the important debate we had all last week and the week before, on whether we would increase funds for the Nicaragua program, we were doing all right until a member of the committee charged that the President had approved the mining. I strongly denied that because I had never heard of it. I found out the next day that the CIA had, with the written approval of the President, engaged in such mining, and the approval came in February! Bill, this is no way to run a railroad and I find myself in a hell of a quandary. I am forced to apologize to the members of the intelligence committee because I did not know the facts on this.” The administration had done itself grave damage. “The President has asked us to back his foreign policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don’t know what the hell he is doing? Lebanon, yes, we all knew that he sent troops over there. But mine the harbors in Nicaragua? This is an act violating international law. It is an act of war. For the life of me, I don’t see how we are going to explain it.” Goldwater predicted that the president would lose his battle with Congress for new funding for the contras. “My simple guess is that the House is going to defeat this supplemental and we will not be in any position to put up much of an argument after we were not given the information we were entitled to receive; particularly, if my memory serves me correctly, when you briefed us on Central America just a couple of weeks ago. And the order was signed before that. I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit from the President or from you. I don’t think we need a lot of lengthy explanations. The deed has been done and, in the future, if anything like this happens, I’m going to raise one hell of a lot of fuss about it in public.”

  Reagan resented Goldwater’s public airing of grievance and disputed the senator’s assertions. “Says he was never briefed,” the president grumbled privately. “He was briefed on March 8 and 13.” Yet Reagan didn’t specify what Goldwater was told in the briefings, which obviously didn’t satisfy him. Nor could Reagan deny the underlying facts of the mining or the damage the affair was doing in Congress to the administration’s Central American policy. “There is a rebellion which will probably lead to their shutting aid off to the Nicaraguan Contras—which will bring joy to the Soviets and Cubans.”

  Reagan thought his Central American policy was right, and he thought the American public would agree if he explained it to them satisfactorily. “Central America is a region of great importance to the United States,” he declared from the Oval Office, looking sincerely into the television camera. “And it is so close: San Salvador is closer to Houston, Texas, than Houston is to Washington, D.C. Central America is America. It’s at our doorstep.” And it was in mortal danger. “It’s become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere.” The war for Central America had already begun. “Right now in El Salvador, Cuban-supported aggression has forced more than 400,000 men, women, and children to flee their homes. And in all of Central America, more than 800,000 have fled—many, if not most, living in unbelievable hardship.” Some of those refugees had found their way to the United States; more would certainly follow.

  The stakes could not be higher, Reagan said. “If we do nothing, if we continue to provide too little help, our choice will be a communist Central America with additional communist military bases on the mainland of this hemisphere and communist subversion spreading southward and northward.” There might be no stopping the red tide. “A hundred million people from Panama to the open border of our South could come under the control of pro-Soviet regimes.”

  But it wasn’t yet too late. “We can and must help Central America. It’s in our national interest to do so, and morally, it’s the only right thing to do.” Helping Central America meant standing up to the communists who sought to destroy freedom and democracy there. Congress had voted assistance to El Salvador, but more was needed. “We’ve provided just enough aid to avoid outright disaster, but not enough to resolve the crisis, so El Salvador is being left to slowly bleed to death.”

  Most Americans didn’t appreciate the gravity of the Central American crisis, Reagan said. Some still thought the Sandinistas of Nicaragua were honest reformers; this view couldn’t be more wrong. “The Sandinista rule is a communist reign of terror.” The Sandinistas had started showing their true colors almost as soon as they seized power. “The internal repression of democratic groups, trade unions, and civic groups began. Right to dissent was denied. Freedom of the press and freedom of assembly became virtually nonexistent.” Groups that defied the regime experienced brutal repression. “There has been an attempt to wipe out an entire culture, the Miskito Indians, thousands of whom have been slaughtered or herded into detention camps, where they have been starved and abused. Their villages, churches, and crops have been burned.” The Sandinistas had alienated even former supporters. “Many of those who fought alongside the Sandinistas saw their revolution betrayed. They were denied power in the new government. Some were imprisoned, others exiled. Thousands who fought with the Sandinistas have taken up arms against them and are now called the contras. They are freedom fighters.”

  The United States must assist the freedom fighters. “The simple questions are: Will we support freedom in this hemisphere or not? Will we defend our vital interests in this hemisphere or not? Will we stop the spread of communism in this hemisphere or not?”

  REAGAN WAS DETERMINED to keep the contra war going whether Congress funded it or not. Robert McFarlane later recalled giving the president a paper describing the bleak prospects for the contras as appropriated funding dwindled and Congress refused to provide more. Reagan read the paper and handed it back. “We’ve got to find a way to keep doing this, Bud,” he told McFarlane. “I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together. Do everything you can.”

  McFarlane set to work. In June 1984 he summoned the National Security Planning Group to the Situation Room. “The purpose of this meeting,” he explained to the president and the others, “is to focus on the political, economic, and military situation in Central America—to offer a status report and to discuss next steps needed to keep our friends together while continuing to make progress toward our overall political goals.” McFarlane offered good news and bad news. The good news was that Congress had approved $62 milli
on in additional money for military assistance to El Salvador. The bad news was that the legislature was refusing to fund the Nicaraguan contras. On the most recent House vote the administration’s contra proposal had lost by sixty-four votes, and while that margin might be whittled down, a reversal of the decision appeared unlikely.

  William Casey described the progress and prospects of the contras. “The FDN in the north remains strong,” Casey said, referring to the largest anti-Sandinista group. “The ARDE”—a more recently formed alliance—“in the south is on the run under pressure.” The CIA had $250,000 in cash left from previous appropriations; this would soon be gone. Weapons were dwindling as well. “Our warehouses have arms and ammunition which can hold till August.” When the money ran out, the contras would be on their own. “Many of the anti-Sandinistas will stay in place within the country in order to feed themselves,” Casey said. “We estimate that about half will retreat into Honduras and Costa Rica in some disarray.” The United States could not turn its back on the refugees. “We have to provide humanitarian assistance to help these individuals and those they bring out with them when they come into Honduras and Costa Rica.”