How Important Was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's Foreign Policy?

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How important was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy?

Marina Miron

Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General José María Córdova”

DOI: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8HDTG

Bogotá D.C., Colombia

7 de junio de 2019 How to cite:

Miron M. (2019). How important was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy? (Working Paper). Bogota D.C.: Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General Jose Maria Cordova” http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8HDTG

Disclaimer:

This working paper forms part of the research project “The role of the National Army in the peace construction process in Colombia. Second phase” sponsored by the Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General Jose Maria Cordova” (ESMIC) – Research group on Military Sciences.

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect those of the ESMIC or the National Army of Colombia.

Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General José María Córdova” Research project “The role of the National Army in the peace construction process in Colombia. Second phase” Working Paper: How important was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy? DOI: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8HDTG

Introduction

During the 1980s, the final decade of the Cold War, American foreign policy experienced a radical shift from détente to a more proactive strategy in which covert operations conducted by the CIA appeared to be as important as diplomatic negotiations. After a landslide victory, Reagan was determined not only to contain the communism, but also to roll it back (Zakaria, 1990, p. 389). Therefore, his focus was not solely upon diplomatic means and negotiations with the Soviets, but also to a high degree on employment of covert operations, which were carried out with the help of the CIA, most notably, under supervision of William Casey, who was DCI during the Reagan administration and co- founder of the “Reagan Doctrine”. A lot of covert actions such as in South Africa, Grenada, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Poland, Iran and Nicaragua (William Blum in Killing Hope) took place during the 1980s, however, their success is disputable, for both, short-term and long-term consequences. In order to assess the importance of the CIA's role during Reagan's 1 administration it is therefore crucial to analyse CIA's success in covert operations during that time period and in how far it can be said that the agency made a useful contribution to pursuit of Reagan's goals. Firstly, we shall focus upon Reagan's Foreign Policy aims and further analyse CIA's role in Poland, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Certainly, the CIA was involved in more covert operations such as in El Salvador, Haiti, Angola and many others; however, it would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss all of them.

Reagan’s foreign policy

Reagan was a big critic of détente strategy, which was reflected in the aggressiveness of his foreign policy, for he saw it necessary to 'rollback' Communism in the so called 'periphery', consisting mainly of countries in the Third World, Middle East and Latin America that fell under Communism after the Vietnam war, on one hand, and to contain the Soviet threat elsewhere on the other. This required making use of covert operations and therefore “unleashing” the CIA, which was left paralyzed after several failures during the Ford and Carter administrations, such as the “family jewels” affair and the failure to predict the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis. After the

election of 1981, Reagan appointed William Casey as the new DCI, seeking to strengthen the CIA (Theoharis, Immerman, 2006, p. 57). Both Casey and the president agreed that the CIA needed to play an important role in a new, more offensive strategic foreign policy to both contain and rollback the “evil empire” (Theoharis, Immerman, 2006, p. 57). Especially, considering Reagan's ambition “to defeat leftist insurgents in El Salvador, topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...” without repeating the Vietnam mistake (Patterson, 1988, pp. 257- 259). On the other hand, he favoured to use diplomacy and negotiations, which was the strategy suggested by George Schulz from the State Department. Thus, Reagan's foreign policy was two-fold: covert on the one hand and diplomatic on the other. This became known as “Reagan doctrine”, formulated in the NSDD 75 in 1983 by a Harvard professor named Pipes (Schweizer, 2003, p. 159).

One of the major CIA covert operations was in Afghanistan. While the Iran- contra operation was considered a “bad war” by the Congress, resulting in the first Boland Amendments being passed, prohibiting the CIA from funding the Contras, the US involvement in Afghanistan was considered a rather 'good war', which started in 1979 with influence of Representative Wilson of Texas, who sought to repay American loss of Vietnam to the Soviets (Stork, 1986, p. 12). In 1980 the CIA carried out a covert operation in order to support the resistance movement in Afghanistan (Prados, 2002, p. 466). Its task was to augment “freedom fighters”, from Pakistan known as mujahedeen, supplying them with military training and arms, such as Stinger missiles (Prados, 2002, p. 471). Besides, the Congress was willing to invest great amounts of money into Afghanistan. By 1983 the US “component” amounted around $50 million on an annual basis (Stork, 1986, p. 13).

While the operation in Afghanistan appeared successful, making Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan by 1989, preventing the Soviets from gaining access to the Persian Gulf and containing communism, the long term consequences, nonetheless, remain disputable. The “Secret War” in Afghanistan, termed as “Kremlin's Vietnam” (Wilentz, 2008, p. 216) led to several very severe blow-backs. Firstly, there was a huge controversy between CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency due to the fact that mujahedeen were involved in heavy drug-trafficking, making Afghanistan the main source of heroin for the US and Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General José María Córdova” Research project “The role of the National Army in the peace construction process in Colombia. Second phase” Working Paper: How important was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy? DOI: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8HDTG

Europe, respectively (Wilentz, 2008, p. 216; Prados, 2002, p. 466). However, the biggest blow-back, which occurred almost two decades later, were the attacks of 9/11 at the centre of which stood Osama Bin Laden, an ex-Afghan Arab. (Prados, 2002, p. 470). Already throughout the 1990s “Afghan Arabs”, that is to say former fighters for the US from the CIA's secret war (Prados, 2002, p. 470), took part in aggression acts against the US. One of such incidents took place in 1993 during the attempted attack on the World Trade Center.

The CIA and US foreign policy

The CIA's involvement in Poland was one of the deciding fragments of the CIA's deeds during the Reagan administration, for it took place inside the Soviet bloc. Reagan employed both diplomatic and covert strategy in Poland which led to success without any negative implications for the US. The CIA's task was to support the Polish anti-Communist trade union Solidarity, founded by Lech Walesa. While, unlike the Contras, Solidarity emerged without any intervention from the West with its main imperative of appealing to people across the Soviet 3 bloc who opposed communism, it was important for the US, most notably for Reagan, to keep the opposition alive (Schweizer, 2003, p. 200). Especially, because the situation became tensed due to raised concerns about the Soviet side, which planned to invade Poland from several sides, being Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany respectively. General Kuklinski played a crucial role delivering information to and spying for the CIA.

The intelligence agency itself had a rather small task that is to support Solidarity financially. Despite the “crackdown” of the Polish Government, it was still important to keep Solidarity alive, thus the CIA's continuation of financial support became crucial to the counter-movement. Key figures in the success of the operation were Casey and Walter, who were responsible for delivering money to the underground movement and gaining support from the “Holy Father” in Rome (Schweizer, 2003, pp. 202-204). Yet, it was Ronald Reagan, who decided to impose economic sanctions, most notably the exclusion of both Poland and the Soviet Union from the Most Favoured Nation Clause and announcing an embargo due to imposition of martial law. This contributed to huge economic losses on the Soviet side, especially because of Soviet dependency on Western oil and gas technology (Schweizer, 2003, p. 200). While

the economic side of Reagan's policies made enormous contributions to the weakening of Soviet economy, both – over and covert – actions were determining for the outcome. Additionally, the Polish interior minister Kiszczak confirmed the importance of CIA's support in financial and communicational matters such as funding the radio, Solidarnocz, for existence of the movement (Schweizer, 2003, p. 205).

In spite of being successful in Poland and Afghanistan, the CIA's engagement in Nicaragua, where the agency was responsible for support of a guerrilla movement, turned out to be one of their most severe debacles. It escalated into the well-known Iran-Contra dilemma and had serious implications for the Reagan Administration, inevitably leading to a shift of Reagan's foreign policy towards more diplomatic means. Reagan's administration, following the doctrine, sought to destabilize Sandinista government in Nicaragua by supporting a group of Nicaraguan rebels, named Contras, who were trained by Argentinian military in guerrilla warfare on Casey's command. (DeConde, Burns, 2002, p. 261).

Even after the Congress had passed the first Boland Amendment in 1982, interdicting the CIA and Defence Department to support groups which would try to overthrow Nicaraguan government (DeConde, Burns, 2002, p. 261), Reagan, however, was determined “'to help these people keep body and soul together.'” (Wilentz, 2008, p. 212). Thus, he ignored the amendment and continued to support the Contras using the National Security Council (Patterson 2008, p. 208), since the NSC could offer aid to Contras bypassing the Congress. Above it all, the CIA was still involved in carrying out coastal operations in Nicaragua to support and fund the Contras despite the amendment. As a direct result of this, the Congress passed the 2nd Boland Amendment, cutting off any financial aid or non-military support to the Contras.

During this period, Reagan's administration adopted a new strategy to manipulate three key institutions of the United States being the Congress, the media and the informed electorate, in order to gain support for Contras, to depict Sandinista as left-wing terrorists engaged in bombings and drug- trafficking, and to control the information in regards to Nicaragua (Parry, Escuela Militar de Cadetes “General José María Córdova” Research project “The role of the National Army in the peace construction process in Colombia. Second phase” Working Paper: How important was the CIA for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy? DOI: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8HDTG

Kornbluh, 1988). This policy was coordinated by Casey, North and Reymond from the NSC, and Otto Reich from the Office of Public Diplomacy (S/LPD). Apart from engaging in operations of psychological “warfare” on the domestic front in regards to the Central American policy, they also raised funds from arms sales to Iranian moderates, enabling them to finance the Nicaraguan Contras and to appease the Iranians to ensure release of American hostages held in Lebanon. When the Iran-contra affair became uncovered on November 3, 1986 after a publication of arms-for-hostages deal by a Lebanese newspaper, Al-Shiraa, not only was Reagan himself negatively affected by the Iran-Contra dilemma, but also the CIA's reputation suffered a setback (Wilentz, 2008, pp. 211-230).

Yet, one must not neglect the importance of diplomatic policy practised by Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev on advice of George Schultz, setting the stage for the end of the Cold War and preparing a solid base for arms control through negotiations on the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty despite hardships at Reykjavik summit in 1986 (DeConde, Burn, 2002, pp. 189-190; Merrill, Paterson, 2000, p. 200). The CIA, however, failed the Reagan administration by remaining 5 suspicious of Gorbachev, proving unable to predict the end of the Cold war due to high degree of pollicisation (Goodman, 1997, p. 130; 136). Some scholars even argue that Reagan's foreign policy delayed the end of the Cold War rather than facilitating it giving the whole credit to Gorbachev. What becomes clear, is the fact that the Soviet Union imploded due to internal problems, to which Reagan's foreign policy was a major contribution as evident from cases such as Afghanistan and Poland. However, events like the Helsinki Accords signed by the Soviets in 1976 surely set the stage for decline of the Soviet system and rise of groups advocating human rights such as Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG).

Conclusion

While the CIA had a major and an important role to play in Reagan's foreign policy it remains unclear whether the CIA had a big impact upon the end of the Cold War, Reagan's ultimate goal. Furthermore, the CIA's operations, while regarded as successful on short-term, proved to be almost fatal to the United States on long-term, as attacks of 9/11 have demonstrated. Additionally, the CIA suffered blow-backs not only from its military operations, but also its intelligence reports proved inaccurate f.e. in regards to prediction of demise of the Soviet

Union. More so, it was not so much the CIA, but specific personalities such as Casey, North, Reymond, Schulz and Weinberger, who were crucial for formation of Reagan's policies. This can be observed by looking at Reagan's policy up to the Iran-Contra scandal and the sudden shift to soft diplomacy after Casey's death. The CIA itself served as one of the means to reach certain ends. The key figure was the DCI, in Reagan's case, William Casey. Finally, several questions remain: firstly, would the CIA have played the same part in Reagan's policies without Casey and secondly, would it have been better for Reagan's foreign policy and long-term consequences not to have employed the CIA at all?

References

DeConde Alexander, Burns Richard Dean (eds.) (2002). Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy 2nd Edition. 3. Vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Goodman, M. A. (1997). Ending the CIA's Cold War Legacy. Foreign Policy, 106, 128-143.

Merrill, D. and Paterson, T. G. (2000). Chapter 14: The Cold War ends and the post-Cold War era begins. In D. Merrill and T. G. Paterson (Eds.), Major Problems in American Foreign Relations: Documents and Essays. Volume 2; Since 1914. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Moscow Helsinki Group. Moscow Helsinki Group (Public Group of the Assistance of the Implementation of Helsinki Accords in the USSR, Moscow Group “Helsinki”). Retrieved from http://www.mhg.ru/english/18E49C2

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Stork, J. (1986). The CIA in Afghanistan: 'The Good War'. Middle East Report, July – August.

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Zakaria, F. (1990). The Reagan Strategy of Containment. Political Science Quarterly, 105(3), 375-399.