The signing of the INF treaty in 1988 became one of Ronald Reagan’s lasting achievements. For the first time in history, a nuclear treaty banning an entire class of nuclear weapons was signed. This development is a stark contrast to the anti-Soviet rhetoric used in many of his speeches, and the dismal situation in 1984. Still, it is necessary to take into consideration Ronald Reagan’s desire to bargain from a position of strength, and the shift in tone which took place when Premier Mikael Gorbachev replaced Chernenko. Ronald Reagan regarded Mikael Gorbachev as sincere (32), and Margaret Thatcher described him as a man with whom it was possible “to do business.” The Gorbachev Doctrine (Perestroika and Glasnost) reflected a desire to move away from the sterility that had marked Soviet-American relations. Thus, the credit, if it is due, must be shared by Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.
THE REAGAN DOCTRINE
The application of the Truman doctrine against Korea and Vietnam was, in short, not very successful. In fact, some observers spoke of a “Vietnam complex” in the years after the Vietnam war. Ronald Reagan inherited this complex, but as already stated, laid the foundation for a renewed sense of confidence in the military and the American public. The Reagan Doctrine was implemented as an alternative to containment which had been a failure, and to rebut the Brezhnev doctrine; the Sovietization of the third world had to be reversed. In 1981, Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of state, stated that the Soviets had to be convinced “that their time of un-resisited adventuring in the Third World was over.”(52) In the president’s “February 1985 State of the Union Address”, President Reagan affirms:
We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives…on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua …to defy Soviet aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense(53)
This, in essence, was the Reagan Doctrine: economic and political support for insurgent movements in third world countries where Marxism had been instigated. Contrary to earlier doctrines, such as the Truman, Eisenhower, and Carter doctrines which “were concerned with prevention, the Reagan approach emphasized cure.”(54)
The Reagan Doctrine can lay claim to having had limited success; when applied against Afghanistan, it was successful – it sent the Soviet Union “a warning” and, once again, indicated a willingness to back the hard-lined rhetoric with action. In Kampuchea, the Vietnamese withdrew their forces. When applied against Nicaragua, however, the result was a nasty blow to the Reagan administration – it portrayed the Reagan administration as unreliable, and the inability to overthrow the Sandinista regime is a standing monument of failure.
CONCLUSION
To uncover the entire spectrum of Ronald Reagan’s impact on the Soviet Union, a detailed analysis of the Soviet economic and political situation in the 1980s would have been necessary. However, as stated in the introduction, this was not my purpose. The aim was, through the establishment of Reagan’s intentions in regard to the Soviet Union – and the policies which were a result thereof to find out if Reagan actually did set a new tone in the American-Soviet relationship.
Reagan could claim to have succeeded in bringing about a considerable change in policy. He came to the White House thinking that his “predecessors in the Oval Office” had disregarded the nation’s armed forces, and been too idle in the battle against persevering Soviet expansionism. The ingrained policy of containment needed to be superseded by a more decisive and forceful approach – the Reagan doctrine; communist regimes in the third world were to be subverted by providing military and economic assistance to partisans sympathetic to the United States. The Reagan administration thus played an active part in countering Soviet influence in Afghanistan. However, when applied against Central America, the doctrine was not successful. This proved to be a nasty blow to the administration: the United States faded in the eyes of the world. Furthermore, as the Soviets only understood the language of bellicosity, the United States needed to build up its defenses, not solely for the sake of rearming, but as a means of getting the Soviet
Union back to the bargaining table on terms favorable to the Reagan administration. INF is the prime result of this, and marked the entry into a new era of negotiations; START was signed in 1989 by President Bush, the foundation of the treaty laid out by Ronald Reagan. Two years later, the Cold War was officially over. In spite of his belligerent rhetoric, Reagan was dismayed by the prospects of the policy of deterrence and “Mutually Assured Destruction”, and was concerned about the need of ridding the world of the peril of nuclear weapons – a predicament that eventually led him to make SDI, or “Star Wars”, the focal point of his nuclear strategy. Many critics challenged the judgment of these policy shifts and, as is depicted from the paper, not all of them were fully effectuated. Nonetheless, tangible movements in the directions taken by Reagan did materialize – movements characterized, not so much by their short-term achievements, as by their lasting effects. What I am pointing to is, of course, that a policy change did transpire when Reagan assumed power; this is his most lasting achievement, and I have, through an examination of Ronald
Reagan’s intentions and policies, found that a prominent alteration of policy took place in the Reagan Presidency