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President Reagan: Second Term Foreign Policy and Foreign Events Bellwork • Up to this point we have discussed many of the events that happened in the first part of the Reagan Administration. Write down a description of 3 events or people that you remember us discussing. Write who they are, why they are important, and how they contribute to history. You may work as a table, but everyone must write. Iran-Contra Affair • Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. • They hoped thereby to secure the release of several US hostages, and to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. • While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras. • On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages" Video • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R67CHqhXJs Central and South America • Central America was also a focus: – Reagan continued the Carter administration's support of El Salvador's efforts to wipe out Marxist rebels in a cruel civil war. – He viewed the Marxist government of Nicaragua as a menace to hemispheric stability. – Reagan blamed much of the trouble on Cuba, which supported both Nicaraguan government and the Salvadoran rebels. The Reagan Doctrine • To Reagan, the soldiers and insurgents struggling against Communism on battlefields throughout the world were "freedom fighters." • In his February 6, 1985, State of the Union message, Reagan called for support of antiCommunist forces "from Afghanistan to Nicaragua" and proclaimed that "support for freedom fighters is self-defense." • Charles Krauthammer announced what came to be known as "the Reagan Doctrine." In Krauthammer's words, this was a policy of "democratic militance" that "proclaims overt and unabashed support for anti-Communist revolution." Limitations of Reagan Doctrine • But Reagan pursued this doctrine selectively. Apart from Afghanistan, which was a bipartisan affair, Reagan tried to roll back Communism only in Nicaragua, and to a limited degree in Angola, where Cuban troops were trying to impose Marxist rule. • Apart from these examples, Reagan usually followed State Department guidance in dealing with most world trouble spots and continued policies that were already in place. Foreign News and Events Margaret Thatcher • Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. • Thatcherism claims to promote low inflation, the small state, and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatization and constraints on the labor movement. • It is often compared with Reaganomics in the United States • The Thatcher-Reagan partnership outstripping all but the prototype Roosevelt-Churchill duo in its warmth and importance. • Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. • Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was". • She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Second Term Soviet Relations • Wanted to continue his policy of communist containment. • He was particularly concerned about Afghanistan, where the brutal Soviet invasion and occupation killed an estimated one million people and made another five million refugees. • Many accounts of this turn in the U.S-Soviet relationship would assert that Reagan changed his approach to the Soviet Union during his second presidential term. • Reagan did not see it that way. He believed his policies were of a piece and was convinced that the U.S. military buildup would inevitably lead to negotiations in which the Soviets would see that nuclear arms reductions were to the mutual benefit of both sides. Mikhail Gorbachev • Mikhail Gorbachev recognized that the Soviet economy could not survive without serious reforms. • He also hoped for better superpower relations. By 1986 and 1987, Gorbachev had determined that a more radical approach was needed in both domestic and foreign affairs. • He believed that the restructuring of the Soviet economy could only occur if accompanied by political liberalization. • Political and economic reforms, in turn, were possible only with better superpower relations. A less antagonistic Soviet-American relationship, Gorbachev believed, would permit a shift of money and resources away from the Soviet military toward the suffering economy. Reagan’s Visit to the Soviet Union • The capstone of the Reagan-Gorbachev relationship, however, occurred in June 1988 when Reagan visited the Soviet Union. The symbolism of the trip was powerful and undeniable. • Reagan, the most outspoken anti-Communist elected to the American presidency, met Soviet citizens in Red Square and spoke to students at Gorbachev's alma mater. Terrorism • Beginning in late 1983, anti-American terrorist groups stepped up their attacks on the United States. Another Hostage Crisis • Shiite terrorists in 1984 and 1985 took hostage seven Americans living in Lebanon, hoping to force a shift in U.S. policy towards the Middle East, which the terrorists considered anti-Arab and pro-Israel. • Reagan desperately wanted to free the hostages, but he and his advisers were publicly adamant that they would not negotiate with terrorists. The longer the hostages remained captive, however, the more Reagan longed for their release. Bombing of Libya • April 15, 1986. • Operation El Dorado Canyon. • Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was firmly antiIsrael and had supported violent organizations in the Palestinian territories and Syria. • There were reports that Libya was attempting to become a nuclear power and Gaddafi's occupation of Chad, which was rich in uranium, was of major concern to the United States. • After the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, which killed 19 and wounded approximately 140. • Gaddafi indicated that he would continue to support the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army as long as the European governments supported anti-Gaddafi Libyans. The Foreign Minister of Libya also called the massacres "heroic acts". • On 5 April 1986, Libyan agents bombed "La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people, one being a U.S. Serviceman, and injuring 229 people who were spending the evening there. • After several unproductive days of meeting with European and Arab nations, and influenced by an American serviceman's death, Ronald Reagan, on the 14th of April, ordered an air raid on Libya. PANAM Terrorist Attack • Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit, via London and New York. • On 21 December 1988, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route, was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. • 243 passengers and 16 crew on board killed, in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. • Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 more people on the ground. • Until 2003, Libya had never formally admitted carrying out the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. On 16 August 2003, Libya formally admitted responsibility (but did not admit guilt) for Pan Am Flight 103 in a letter presented to the president of the United Nations Security Council. • The Libyan government claimed the air strikes killed Hanna, a baby girl Gaddafi claimed he adopted. • To avenge his daughter's death, Gaddafi is said to have sponsored the September 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan. Trans World Airlines 847 • Trans World Airlines Flight 847 was a flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. • On the morning of Friday, June 14, 1985 Flight 847 was hijacked by members of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad shortly after take off from Athens. The hijackers were seeking the release of 700 Shi'ite Muslims from Israeli custody. • The passengers and crew endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal. Some passengers were threatened and some beaten. Passengers with Jewish-sounding names were moved apart from the others. • United States Navy diver Robert Stethem was killed, and his body was thrown onto the tarmac. Dozens of passengers were held hostage over the next two weeks until released by their captors after some of their demands were met. • Hezbollah reportedly denies culpability in the TWA Flight 847 attack, among its denials of numerous other attacks which have been attributed to the group.