From Colony to Superpower XIX: First Rays of the New Rising Sun?

This is the 19th installment of our 20 part series on George Herring’s From Colony to Superpower. Erik had the honors this week; check out his post first.

Reagan’s approach to Latin America was a touch more brutal than his immediate predecessors, but the disregard for human rights is only really notable for its contradiction with administration rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. The other difference was Congress; for the first time in a very long while, there was serious objection within Congress to administration Latin American policy. This resulted in a number of unsavory projects to limit the amount of information Congress possessed on US foreign policy, the most notable of which was the Iran-Contra affair. As the Cold War eased, so did US policy, opening some space for opposition movements in Latin America. When these movements no longer threatened to “tip the balance” towards the Soviet Union, they could tolerated and even supported to some extent.

Reagan’s Middle East policy was almost singularly inept. Neoconservatives don’t usually emphasize Beirut in their litany-of-appeasement-inevitably-leading-up-to-9/11 story, but the course of US intervention The Reagan administration clumsily handled the Iran-Iraq War, mostly favoring Iraq but leaning towards Iran at critical times. Re-reading the story of the Iran-Contra Affair remains shocking; it is remarkable that Reagan avoided impeachment. Herring’s discussion sheds some light on the unwillingness of the 1980s crop of neoconservatives to consider rapproachment with Iran. On both the US and the Israeli side, it was believed that the arms shipments to Iran would empower moderates and cause magical things to happen in Lebanon. The Iranians however, were simply playing the United States in order to get the weapons. It’s not terribly surprising that the advocates of the deal in the administration now view any effort to empower Iranian moderates as hopeless; if anti-tank weapons didn’t work, what will? However, it’s also remarkable the degree which Reagan and Bush were willing to put the screws to Israel. Both engaged in coercive foreign policy (condemnations, suspensions of aid) which are virtually unimaginable today.

Reagan entered office as a Taiwan hawk, and some in the administration pushed for a hard line with the PRC. However, as in Central America the desire to compete with the Soviet Union quickly eclipsed any interest in human rights. Reagan desired China’s cooperation against the Soviet Union more than his longstanding relationship with Taiwan, and thus largely ignored Taiwanese concerns. Happily, this corresponded with an important period in Taiwan’s long term democratization.

Herring makes clear that while Reagan deserves some credit for the end of the Cold War, the bulk of responsibility lies with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Reagan arms buildup did help convince some within the USSR that it could not compete military with the United States, and the arms control openings after 1984 helped convince some that the United States wasn’t a threat. But there was no coordinated strategy; the same people who strongly supported the first bitterly opposed the second. And of course there were also structural factors; the rapid decline of the price of oil in the 1980s helped to undermine the Soviet economy. In any case, the pressure produced by the United States wasn’t determinative; different Soviet leaders could have made much different choices, ranging from preventive war to hunkered isolation to Chinese style perestroika-without-the-glastnost. Reagan’s central achievement was recognizing the opening that Gorbachev offered.

More later on the first Bush administration…