Moral Containment of Military Challenge: The Reagan Administration and the Soviet Union (original) (raw)

The Reagan Doctrine and International Security

Monthly Review, 1987

In a message to Congress last March, President Reagan gave a comprehensive outline of what the media and the foreign policy experts had already been calling the Reagan Doctrine. The message reaffirmed "active American support" to the "growing resistance movements [that] now challenge Communist regimes installed or maintained by the military power of the Soviet Union and its colonial agents-in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua."l Such presidential doctrines expressing American determination to resist the spread of Communist influence are not new. The Reagan Doctrine has a number of well-known precedents-Truman, Eisenhower, and Carter doctrines-all of which carried the message of "containment" of the Soviet Union, including by the use of American military force if necessary. President Reagan's message affirmed its continuity with these previous doctrines: today "the goal of containing Soviet expansionism ... is more relevant and more important than ever."z But the Reagan Doctrine differs from the past doctrines in two important respects. Firstly, its geographic sweep is much broader; in fact it is the first truly global doctrine of containment. In his message, Reagan targets the existing regimes in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Angola, Afghanistan, and Kampuchea

The Reagan Doctrine and the Lessons from the Afghan War

Australian Journal of Politics & History, 2008

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan dealt a final blow to superpower detente and reinvigorated America's traditional policy of communist containment. In consequence, the Reagan administration implemented a policy of covert support for indigenous, anti-Marxist rebels in four post-revolutionary countries in the Third World Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. In 1985, this policy was dubbed the "Reagan Doctrine" and Afghanistan became its most visible expression. This article first discusses the origins and nature of the Reagan Doctrine. It then sketches its implementation during the final phase of the Cold War, emphasising US support for the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels. The article finally discusses some of the lessons which US policy-makers have drawn from this implementation in the wake of the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. First, it notes the most immediate lesson drawn: that the Reagan Doctrine worked.1 It then notes that while the Reagan Doctrine was superfkially a success in the context of Soviet-American rivalry, it was singularly destructive both to the Third World countries in which it was applied and to Vital foreign policy decision-making processes in the United States. The Doctrine challenged America's traditional system of checks and balances, it raised congressional suspicion about continued US covert action in the Third World and led, during July and August of 1990, to its own de fucro dismantlement.

Carter and the Failure of Foreign Policy Reform

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The 1970s were a period of aborted change in U.S. foreign policy. The pervasive post-World War II consensus among foreign policy elites crumbled under the weight of the Vietnam war and global economic travails. New policy paradigms such as detente and liberal internationalism not only stirred debate but often served as the basis for marked policy departures. Richard Nixon was the first American president to challenge past orthodoxy when he took bold steps toward improving relations with both the Soviet Union and mainland China. Yet the influence of new schools of thought was most evident during the early years of the Carter presidency. Jimmy Carter and his advisers believed that many of the traditional rationales that had guided U.S. foreign policy for over a generation were now outmoded and inappropriate to altered world realities. By the end of the decade, however, these new orientations had largely been abandoned in favor of policies reminiscent of the cold war era. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 only confirmed the passing of this liberal interlude in U.S. foreign policy.

US Policies in the Post-Cold War Era

2004

The 9/11 attacks on the US have forced the Americans to believe that the US secret service agencies are helpless against the attacks of the committed suicide squads. These attacks and the subsequent happenings in Afghanistan and Iraq have not only removed the illusion of post-Cold War peace, but also heightened uncertainty and insecurity in the world. 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' has given a clear message to the countries of the world that the US can go to any extent to protect its national interests even if the mandate of the world community is against such actions. The principles of sovereignty and the right of choosing one's own government are not significant in the new US strategy, and it would have serious repercussions for all the states.

Containment: America's Default Foreign Policy In the Cold War Era

The doctrine of containment would have a lasting impact on the conduct of United States (US) foreign policy during the Cold War. It involved a series of attempts to deal with the idea of preventing the Soviet Union from using the power and position it won as a result of that WWII to reshape the international order, a prospect that seemed, in the West, no less dangerous than what Germany or Japan might have done had they had the chance. This paper will argue that containment was the default foreign policy strategy of the US during the Cold War (1945-1989) as it became the reinforced and “naturalized grand strategy”, marginalizing alternative accounts of US imperialist ambitions, but which evolved from being an openly confrontational ideological containment policy of the early Cold War years to an increasingly more militarized covert counterinsurgency containment. Firstly, this paper will elaborate on the concept of containment and its origin. It will then show that containment was the default foreign policy by demonstrating how each president in the Cold War era used containment – although in varying forms and degrees – as an instrument of foreign policy in dealing with the Soviet Union. COURSE: 3007GIR American Foreign Policy. 09.10.13

The Tale of Two Terms: The Reagan Diplomatic Transition

2021

Many strategists assumed that the Cold War, in large measure shaped by the nuclear bomb, would be resolved in a string of mushroom clouds. As this chapter will illustrate, that the Cold War ended without such a clash was due in large measure to the efforts of American president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in spurring the process to reduce nuclear arsenals. These two charismatic leaders, who differed in so many ways, were an oddly matched pair who sought to lessen the prospects of a nuclear war. Reagan, the older of the two, was a convinced, outspoken anti-Communist, who came to the White House with little understanding of the Soviet Union and largely uniformed about the intricacies of nuclear weaponry. Without intellectual or analytical pretensions, his fear that these destructive weapons might be used would lead him to urge the development and deployment of a questionable missile defense system and seek a halt to building nuclear weaponry. Gorbachev, a dedicated communist bent on domestic reform, provided the imaginative leadership that redirected Moscow's relations with the West even while it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Overriding the opposition in the Politburo, Professor Robert English has recorded, he sincerely believed "that he could end the Cold War solely by cutting weapons and halting the arms race." Both leaders put great stock in personal contact and their ability to