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The philosophy that becomes known as "neoconservativism" traces its roots to leftist ideologues in New York City who, before World War II, begin sorting themselves into two camps: those who support Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic "New Deal" policies, and more radical individuals who consider themselves followers of Soviet communism. Many of these radical leftists are Jews who, staunchly opposed to Nazi-style fascism, find themselves finding more and more fault with Stalinist Russia. In their eyes, Josef Stalin's Soviet Union has betrayed the ideals of the original Russian Revolution, and has instead created a monstrous regime that is as bad towards Jews and other ethnic and cultural minorities as Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini. The betrayal they feel towards the Soviet Union, author J. Peter Scoblic will later write, cannot be overestimated. Seminal movement figures such as Irving Kristol (see 1965) lead a small cadre of academics and intellectuals far away from their former leftist-Communist ideology, instead embracing what Scoblic will call "an ardent nationalism" that they see as "the only feasible counterweight to the Soviet monster." The USSR is as evil as Nazi Germany, they believe, and as committed to world domination as the Nazis. Therefore, the USSR cannot be negotiated with in any form or fashion, only opposed, and, hopefully, destroyed. During the 1950s, Scoblic will write, "these intellectuals adopted a strict good-versus-evil outlook—and a scorn for radical elements of the American Left—that was not unlike that of the ex-communists… who were defining modern conservatism." But unlike their conservative counterparts, Kristol's neoconservatives either espouse a more liberal social construct similar to Roosevelt's New Deal, or care little one way or the other about the entire skein of issues surrounding economic and social policy. The neoconservatives will drive themselves even farther right during the social upheaval of the 1960s, and, according to Scoblic, will hold leftist leaders in contempt in part because they remind the neoconservatives of their Stalinist compatriots of thirty years ago, colleagues whom they have long since abandoned and held in scorn. The fact that some antiwar New Left figures will support Soviet, Chinese, and Vietnamese communism will further enrage the neoconservatives. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 83-85]
Entity Tags: J. Peter Scoblic, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Irving Kristol
Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence
The illustration for the DVD of the 1964 film. [Source: Sony Pictures]Fail-Safe, a military thriller by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler about over-confidence in the reliability of military technology, is published at the height of the Cold War. The book's plot hinges on a computer error sending American nuclear bombers to destroy Moscow, and the efforts of the US president and his advisers to call them back before they can complete their mission. The book notes that US military strategists believe that civilian planes as well as military planes are matters of concern, as a civilian pilot could try "hara-kiri over New-York or Montreal." The idea of using a civilian plane to destroy a target is obviously of real concern to military planners. Neoconservative Prototype - One distinctive character in the book is Walter Groteschele, a famous "nuclear philosopher" and anti-communist hawk who has argued that nuclear weapons are not just for deterrence but for actual use. The pre-emptive use of nuclear bombs would kills millions, he acknowledges, but the US would still win the war. Groteschele is Jewish and his hard-line views are in reaction to Jewish helplessness during the Holocaust. Jewish neoconservatives have often linked their views with the Holocaust (see Early 1970s). In the novel, Groteschele argues that the president should not attempt to call back the bombers, but should instead let them finish off the Soviets. [Burdick and Wheeler, 1962] Film Versions - In 1964, the novel will be made into a film; [Sidney Lumet, 1964] in 2000, the novel will be adapted for television. [Stephen Frears, 2000]
Entity Tags: Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Albert Wohlstetter in 1969. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, gathers a cadre of fiery young intellectuals around him, many of whom are working and associating with the magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965). Wohlstetter's group includes Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter, himself a protege of the Machiavellian academic Leo Strauss, is often considered the "intellectual godfather" of modern neoconservatism. Formerly an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter wielded a powerful influence on the US's foreign policy during the heyday of the Cold War. Wohlstetter, who is believed to be one of several analysts who became a model for director Stanley Kubrick's title character in the 1968 film Dr. Strangelove, added dramatic phrases like "fail-safe" and "second strike" capability to the US nuclear lexicon, and pushed to increase the US's military might over what he saw as the imminent and lethal threat of Soviet nuclear strikes and the Soviet Union's plans for global hegemony. He was such a powerful figure in his hundreds of briefings that he projected far more certainty than his facts actually supported. Though his facts and statistics were often completely wrong, he was so relentless and strident that his ideas gained more credence than they may have warranted. By 1965, he is known in some circles as a "mad genius" who is now collecting and molding young minds to follow in his footsteps. Author Craig Unger writes in 2007, "To join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy's intentions and military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models, probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at RAND." An analyst with the Federation of Atomic Scientists will write in November 2003: "This methodology exploited to the hilt the iron law of zero margin for error.… Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency." Or as one-time Wohlstetter acolyte Jude Wanninski will later put it, "[I]f you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off, go to war now." Unger will observe, "It was a principle his acolytes would pursue for decades to come—with disastrous results." [Unger, 2007, pp. 42-46]
Entity Tags: University of Chicago, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Perle, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Federation of Atomic Scientists, Craig Unger, Jude Wanninski
Dick Cheney. [Source: Boston Globe]Dick Cheney, a long-term college student who avoided the Vietnam War by securing five student deferments [Washington Post, 1/17/2006] and now a Congressional aide, is hired by Donald Rumsfeld, who had been a congressman but resigned to run the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Cheney is a young staff assistant to Representative Bill Steiger (R-WI), who took Cheney under his wing and taught him what he knew of the ins and outs of Washington bureaucracy. There are two versions of how Cheney comes to Rumsfeld's attention. Rumsfeld sends a letter to Steiger asking for advice on how to run the OEO. The official story has Cheney spying the letter and writing a ten-page policy memo on how to run a federal agency, a memo that so impresses Steiger that he recommends Cheney to Rumsfeld's attention. Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein will write, "A more plausible version has Steiger (who died in 1978) assigning Cheney the task of collecting information on the OEO for Rumsfeld." Either way, Rumsfeld is so taken with the memo that he hires Cheney on the spot. Rumsfeld, who is also an assistant to President Nixon, takes Cheney with him to morning and afternoon meetings in the White House. Cheney later says these meetings taught him "what [a president] has to do in the course of a day." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 24-25]
Entity Tags: Jake Bernstein, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard M. Nixon, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Office of Economic Opportunity, Lou Dubose, Bill Steiger
Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate, Neoconservative Influence
Impelled in part by anti-ballistic missiles deployed in both the US and the Soviet Union (see September 18, 1967 and 1969-1976), the two nuclear superpowers begin the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, later known as SALT I. The negotiations are designed to limit both anti-ballistic missile systems and offensive nuclear arsenals. An agreement will be signed three years later (see May 26, 1972 and May 26, 1972). [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
Entity Tags: Sentinel, Safeguard
Timeline Tags: US International Relations
Richard Perle, a young neoconservative just hired for the staff of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), is given a classified CIA report on alleged past Soviet treaty violations by CIA analyst David Sullivan. Apparently Sullivan leaks the report to pressure the US government to take a harder stance on the Soviet Union. Sullivan quits before an incensed CIA Director Stansfield Turner can fire him. Turner urges Jackson to fire Perle, but Jackson not only refuses, he also hires Sullivan for his staff. Sullivan and Perle establish an informal right-wing network called "the Madison Group" after their usual meeting place, the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, 'Madison Group', David Sullivan, Central Intelligence Agency, Stansfield Turner, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson
Henry 'Scoop' Jackson. [Source: US Congress]The recently formed neoconservatives, bound together by magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965), react with horror to the ascendancy of the "McGovern liberals" in the Democratic Party, and turn to conservative senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) for leadership. Jackson calls himself a "muscular Democrat"; others call him "the Senator from Boeing" for his strong support of the US defense industry. Jackson merges a strong support of labor and civil rights groups with a harsh Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union. Jackson assembles a staff of bright, young, ideologically homogeneous staffers who will later become some of the most influential and powerful neoconservatives of their generation, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Jackson's office—"the bunker," to staffers—becomes a home for disaffected, ambitious young conservative ideologues with a missionary zeal for change. Jackson presides over the cadre in an almost fatherly fashion. History of Two Dictators - Many of Jackson's neoconservative disciples came of age either fighting two foreign dictators—Stalin and/or Hitler—or growing up with family members who fought against them. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41] Wolfowitz's father's family perished in the Holocaust; he will later say that what happened to European Jews during World War II "shaped a lot of my views." [New York Times, 4/22/2002] Feith will tell the New Yorker in 2005, "[My] family got wiped out by Hitler, and… all this stuff about working things out—well, talking to Hitler to resolve the problem didn't make any sense." Most neoconservatives like Feith and Wolfowitz tend to look to military solutions as a first, not a last, resort. To them, compromise means appeasement, just as Britain's Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler. Stefan Halper, a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, will say of the neoconservatives, "It is use force first and diplomacy down the line." Former Trotskyites - On the other hand, many neoconservatives come to the movement from the hardline, socialist left, often from organizations that supported Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky (see Late 1930s - 1950s). Trotskyites accused Stalin of betraying the purity of the Communist vision as declaimed by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. "I can see psychologically why it would not be difficult for them to become [conservative] hard-liners," says Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, himself a hardliner whose son, Daniel Pipes, will become an influential neoconservative. "It was in reaction to the betrayal." Many neoconservatives like Stephen Schwartz, a writer for the Weekly Standard, still consider themselves to be loyal disciples of Trotsky. Richard Perle is a Trotskyite socialist when he joins Jackson's staff, and will always practice what author Craig Unger calls "an insistent, uncompromising, hard-line Bolshevik style" of policy and politics. Like Trotsky, Unger writes, the neoconservatives pride themselves on being skilled bureaucratic infighters, and on trusting no one except a small cadre of like-minded believers. Disagreement is betrayal, and political struggles are always a matter of life and death. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41]
Entity Tags: Stefan Halper, Stephen Schwartz, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Neville Chamberlain, Abram Shulsky, Douglas Feith, Daniel Pipes, Craig Unger, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Elliott Abrams, Leon Trotsky, Irving Kristol
An FBI wiretap at the Israeli Embassy in Washington picks up Richard Perle, an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), discussing classified information with an Israeli official. This is the second time Perle has been involved in providing classified information to Israel (see Late 1969). This data was given to Perle by National Security Council staff member Helmut "Hal" Sonnenfeldt, who has been under investigation since 1967 for providing classified documents to the Israelis. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1982; American Conservative, 3/24/2003; CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]
Entity Tags: Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Richard Perle, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson
Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence
Hardline Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA), one of the political fathers of the burgeoning neoconservative movement (see Early 1970s), attempts to derail trade negotiations with the Soviet Union by proposing an amendment that would deny trade relations with countries that did not allow free emigration, a shot at the Soviets, who force emigrating Jews to pay an "exit tax." When Secretary of State Henry Kissinger complains that Jackson is damaging negotiations with the Soviets, Jackson retorts, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a secretary of state who doesn't take the Soviet point of view?" [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 83]
Entity Tags: Henry A. Kissinger, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson
The US and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM) Treaty. It will be ratified by the US Senate in August 1972, and will go into force in October 1972. Originally, the treaty agrees that each nation can have only two ABM deployment areas, located so that those areas cannot provide a nationwide ABM defense or become the basis for developing one. In essence, the ABM Treaty prevents either nation from developing a missile defense system (see March 23, 1983), and allows each country the likelihood of destroying the other with an all-out nuclear barrage. The treaty puts in place the doctrine of MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction, which states that because both nations can obliterate the other in a nuclear exchange, neither one will trigger such a strike. In 1976, an addendum to the treaty further limits the number of ABM deployment areas from two to one; the Soviets will deploy a rudimentary ABM system around Moscow, but the US never does, and even deactivates its single ABM site near Grand Forks, North Dakota. In 2001, US President George W. Bush will unilaterally withdraw from the treaty (see December 13, 2001 and June 14, 2002). [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
Entity Tags: Nixon administration, George W. Bush
Neoconservatives see Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's floundering campaign and eventual landslide defeat (see November 7, 1972) as emblematic of, in author Craig Unger's words, everything that is wrong with the "defeatist, isolationist policies of the liberals who had captured the Democratic Party." If the neoconservatives had had their way, their favorite senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s), would have won the nomination. But the Vietnam War has put hawkish Cold Warriors like Jackson in disfavor in the party, and Jackson was set aside for the disastrous McGovern candidacy. The Republicans offer little interest themselves for the neoconservatives. Richard Nixon is enamored of one of their most hated nemeses, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, whose "realpolitik" did nothing to excite their ideological impulses. And under Nixon, the icy Cold War is slowly thawing, with summit meetings, bilateral commissions, and arms limitations agreements continually bridging the gap between the US and the neoconservatives' implacable foe, the Soviet Union. In Nixon's second term, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM)—populated by Democratic neoconservatives like Jackson, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Nixon's domestic adviser), Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, and James Woolsey, and joined by 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, will pressure Nixon to adopt a tough "peace through strength" policy towards the Soviet Union. Although it will take time, and the formation of countless other organizations with similar memberships and goals, this group of neoconservatives and hawkish hardliners will succeed in marginalizing Congress, demonizing their enemies, and taking over the entire foreign policy apparatus of the US government. [Unger, 2007, pp. 47-48]
Entity Tags: Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard M. Nixon, James Woolsey, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Ben Wattenberg, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Irving Kristol, George S. McGovern, Craig Unger, Henry A. Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
New York Times headline announcing Nixon victory. [Source: New York Times]Richard Nixon defeats Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in the largest landslide in modern electoral history. Nixon wins over 60 percent of the votes and 49 of the 50 states. [Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007] Democrats retain control of the House and Senate. Nixon's victory breaches traditional Democratic strongholds in the Northeast, and his "Southern strategy" creates a "Solid South" of Republican support. Harry Dent, a White House aide involved in the "Southern strategy" of targeting conservative Democrats who once supported segregationist candidate George Wallace (see May 15, 1972), says, "[T]he Southern strategy is working—in fact, it's working all over the country." Democrats, on the other hard, were sharply divided throughout the campaign, with many traditional Democratically aligned organizations such as trade unions refusing to back the McGovern candidacy, problems with finding and keeping a suitable vice-presidential running mate, and McGovern surviving a challenge to his primary victory at the Democratic convention. [Washington Post, 11/8/1972] The simmering Watergate investigations apparently have little drag on the Nixon re-election efforts.
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, George S. McGovern, George C. Wallace, Harry Dent
Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate, Elections Before 2000
Richard Perle, a senior staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s), uses his position to help fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz gain a position with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Neoconservatives such as Perle and Wolfowitz do not believe in either arms control or disarmament (see 1965 and August 15, 1974). In 2004, author Stephen Green will write, "Wolfowitz also brought to ACDA a strong attachment to Israel's security, and a certain confusion about his obligation to US national security" (see 1978). [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]
Entity Tags: Stephen Green, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard Perle
In 1973 Afghan Prince Muhammad Daoud ousts the Afghan king with help from the Soviet Union, and establishes an Afghan republic. The CIA in turn begins funding Islamist extremists, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as a resistance movement opposing the Soviets. US allies Iran, with its intelligence agency SAVAK, and Pakistan, with its intelligence agency the ISI, play an important role in funneling weapons and other forms of assistance to the Afghan Islamist militants. After the pro-Soviet coup in April 1978, the Islamic militants with the support of the ISI carry out a massive campaign of terrorism, assassinating hundreds of teachers and civil servants. [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 260 - 263]
Entity Tags: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Organization for Intelligence and National Security (Iran), Muhammad Daoud, Central Intelligence Agency
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger begins pushing for a new nuclear weapons doctrine to supplant the idea of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) as a final deterrent to war with the Soviet Union. Schlesinger argues that the president needs more options in the case of an armed confrontation with the USSR. Instead of the only two options being either no war, or total global annihilation, he says, the US needs to be able to pick and choose targets ranging from selected military bases to a general nuclear assault on the entire Soviet infrastructure. Because it fits with their idea of having the option of a limited nuclear war, both President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approve the plan. But Schlesinger says at a luncheon/press conference at the Overseas Writers Association that this is a "change in targeting strategy" that gives the US options besides "initiating a suicidal strike against the cities of the other side." The US cannot rely solely on MAD as its only nuclear doctrine, he tells the gathered reporters. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will observe, "Schlesinger was essentially parroting the conservative line, implying that MAD was a policy that could be rejected—as opposed to a condition—and that he was the one who had done it." Schlesinger's policy is not adopted, but his argument has the effect of chilling US-Soviet negotiations during the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) discussions (see June 20, 1974 and After and November 23, 1974). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 79-80]
Entity Tags: J. Peter Scoblic, Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Nixon, James R. Schlesinger, Overseas Writers Association
Former Nixon White House aide Charles Colson, later described by reporter David Plotz as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration," is sentenced to jail after pleading guilty (see March 7, 1974) to taking part in the plan to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office (see September 9, 1971) and interfering with Ellsberg's trial (see June 28, 1971). Colson also, according to Watergate historian Stanley Kutler, tried to hire Teamster thugs to beat up antiwar demonstrators, and plotted to either raid or firebomb the Brookings Institution (see June 8-9, 1973). Colson will serve seven months in jail (see September 3, 1974). [Slate, 3/10/2000] Colson tells the court: "I shall be cooperating with the prosecutor, but that is not to say that the prosecutor has bargained for my testimony, that there is any quid pro quo: there was not. I reached my own conclusion that I have a duty to tell everything I know about these important issues, and a major reason for my plea was to free me to do so." Colson's testimony against Richard Nixon is damning, as he tells the court Nixon had "on numerous occasions urged me to disseminate damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg." Vice President Ford defends Nixon, saying, "There's a big difference between telling Chuck Colson to smear Ellsberg and ordering—or allegedly ordering—a break-in." Colson will later become a born-again Christian evangelist, and found an influential prison ministry. [Slate, 3/10/2000; Werth, 2006, pp. 273-274]
Entity Tags: Brookings Institution, David Plotz, Stanley Kutler, Richard M. Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Charles Colson, Nixon administration
Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate
A group of conservative strategic thinkers and policymakers attends a dinner party in Santa Monica, California. It is at this dinner party that the notorious "Team B" intelligence analysis team will be formed (see Early 1976). The cohost of the gathering is Albert Wohlstetter (see 1965), the eminent neoconservative academic and policy analyst. The next day, the guests join fellow conservative ideologues at a Beverly Hills conference called "Arms Competition and Strategic Doctrine." Wohlstetter uses selectively declassified intelligence data to accuse the Pentagon of systematically underestimating Soviet military might. Wohlstetter will soon publish his arguments in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine, and Strategic Review. In July, respected Cold War figure Paul Nitze will use Wohlstetter's assertions in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee to accuse Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA of dangerously underestimating both the Soviet Union's military strength and its intentions. Some old-line Cold Warriors—many of whom find themselves in sympathy with the upstart neoconservatives—begin attacking both the CIA's intelligence reporting and the US-Soviet policy of detente. Author Craig Unger will write, "This was the beginning of a thirty-year fight against the national security apparatus in which the [neoconservatives] mastered the art of manipulating intelligence in order to implement hard-line, militaristic policies." [Unger, 2007, pp. 48-49]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Paul Nitze, House Armed Services Committee, Craig Unger, 'Team B', Henry A. Kissinger, Albert Wohlstetter, Central Intelligence Agency
James Schlesinger. [Source: Central Intelligence Agency]Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, an opponent of arms limitations agreements with the Soviet Union, attempts to scuttle the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiations between the two countries by telling the National Security Council that the Pentagon will not support any SALT agreement that does not guarantee US superiority in nuclear weapons. In a follow-up to his declaration, he writes a letter to neoconservative Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) essentially advocating Jackson's hardline approach to dealing with the USSR, a position that undermines that of President Ford. During the Vladivostok negotiations between Ford and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (see November 23, 1974), he encourages Ford to hold out for an agreement that mandates numerical equality between the two sides for the simple reason that he does not believe the Soviets will agree. Author J. Peter Scoblic calls this the "foreshadowing of a tactic that would be used by arms control opponents in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 80]
Entity Tags: Leonid Brezhnev, US Department of Defense, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, J. Peter Scoblic, James R. Schlesinger
Alexander Haig, President Nixon's chief of staff, is briefly staying on at the White House to ease the transition into the new, hastily assembled Ford staff. Haig, knowing that President Ford will not consider retaining him in the position, believes that Donald Rumsfeld, the US ambassador to NATO, might be the person Ford needs to head his staff (see August 9, 1974). (Nixon held Rumsfeld in grudging admiration, referring to him as a "ruthless little b_stard," but had sent him to Europe and NATO headquarters because he did not like Rumsfeld's obvious ambition.) Although Ford is not sold on having a chief of staff at all, Haig believes Ford needs someone with Rumsfeld's "strong personality and fine administrat[ive skills]" to help him establish himself. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom Ford is retaining, sees Rumsfeld as, in Kissinger's words, an exemplar of a "special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly." Ford has a good relationship with Rumsfeld, who in the 1960s led an insurgency among House Republicans to replace Minority Leader Charles Halleck with Ford. He views Rumsfeld as something of a maverick, and wants someone not beholden to the entrenched Nixon loyalists remaining in the White House as well as someone with a good relationship with Congressional Republicans. Rumsfeld fits the bill. Rumsfeld, a former Navy pilot, will later write that Ford "had to provide sufficient change to make the transition from what many perceived to be an illegitimate White House and administration to a legitimate administration. It was a bit like climbing into an airplane, at 30,000 feet, going 500 miles an hour, and having to change part of the crew." [Werth, 2006, pp. 60-61; Unger, 2007, pp. 49-52] (Rumsfeld will, in turn, ask his own former assistant, Dick Cheney, to once again join him as his assistant in the Ford White House—see 1969). Ford's longtime aide and speech writer Robert Hartmann will be equally blunt in his own recollections: "The Nixon-to-Ford transition was superbly planned. It was not a failure. It just never happened." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 26]
Entity Tags: Robert Hartmann, Nixon administration, Henry A. Kissinger, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Donald Rumsfeld, Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
Conservative Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) meets with President Ford as part of a discussion about the standoff with the Soviet Union over trade and emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Jackson—hawkish, defense-minded, and solidly pro-Israel—sees the standoff as an opportunity to undercut Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Jackson is a forerunner of what in later years will be called "neoconservatism" (see 1965), an ideology mostly espoused by a group of Democratic lawmakers and intellectuals who have abandoned their support for Rooseveltian New Deal economics and multilateralist foreign policies (see Early 1970s). Jackson and his outspoken pro-Israel aide, Richard Perle, view Kissinger as far too conciliatory and willing to negotiate with the Communist bloc. Jackson and Perle see the Soviet Union, not the Israeli-Palestine conflict, as the chief threat to US interests in the Middle East and the control of that region's oil fields. They see a strong, powerful Israel as essential to their plans for US domination of the region. Jackson resists a proposed compromise on the number of Soviet Jews the USSR will allow to emigrate to Israel—the Soviets offer 55,000 and Jackson insists on 75,000—and many in the meeting feel that Jackson is being deliberately recalcitrant. "It made mo sense to me because it was sure to be counterproductive," Ford later writes, "but he would not bend, and the only reason is politics." For his part, Kissinger respects Jackson's political abilities, but to his mind, Perle is a "ruthless… little b_stard." Kissinger knows that Republican hawks as well as the burgeoning neoconservative movement will pressure Ford to abandon Richard Nixon's policies of moderating relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. But, author Barry Werth writes in 2006: "what Kissinger and now Ford would chronically underestimate was the neoconservatives' argument that the United States should not so much seek to coexist with the Soviet system as to overthrow it through direct confrontation. Or the extent to which the neoconservatives would go to exaggerate a foreign threat and stir up fear." [Werth, 2006, pp. 77-79]
Entity Tags: Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Richard M. Nixon, Barry Werth, Richard Perle, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Henry A. Kissinger
Republican political adviser and corporate lobbyist Bryce Harlow recommends former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller over former ambassador and current Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush to serve as vice president (see August 20, 1974). Bush may be a better choice for party harmony, Harlow says, but that choice would be considered indecisive and overly partisan. On the other hand, Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, would be considered a "bold" choice and "would be hailed by the media normally most hostile to Republicans." Rockefeller's selection would also "encourage estranged groups to return to the Party and would signal that the new president will not be captive of any political faction." Watergate Allegations against Rockefeller - Rockefeller's naming as vice president, strongly supported by President Ford, is briefly held up by unfounded allegations that Rockefeller hired thugs to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention, and that the papers to prove the allegations were stolen from the offices of convicted Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. The charges are leveled by an elderly anti-Communist activist named Hamilton Long. The story leaks to the press, and Ford, taking no chances, orders the FBI to investigate Rockefeller, Bush, and senior staff aide Donald Rumsfeld for possible selection as the vice president. Long's allegations prove baseless when Watergate investigators locate the safety deposit boxes in which Long says the documents are stored, and find the boxes empty. Ford Offers VP - After learning that Rockefeller is free of any Watergate taint, Ford privately asks him to accept the vice presidency. Rockefeller will have strong influence on the Ford administration's domestic and economic policies, Ford promises, and, additionally, Rockefeller will be Ford's vice presidential choice in the 1976 presidential elections. The last obstacle is the press, which is all but convinced that the White House is involved in another Watergate cover-up, this time with Ford at the helm. A White House source tells reporters that the so-called "Rockefeller Papers" are nothing more than a hoax concocted by "right-wing extremists who decided it would be useful to blacken the name of Governor Rockefeller." The explanations by press secretary Jerald terHorst, himself a former reporter, and terHorst's acceptance of the blame for giving confusing and somewhat misleading information about the Rockefeller allegations, somewhat mollifies the press. White House counsel Robert Hartmann recalls the Long incident and its handling as an example of the inexperience of the Ford staff and of Ford himself. "[W]e were all babes in the White House," he later writes. "We had done the right thing and truthfully told what we had done, but it was unfair to Rockefeller to give presidential credence to Long's hearsay. And of course, the press castigated us for that the next day." [Werth, 2006, pp. 93-105]
Entity Tags: Robert Hartmann, Nelson Rockefeller, Hamilton Long, Jerald terHorst, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bryce Harlow, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, E. Howard Hunt, Ford administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Rumsfeld
President Ford names outgoing chief of staff Alexander Haig to be supreme allied commander in Europe, provoking an outcry in Congress and unprecedented demands that Haig be confirmed for the post by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) says, "I'd like to put him under oath to learn his role in the Nixon pardon" (see September 8, 1974). Haig will not be compelled to testify before the committee, but he weathers another scare, this one from inside the White House. Haig is told by former Nixon White House lawyer Fred Buzhardt, who now works for Ford, that the group preparing Ford for his upcoming House testimony on the pardon (see Mid-October 1974) has "prepared sworn testimony for the president that could very well result in your indictment," as Haig will later write. Haig storms to the White House, reads the testimony, and demands an immediate audience with Ford. White House staffers refuse him. Haig then threatens to announce his knowledge of "a secret effort by Ford people to hurry Nixon out of the presidency behind Ford's back." Haig gets the meeting. He learns that Ford has not read the testimony, and decides that Buzhardt's threat is hollow. [Werth, 2006, pp. 335-336]
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, William Proxmire, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Fred Buzhardt, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld speaking to reporters, 1975. [Source: Gaylinkcontent (.com)]President Ford asks Donald Rumsfeld to replace the outgoing Alexander Haig at the White House (see September 16-Late September, 1974). Rumsfeld has long been Haig's choice to replace him (see August 14, 1974). Ford does not want to give Rumsfeld the official title of "chief of staff," and instead wants Rumsfeld as "staff coordinator." The difference is academic. Ford wants the aggressive, bureaucratically savvy Rumsfeld to help him regain control over a White House that is, in the words of author Barry Werth, "riven with disunity, disorganization, and bad blood." Rumsfeld agrees, and names former Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney as his deputy (who makes himself valuable by initially doing the lowest forms of bureaucratic scutwork). Rumsfeld and Cheney will eventually wield almost Nixonian power in Ford's White House, successfully blocking the "in-house liberal," Vice President Rockefeller, from exerting any real influence, and hobbling Henry Kissinger's almost-limitless influence. Blocking of Rockefeller and Kissinger for Ideological and Political Reasons - Rumsfeld begins his in-house assault in classic fashion: trying to cause tension between Kissinger and White House officials by snitching on Kissinger to any White House official who will listen. Kissinger eventually tells Ford: "Don't listen to [Rumsfeld], Mr. President. He's running for president in 1980." Rumsfeld and Cheney do their best to open the White House to hardline defense hawks and the even more hardline neoconservatives led by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) and Jackson's aide, Richard Perle. (Though Rumsfeld and Cheney are not considered neoconservatives in a strict sense, their aims are almost identical—see June 4-5, 1974). Kissinger's efforts to win a negotiated peace between Israel and Palestine in the Middle East are held in contempt by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the neoconservatives; using Ford's press secretary Ron Nessen as a conduit, Rumsfeld and Cheney leak information about the negotiations to the press, helping to cripple the entire peace process. Rumsfeld and Cheney have larger personal plans as well: they want to secure the White House for Rumsfeld, perhaps as early as 1976, but certainly by 1980. One of their methods of winning support is to undercut Kissinger as much as possible; they believe they can win support among the GOP's right wing by thwarting Kissinger's "realpolitik" foreign policy stratagems. Rumsfeld as 'Wizard of Oz' - According to the chief of Ford's Economic Policy Board, William Seidman, Rumsfeld's bureaucratic machinations remind him of the Wizard of Oz: "He thought he was invisible behind the curtain as he worked the levers, but in reality everyone could see what he was doing." Rumsfeld and Cheney will make their most open grasp for power in orchestrating the "Halloween Massacre" (see November 4, 1975 and After). [Werth, 2006, pp. 336-337; Unger, 2007, pp. 49-52]
Entity Tags: William Seidman, Ron Nessen, Richard Perle, Barry Werth, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Henry A. Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
Ford and Brezhnev in Vladivostok, 1974. [Source: Public domain]President Gerald Ford meets with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok. Ford, attempting to restart the moribund SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) negotiations, finds Brezhnev willing to deal. The Soviet Union offers to sign off on one of two options: equal ceilings (allowing each side the same number of long- and short-range ballistic missiles and heavy bombers), or what he calls "offsetting asymmetries," which would allow the US to have more MIRV—Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle—missiles while the Soviets have more launch vehicles. Most American experts believe the "offsetting asymmetries" option is better for the US—leaving the USSR with measurably fewer MIRV launchers, warheads, and payload capacity, or "throw weight." However, Ford, knowing he will have to get the deal past neoconservative Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) and his call for numerical equality, reaches an agreement with Brezhnev that both the US and USSR will be allowed 2,400 long-range delivery systems, of which 1,320 will be MIRVs. Author J. Peter Scoblic calls the deal "yet another instance of right-wing opposition to arms control undermining not only nuclear stability but the stated goals of conservatives—in this case, a US advantage in MIRVs." When Ford returns to Washington with the deal, hardline right-wingers will fiercely oppose the deal on the grounds that the numerical equality in launch vehicles gives the USSR an untenable advantage. "[T]he agreement recognizes and in effect freezes Soviet superiority in nuclear firepower," says New York Senator James Buckley, the only member of the Conservative Party ever to hold a Senate seat. Governor Ronald Reagan, a voluble opponent of any arms-control deals, says, incorrectly, that the Vladivostok agreement gives the Soviet Union the opportunity to have a "ten-to-one" advantage in throw weight. Though the Vladivostok agreement becomes part of the overall SALT II negotiations (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), conservatives among both parties will stiffen their opposition to the deal. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 78-79]
Entity Tags: James Buckley, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, J. Peter Scoblic, Leonid Brezhnev
Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as vice president (see August 20, 1974). [Rockefeller Family Archives, 6/7/2007] Bad Blood and Confirmation Difficulties - Rockefeller has trouble even before taking office. Branded as a liberal by many in the Republican Party, and winning as many enemies as friends with his outsized ego and gladhanding demeanor, Rockefeller garnered swift and obdurate resistance particularly from the right wing both outside the White House (see August 24, 1974) and in (see September 21, 1974 and After). During the Senate's confirmation hearings, many Democrats and some Republicans relished forcing Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in the country, to open his finances to public scrutiny. Even President Ford privately expresses his astonishment. "Can you imagine?" he asked during the hearings. "Nelson lost $30 million in one year and it didn't make any difference." When it was revealed that Rockefeller had given huge personal contributions to lawmakers and government officials—including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—in the form of "loans" that never needed repaying, the Senate hearings became even more inquisitorial. The hearings dragged on for months until Ford personally intervened, telling House and Senate leaders that it was "in the national interest that you confirm Rockefeller, and I'm asking you to move as soon as possible." [US Senate, 7/7/2007] Cheney Wanted Reagan - Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, far more conservative than either Ford or Rockefeller, opposes Rockefeller's influence from the start, and works with his boss, Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, to minimize Rockefeller's influence. In 1986, Cheney will say that Ford "should have thought of Ronald Reagan as vice president in the summer of 1974, if you are talking strictly in political terms." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 38] Domestic Squabbles - Both Ford and Rockefeller want the new vice president to be what Ford calls "a full partner" in his administration, particularly on domestic issues. Ford appoints him to chair the Domestic Council, but behind the scenes, Rockefeller's implacable enemy, Rumsfeld, who sees Rockefeller as a "New Deal" economic liberal, blocks his influence at every term, both from personal and ideological dislike and from a desire to keep power in the White House to himself and his small, close-knit aides. (Cheney, ever attentive to indirect manipulations, inflames Rumsfeld's dislike of Rockefeller even further by suggesting to his nakedly ambitious boss that if Rockefeller was too successful in implementing domestic policy, he would be perceived as "the man responsible for drafting the agenda of 1976," thus limiting Rumsfeld's chances of being named vice president in Ford's re-election campaign (see November 4, 1975 and After). When Rockefeller tries to implement Ford's suggested policy that domestic policymakers report to Ford through Rockefeller, Rumsfeld interferes. When Rockefeller names one of his trusted assistants, James Cannon, to head the Domestic Council, Rumsfeld slashes the Council's budget almost to zero. When Rockefeller proposes a $100 billion Energy Independence Authority, with the aim to reduce and perhaps even end the nation's dependency on foreign energy sources, Rumsfeld joins Ford's economic and environmental advisers to block its creation. When Rockefeller proposes an idea for the president to Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld hands it off to Cheney, who ensures that it dies a quiet, untraceable bureaucratic death. Rockefeller Neutralized - Cheney later recalls that Rockefeller "came to a point where he was absolutely convinced that Don Rumsfeld and myself were out to scuttle whatever new initiatives he could come up with." Rumsfeld and other Ford staffers ensure that Rockefeller is not involved in key policy meetings; when Ford proposes large cuts in federal taxes and spending, Rockefeller complains, "This is the most important move the president has made, and I wasn't even consulted." Asked what he is allowed to do as vice president, Rockefeller answers: "I go to funerals. I go to earthquakes." He says, only half sardonically, that redesigning the vice-presidential seal is "the most important thing I've done." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 38-39; US Senate, 7/7/2007] Following in Rockefeller's Footsteps - Ironically, when Cheney becomes vice president in 2001, he uses what Rockefeller intended to do as a model for his own, extremely powerful vice presidency. James Cannon, who came into the Ford administration with Rockefeller, will marvel in 2006, "Cheney is now doing what he and Rumsfeld blocked Rockefeller from doing—influencing policy." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 39-40]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Ford administration, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry A. Kissinger, James Cannon
President Ford fires a number of Nixon holdovers and replaces them with "my guys… my own team," both to show his independence and to prepare for a bruising 1976 primary battle with Ronald Reagan. The wholesale firings and reshufflings are dubbed the "Halloween Massacre." Donald Rumsfeld becomes secretary of defense, replacing James Schlesinger (see November 4, 1975). George H. W. Bush replaces William Colby as director of the CIA. Henry Kissinger remains secretary of state, but his position as national security adviser is given to Brent Scowcroft. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld's deputy chief of staff, moves up to become the youngest chief of staff in White House history. Perhaps the most controversial decision is to replace Nelson Rockefeller as Ford's vice-presidential candidate for the 1976 elections. Ford's shake-up is widely viewed as his cave-in to Republican Party hardliners. He flounders in his defense of his new staffers: for example, when Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) asks him why he thinks Rumsfeld is qualified to run the Pentagon, Ford replies, "He was a pilot in the Korean War." The ultimate winner in the shake-up is Rumsfeld, who instigated the moves from behind the scenes and gains the most from them. Rumsfeld quickly wins a reputation in Washington as a political opportunist, gunning for the vice presidency in 1976 and willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. Rockefeller tells Ford: "Rumsfeld wants to be president of the United States. He has given George Bush the deep six by putting him in the CIA, he has gotten me out.… He was third on your [vice-presidential] list (see August 16-17, 1974) and now he has gotten rid of two of us.… You are not going to be able to put him on the [ticket] because he is defense secretary, but he is not going to want anybody who can possibly be elected with you on that ticket.… I have to say I have a serious question about his loyalty to you." Later, Ford will write of his sharp regret in pushing Rockefeller off the ticket: "I was angry at myself for showing cowardice in not saying to the ultraconservatives: It's going to be Ford and Rockefeller, whatever the consequences." [Werth, 2006, pp. 340-341] "It was the biggest political mistake of my life," Ford later says. "And it was one of the few cowardly things I did in my life." [US Senate, 7/7/2007]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, William Colby, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, James R. Schlesinger, Barry Goldwater, Donald Rumsfeld, Brent Scowcroft, George Herbert Walker Bush, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry A. Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller
Richard Pipes. [Source: Mariusz Kubik]After George H. W. Bush becomes the head of the CIA (see November 4, 1975 and After), he decides to break with previous decisions and allow a coterie of neoconservative outsiders to pursue the allegations of Albert Wohlstetter that the CIA is seriously underestimating the threat the USSR poses to the US (see 1965), allegations pushed by hardliners on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Internal Opposition - Bush's predecessor, William Colby, had steadfastly refused to countenance such a project, saying, "It is hard for me to envisage how an ad hoc 'independent' group of government and non-government analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities—even in two specific areas—than the intelligence community can prepare." (Bush approves the experiment by notating on the authorization memo, "Let 'er fly!") The national intelligence officer in charge of the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR, Howard Stoertz, will later recall: "Most of us were opposed to it because we saw it as an ideological, political foray, not an intelligence exercise. We knew the people who were pleading for it." But Bush, on the advice of deputy national security adviser William Hyland, agrees to the exercise. Hyland says the CIA had been getting "too much flak for being too peacenik and detentish…. I encouraged [Bush] to undertake the experiment, largely because I thought a new director ought to be receptive to new views." The neocon team of "analysts" becomes known as "Team B," with "Team A" being the CIA's own analytical team. It is unprecedented to allow outsiders to have so much access to highly classified CIA intelligence as Bush is granting the Team B neocons, so the entire project is conducted in secret. CIA analyst Melvin Goodman later says that President Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, is one of the driving forces behind Team B. The outside analysts "wanted to toughen up the agency's estimates," Goodman will say, but "Cheney wanted to drive [the CIA] so far to the right it would never say no to the generals." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 208; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55] Political Pressure - Ford's political fortunes help push forward the Team B experiment. Ford has been a strong proponent of detente with the Soviet Union, but his poll numbers are sagging and he is facing a strong presidential primary challenger in Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), an avowed hardliner. Reagan is making hay challenging Ford's foreign policy, claiming that the so-called "Ford-Kissinger" policies have allowed the Soviet Union to leap ahead of the US both militarily and geopolitically. In response, Ford has lurched to the right, banning the word "detente" from speeches and statements by White House officials, and has been responsive to calls for action from the newly reforming Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976). In combination, these political concerns give Bush the justification he wants to push forward with the Team B experiment. Three B Teams - According to Carter administration arms control official Anne Cahn, there are actually three "B" teams. One studies Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examines Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and the third, chaired by Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, examines Soviet strategic policy and objectives. It is Pipes's team that becomes publicly known as "Team B." [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993] Assembling the Team - Pipes fits in well with his small group of ideological hardliners. He believes that the USSR is determined to fight and win a nuclear war with the US, and he is bent on putting together an analysis that proves his contention. He asks Cold War icon Paul Nitze, the former Secretary of the Navy, to join the team. Richard Perle, a core member, has Pipes bring in Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter's most devout disciples. Wolfowitz immediately begins arguing for the need to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The "incestuous closeness" of the members, as Cahn later calls it, ensures that the entire group is focused on the same goals as Wohlstetter and Pipes, with no dissension or counterarguments. Other key members include William von Cleave and Daniel Graham. The entire experiment, Cahn will write, "was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners," and many are members of the newly reconstituted "Committee on the Present Danger" (see 1976). The experiment is "leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an 'October surprise' [an attempt to damage the presidential hopes of Democrat Jimmy Carter—see Late November, 1976]. But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of 'the window of vulnerability' and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan." Team B will formally debate its CIA adversaries, "Team A," towards the end of the year (see November 1976). [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55] 'Designed to be Prejudiced' - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will note, "Team B was designed to be prejudiced." Pipes, the Soviet experts, holds a corrosive hatred of the Soviet Union, in part stemming from his personal experiences as a young Jew in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, and his belief that the Soviet system is little different from the Nazis. When asked why his team is stacked with hardline opponents of arms negotiations and diplomacy of any kind with the USSR, Pipes replies, "There is no point in another, what you might call, optimistic view." Scoblic will write, "Team B, in short, begged the question. Its members saw the Soviet threat not as an empirical problem but as a matter of faith." He will add, "For three months, the members of Team B pored over the CIA's raw intelligence data—and used them to reaffirm their beliefs." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 93-94]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Richard Pipes, William Hyland, Paul Nitze, William Colby, J. Peter Scoblic, Paul Wolfowitz, George Herbert Walker Bush, 'Team A', 'Team B', Anne Cahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Issuetsdeah, Central Intelligence Agency, Howard Stoertz
A team of young, mid-level CIA and DIA analysts, informally dubbed "Team A," debates the neoconservative/hardline group of outside "analysts" known as "Team B" (see Early 1976) over the CIA's estimates of Soviet military threats and intentions. The debate is a disaster for the CIA's group. Team B uses its intellectual firepower and established reputations of members such as Richard Pipes and Paul Nitze to intimidate, overwhelm, and browbeat the younger, more inexperienced CIA analysts. "People like Nitze ate us for lunch," recalls one member of Team A. "It was like putting Walt Whitman High versus the [NFL's] Redskins. I watched poor GS-13s and GS-14s [middle-level analysts with modest experience and little real influence] subjected to ridicule by Pipes and Nitze. They were browbeating the poor analysts." Howard Stoertz, the national intelligence officer who helped coordinate and guide Team A, will say in hindsight, "If I had appreciated the adversarial nature [of Team B], I would have wheeled up different guns." Team A had prepared for a relatively congenial session of comparative analysis and lively discussion; Team B had prepared for war. Ideology Trumps Facts - Neither Stoertz nor anyone else in the CIA appreciated how thoroughly Team B would let ideology and personalities override fact and real data. While CIA analysts are aware of how political considerations can influence the agency's findings, the foundation of everything they do is factual—every conclusion they draw is based on whatever facts they can glean, and they are leery of extrapolating too much from a factual set. Team A is wholly unprepared for B's assault on their reliance on facts, a line of attack the CIA analysts find incomprehensible. "In other words," author Craig Unger will write in 2007, "facts didn't matter." Pipes, the leader of Team B, has argued for years that attempting to accurately assess Soviet military strength is irrelevant. Pipes says that because it is irrefutable that the USSR intends to obliterate the US, the US must immediately begin preparing for an all-out nuclear showdown, regardless of the intelligence or the diplomatic efforts of both sides. Team B is part of that preparation. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Intelligence expert John Prados, who will examine the contesting reports, later says that while the CIA analysts believe in "an objective discoverable truth," the Team B analysts engaged in an "exercise of reasoning from conclusions" that they justify, not in factual, but in "moral and ideological terms." According to Prados's analysis, Team B had no real interest in finding the truth. Instead, they employed what he calls an adversarial process similar to that used in courts of law, where two sides present their arguments and a supposedly impartial judge chooses one over the other. Team B's intent was, in essence, to present the two opposing arguments to Washington policy makers and have them, in author J. Peter Scoblic's words, "choose whichever truth they found most convenient." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 98] Attacking the Intelligence Community - The first sentence of Team B's report is a frontal assault on the US intelligence community. That community, the report says, had "substantially misperceived the motivations behind Soviet strategic programs, and thereby tended consistently to underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat." Team B writes that the intelligence community has failed to see—or deliberately refused to see—that the entire schema of detente and arms limitations negotiations are merely elements of the Soviet push for global domination. Fighting and Winning a Nuclear War - Team B writes that the Soviets have already achieved measurable superiority in nuclear weaponry and other military benchmarks, and will use those advantages to cow and coerce the West into doing its bidding. The Soviets worship military power "to an extent inconceivable to the average Westerner," the report asserts. The entire Soviet plan, the report goes on to say, hinges on its willingness to fight a nuclear war, and its absolute belief that it can win such a war. Within ten years, Team B states, "the Soviets may well expect to achieve a degree of military superiority which would permit a dramatically more aggressive pursuit of their hegemonial objectives." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 94-95] Lack of Facts Merely Proof of Soviets' Success - One example that comes up during the debate is B's assertion that the USSR has a top-secret nonacoustic antisubmarine system. While the CIA analysts struggle to point out that absolutely no evidence of this system exists, B members conclude that not only does the USSR have such a system, it has probably "deployed some operation nonacoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years." The absence of evidence merely proves how secretive the Soviets are, they argue. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Anne Cahn, who will serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Carter administration, later says of this assertion, "They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They're saying, 'we can't find evidence that they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'… [The fact that the weapon doesn't exist] doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that we haven't found it yet." Cahn will give another example: "I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, 'This is a laser beam weapon,' when in fact it was nothing of the sort.… And if you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.… I don't believe anything in Team B was really true." [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005] Soviet Strike Capabilities Grossly Exaggerated - Team B also hammers home warnings about how dangerous the Soviets' Backfire bomber is. Later—too late for Team A—the Team B contentions about the Backfire's range and refueling capability are proven to be grossly overestimated; it is later shown that the USSR has less than half the number of Backfires that B members loudly assert exist (500 in Team B's estimation, 235 in reality). B's assertions of how effectively the Soviets could strike at US missile silos are similarly exaggerated, and based on flawed assessment techniques long rejected by the CIA. The only hard evidence Team B produces to back their assertions is the official Soviet training manual, which claims that their air-defense system is fully integrated and functions flawlessly. The B analysts even assert, without evidence, that the Soviets have successfully tested laser and charged particle beam (CPB) weapons. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ] (The facility at Semipalatansk that is supposedly testing these laser weapons for deployment is in reality a test site for nuclear-powered rocket engines.) [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 96] Fundamental Contradiction - One befuddling conclusion of Team B concerns the Soviets' ability to continue building new and expensive weapons. While B acknowledges "that the Soviet Union is in severe decline," paradoxically, its members argue that the threat from the USSR is imminent and will grow ever more so because it is a wealthy country with "a large and expanding Gross National Product." Allegations 'Complete Fiction' - Cahn will say of Team B's arguments, "All of it was fantasy.… [I]f you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong." The CIA lambasts Team B's report as "complete fiction." CIA director George H. W. Bush says that B's approach "lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy." His successor, Admiral Stansfield Turner, will come to the same conclusion, saying, "Team B was composed of outsiders with a right-wing ideological bent. The intention was to promote competition by polarizing the teams. It failed. The CIA teams, knowing that the outsiders on B would take extreme views, tended to do the same in self-defense. When B felt frustrated over its inability to prevail, one of its members leaked much of the secret material of the proceedings to the press" (see Late November, 1976). Former CIA deputy director Ray Cline says Team B had subverted the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR by employing "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says that B's only purpose is to subvert detente and sabotage a new arms limitation treaty between the US and the Soviet Union. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Costs of Rearmament - In 1993, after reviewing the original Team B documents, Cahn will reflect on the effect of the B exercise: "For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to 'rearm.' In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world's greatest debtor—in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing." [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993] Former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) will agree: "The Pro-B Team leak and public attack on the conclusions of the NIE represent but one element in a series of leaks and other statements which have been aimed as fostering a 'worst case' view for the public of the Soviet threat. In turn, this view of the Soviet threat is used to justify new weapons systems." [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]
Entity Tags: Howard Stoertz, Henry A. Kissinger, Stansfield Turner, Richard Pipes, J. Peter Scoblic, Ray Cline, George Herbert Walker Bush, Craig Unger, Defense Intelligence Agency, 'Team A', Gary Hart, Anne Cahn, 'Team B', Carter administration, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Nitze, Central Intelligence Agency
Although the entire "Team B" intelligence analysis experiment (see Early 1976, November 1976, and November 1976) is supposed to be classified and secret, the team's neoconservatives launch what author Craig Unger will call "a massive campaign to inflame fears of the red menace in both the general population and throughout the [foreign] policy community—thanks to strategically placed leaks to the Boston Globe and later to the New York Times." Times reporter David Binder later says that Team B leader Richard Pipes is "jubilant" over "pok[ing] holes at the [CIA]'s analysis" of the Soviet threat. Team B member John Vogt calls the exercise "an opportunity to even up some scores with the CIA." [Unger, 2007, pp. 57] Team member George Keegan tells reporters, "I am unaware of a single important category in which the Soviets have not established a significant lead over the United States… [This] grave imbalance in favor of Soviet military capability had developed out of a failure over the last 15 years to adjust American strategic thinking to Soviet strategic thinking, and out of the failure of the leadership of the American intelligence community to 'perceive the reality' of the Soviet military buildup." Keegan's colleague William van Cleave agrees, saying that "overall strategic superiority exists today for the Soviet Union," and adds, "I think it's getting to the point that, if we can make a trade with the Soviet Union of defense establishments, I'd be heartily in favor of it." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 95] Used to Escalate Defense Spending - The experiment is far more than a dry, intellectual exercise or a chance for academics to score points against the CIA. Melvin Goodman, who heads the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs, will observe in 2004: "[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war." Even though Wolfowitz's and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMD programs are completely wrong, they use the charges to successfully push for huge escalations in military spending, a process that continues through the Ford and Reagan administrations (see 1976) [Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005] , and resurface in the two Bush administrations. "Finally," Unger will write, "a band of Cold Warriors and neocon ideologues had successfully insinuated themselves in the nation's multibillion-dollar intelligence apparatus and had managed to politicize intelligence in an effort to implement new foreign policy." [Unger, 2007, pp. 57-58] Kicking Over the Chessboard - Former senior CIA official Richard Lehman later says that Team B members "were leaking all over the place… putting together this inflammatory document." Author and university professor Gordon R. Mitchell will write that B's practice of "strategically leaking incendiary bits of intelligence to journalists, before final judgments were reached in the competitive intelligence exercise," was another method for Team B members to promulgate their arguments without actually proving any of their points. Instead of participating in the debate, they abandoned the strictures of the exercise and leaked their unsubstantiated findings to the press to "win" the argument. [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ] 'One Long Air Raid Siren' - In 2002, defense policy reporter Fred Kaplan will sardonically label Team B the "Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency," and write: "It was sold as an 'exercise' in intelligence analysis, an interesting competition—Team A (the CIA) and Team B (the critics). Yet once allowed the institutional footing, the Team B players presented their conclusions—and leaked them to friendly reporters—as the truth," a truth, Team B alleges, the pro-detente Ford administration intends to conceal. Kaplan will continue, "The Team B report read like one long air-raid siren: The Soviets were spending practically all their GNP on the military; they were perfecting charged particle beams that could knock our warheads out of the sky; their express policy and practical goal was to fight and win a nuclear war." Team B is flatly wrong across the board, but it still has a powerful impact on the foreign policy of the Ford administration, and gives the neoconservatives and hardliners who oppose arms control and detente a rallying point. Author Barry Werth will observe that Rumsfeld and his ideological and bureaucratic ally, White House chief of staff Dick Cheney "drove the SALT II negotiations into the sand at the Pentagon and the White House." Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, and the neocons' public spokesman, Senator Henry Jackson, pillory Ford for being soft on Communism and the Soviet Union. Ford stops talking about detente with the Soviets, and breaks off discussions with the Soviets over limiting nuclear weapons. Through Team B, Rumsfeld and the neocons succeed in stalling the incipient thaw in US-Soviet relations and in weakening Ford as a presidential candidate. [Werth, 2006, pp. 341]
Entity Tags: Melvin A. Goodman, New York Times, Paul Wolfowitz, Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Richard Lehman, William van Cleave, John Vogt, Richard Pipes, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Gordon R. Mitchell, Bush administration (43), Boston Globe, Barry Werth, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Bush administration (41), Central Intelligence Agency, 'Team B', David Binder, Fred Kaplan, Craig Unger, Ford administration, George Keegan, Donald Rumsfeld
After CIA Director George H. W. Bush meets with the New York Times's David Binder, the Times publishes a front-page story about the "Team B" analysis experiment (see November 1976). Up till now, Bush has been foursquare against leaking information to the press, especially classified information such as the Team B affair. Dr. Anne Cahn, who will serve in President Carter's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, later writes that Bush's sudden about-face may be sparked in part by President-elect Carter's refusal to assure Bush that he would continue as CIA director in the new administration. Bush soon appears on NBC's Meet the Press, and because of Bush's media leaks and other Team B press revelations (see Late November, 1976), three separate Congressional committees announce their intention to hold hearings on the entire exercise. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993]
Entity Tags: New York Times, George Herbert Walker Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, 'Team B', David Binder, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., Anne Cahn
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]
Entity Tags: Richard Pipes, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Nationalities Working Group
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence, War in Afghanistan
A few days before his inauguration, President-elect Jimmy Carter says to the assembled Joint Chiefs of Staff that he can envision the US and the Soviet Union having much smaller nuclear arsenals—perhaps as low as 200 submarine-based nuclear missiles each, in essence a purely deterrent force. When the comment is leaked to conservative columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, the two write in their column that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General George Brown, was "[s]tunned speechless" by the remark. In his inaugural address, Carter continues the theme of nuclear disarmament between the two superpowers, saying he intends to try to "limit the world's armaments to those necessary for each nation's domestic safety." As for the world's nuclear arsenals, he says, "[W]e will move this year a step towards the ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., George Brown, Rowland Evans, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Robert Novak
Paul Warnke, at a 1986 press conference. [Source: Terry Ashe/Time and Life Pictures / Getty Images]President Carter's nomination of Paul Warnke to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) galvanizes opposition from conservatives throughout Washington. Long Record of Opposing Arms Buildup - Warnke, a trial lawyer who began his political career as general counsel to the secretary of defense under President Johnson and established himself as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, has a long record of favoring negotiations with the Soviet Union over confrontation. His 1975 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, "Apes on a Treadmill," ridiculed the conservative idea that the only way to counter the Soviet nuclear threat is to build ever more nuclear weapons, and earned the lasting enmity of those same conservatives. "We can be first off the treadmill," he wrote. "That's the only victory the arms race has to offer." Carter also wants Warnke to head the administration's negotiating team in the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviets. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101] Conservative, Neoconservative Counterattack Creates Grassroots Element - The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976) leads the opposition to Warnke's nomination. Even before Warnke is officially nominated, neoconservatives Penn Kemble and Joshua Muravchik write and circulate an anonymous memo around Washington accusing Warnke of favoring "unilateral abandonment by the US of every weapons system which is subject to negotiation at SALT." The memo also cites the conclusions of the Team B analysts (see November 1976) to deride Warnke's arguments against nuclear superiority. Shortly after the memo, one of the CPD's associate groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) creates a "grassroots" organization, the Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament (ECAUD), that actually functions out of the CDM offices in Washington. ECAUD, though an offshoot of the CDM, has a leadership made up of conservatives, including the American Conservative Union's James Roberts, the Republican National Committee's Charles Black, and the Conservative Caucus's Howard Phillips. The directors of Young Americans for Freedom, the Young Republican National Federation, and the American Security Council (see 1978) are on the steering committee. And the executive director is Morton Blackwell, a hard-right conservative who works with direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, "Thus were the views of neoconservatives, hawks, and traditional conservatives given a populist base." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101-102] Contentious Confirmation Hearings - Scoblic describes the opposition to Warnke at his Senate confirmation hearings as "vicious." Eminent Cold War foreign policy expert Paul Nitze (see January 1976) lambasts Warnke, calling his ideas "demonstrably unsound… absolutely asinine… screwball, arbitrary, and fictitious." Neoconservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) gives over his first Senate speech to blasting Warnke; Moynihan's Senate colleague, neoconservative leader Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) joins Moynihan in criticizing Warnke's nomination, as does Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). Another conservative congressman accuses Warnke, falsely, of working with both Communists and terrorists: according to the congressman, Warnke is in collusion with "the World Peace Council, a Moscow-directed movement which advocates the disarmament of the West as well as support for terrorist groups." Heritage Foundation chief Paul Weyrich uses Viguerie's mass-mailing machine to send 600,000 letters to voters urging them to tell their senators to vote "no" on Warnke. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 103-104] Warnke Confirmed, but Resistance Established - Warnke is confirmed by a 70-29 vote for the ACDA, and by a much slimmer 58-40 vote to head the US SALT II negotiating team. The New York Times's Anthony Lewis later writes of "a peculiar, almost venomous intensity in some of the opposition to Paul Warnke; it is as if the opponents have made him a symbol of something they dislike so much that they want to destroy him.… [I]t signals a policy disagreement so fundamental that any imaginable arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union will face powerful resistance. And it signals the rise of a new militant coalition on national security issues." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104] Effective Negotiator - Warnke will resign his position in October 1978. Though he will constantly be under fire from Congressional conservatives, and will frequently battle with administration hawks such as National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he will earn the respect of both American and Soviet negotiators. In 1979, disarmament scholar Duncan Clarke will write that the Soviets come to regard Warnke as one of the toughest of American negotiators, with one Soviet official saying: "We always wondered why Americans would pay so much for good trial attorneys. Now we know." Warnke will have a strong influence on the eventual shape of the final SALT II agreement (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979). [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104] Upon his death in 2001, fellow negotiator Ralph Earle will say, "Arms control will be forever on the agenda due in large part to Paul and his articulation of the importance of the issues." [Arms Control Today, 1/1/2002]
Entity Tags: Duncan Clarke, Zbigniew Brzezinski, World Peace Council, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Charles Black, Barry Goldwater, 'Team B', Anthony Lewis, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Richard Viguerie, Ralph Earle, Penn Kemble, Paul Weyrich, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., James Roberts, Johnson administration, J. Peter Scoblic, Howard Phillips, Joshua Muravchik, Paul Nitze, Paul Warnke, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Committee on the Present Danger, Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament, Morton Blackwell
President Carter attempts, and fails, to forge an agreement with the Soviet Union to drastically reduce the number of nuclear weapons the two countries possess (see Mid-January, 1977). Carter's predecessor, Gerald Ford, left him with the framework of a potentially expansive SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement signed in Vladivostok (see November 23, 1974), but that agreement still allowed for an astonishing number of nuclear weapons—2,400 apiece. (The US does not even have 2,400 delivery vehicles.) Carter proposes that both sides significantly reduce their nuclear stockpiles. But Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, lacking the political capital among his more hawkish colleagues and rivals in the Kremlin, not only refuses, but decries the suggestion as nothing but American propaganda. The two nations will eventually sign the SALT II accords two years later (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), after a fitful negotiation process, but the agreement will differ little from the Vladivostok agreement of 1974. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105]
Entity Tags: Leonid Brezhnev, Ford administration, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
President Jimmy Carter again indicates that he intends to break with the hard line, confrontational policies of the past, particularly regarding the Soviet Union (see Mid-January, 1977). Speaking to the graduating class at Notre Dame University, Carter decries the "intellectual and moral poverty" of the Vietnam War and the militaristic mindset that drove that war, saying that for years the US has "fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is best quenched with water." Now that the US is "free of that inordinate fear of Communism," the country can pursue a much different course, featuring multi-lateral, interdependent relations with a variety of countries, and abandon the isolationism and endless military buildups of the past (see June 1977). Carter will achieve very little of these goals, and by the time his single term ends, he will have begun rebuilding the US's military and nuclear arsenal again. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104-105]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
The American Security Council (ASC), a McCarthy-era organization originally conceived to ferret out Communists from the American business community, and now broadening its focus to oppose any sort of detente with the Soviet Union or any arms control agreements, forms the Coalition of Peace Through Strength, an association of 148 members of Congress led by Senator Robert Dole (R-KS). It opposes any sort of arms reduction agreements with the Soviet Union, and particularly opposes the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty negotiations. By 1979, its ranks in Congress will have grown to 191, and it will have the support of over 2,400 retired generals and admirals. The organization insists that any such agreements with the Soviet Union are nothing less than a "symbol of phased surrender." The organization is allied with other hardline conservative groups, including the American Conservative Union, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Young Americans for Freedom, and a loose organization of neoconservatives and disaffected Democratic hawks called the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 72-73]
Entity Tags: Young Americans for Freedom, American Conservative Union, American Security Council, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Coalition of Peace Through Strength, Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
Albert Wohlstetter, the ideological father of neoconservatism (see 1965), arranges a meeting in Istanbul bringing together 13 Americans, 13 Turks, and 13 Europeans. Wohlstetter's protege, Richard Perle, is possibly present. The policies discussed at the meeting later become the basis of the Turgut Ozal administration's pro-American policies in Turkey (see September 1980)
(see December 1983). [American Enterprise Institute, 11/22/2003] Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, is a mentor to Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. [Think Tank, 11/14/2002] He sees Turkey as "a US staging post for Middle East contingencies and as a strategic ally of Israel." [Evriviades, 1999]
Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Albert Wohlstetter, Richard Perle
A test firing of an MX missile. [Source: University of Wyoming]President Carter reluctantly gives public support to the MX nuclear missile program. The MX, first proposed in 1971, is a mobile missile platform that can, in theory, escape detection by Soviet spy satellites simply because it is mobile; by the time static satellite photos are developed and analyzed, and targeting data fed into Soviet nuclear missiles, the MX could have long since been moved. The MX has ten nuclear warheads, each capable of striking separate targets. To keep it out of Soviet sights, it can be moved around on railway cars, in vans driven on superhighways, even submerged in lakes. The MX program quickly earned heated opposition from ranchers and landowners in Western states, where the missiles would be deployed. And the Soviets do not like the program because the MX, being mobile, could be used to "spoof" the counts each side make of the other's weapons, as mandated by treaties. Carter struggles with the program throughout his term, and finally orders 200 of the missiles and 4,600 "soft shelters" constructed in Utah and Nevada. Carter's Republican challenger in the 1980 presidential race, Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), effectively lambasts Carter for his support of the program throughout the race, then after taking office in 1981, reverses course and enthusiastically supports and even expands the program (see 1981), in the process dubbing the MX the "Peacekeeper." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 50-51]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
US President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement in Vienna, after years of fitful negotiations. The basic outline of the accords is not much different from the agreement reached between Brezhnev and President Ford five years earlier (see November 23, 1974). Conservative Opposition - The Senate must ratify the treaty before it becomes binding; Republicans and conservative Democrats alike oppose the treaty. Neoconservative Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) compares Carter to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who allowed the Nazis to occupy part of Czechoslovakia in 1938) in accusing Carter of "appeasement in its purest form" towards the Soviet Union. Members of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976) appear before the Senate 17 times to argue against ratification. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testifies against it, calling instead for a $44 billion increase in defense spending and once again evoking the specter of Nazi Germany: "Our nation's situation is much more dangerous today than it has been at any time since Neville Chamberlain left Munich, setting the stage for World War II." The American Security Council launches "Peace Through Strength Week" (see November 12, 1979). And Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), embarking on his presidential campaign, warns the nation that the Soviets could just "take us with a phone call," forcing us to obey an ultimatum: "Look at the difference in our relative strengths. Now, here's what we want.… Surrender or die." Familiar Arguments - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write that the arguments advanced against the SALT II treaty are the same as advanced so many times before (see August 15, 1974), including during the infamous "Team B" exercise (see November 1976). The Soviet Union believes it can win a nuclear war, opponents insist, and a treaty such as the one signed by Carter and Brezhnev merely plays into the Soviets' hands. Once the US loses its significant advantage in nuclear payloads, the likelihood increases that the USSR incinerates American missile silos and dares the US to respond—the US might get off a volley of its remaining missiles, but the Soviets will then launch a second strike that will destroy America's cities. And that US strike will have limited impact because of what critics call the Soviets' extensive, sophisticated civil defense program. The US will have no other choice than to, in Scoblic's words, "meekly submit to Soviet will." SALT II plays into what the CPD calls the Soviet goal of not waging a nuclear war, but winning "political predominance without having to fight." Scoblic will note, "An argument that had started on the fringes of the far Right was now being made with total seriousness by a strong cross-section of foreign policy experts, backed by significant public support." Scoblic then calls the arguments "fatuous… grounded in zero-sum thinking." The facts do not support the arguments. It is inconceivable, he will observe, that the US would absorb a devastating first strike without immediately launching its own overwhelming counterstrike. And for the critics to accept the tales of "extensive" Soviet civil defense programs, Scoblic argues, is for them to be "remarkably credulous of Soviet propaganda." No matter what the Soviets did first, the US could kill upwards of 75 million Soviet citizens with its single strike, a circumstance the USSR was unlikely to risk. And, Scoblic will note, subsequent studies later prove the conservatives' arguments completely groundless (see 1994). Senate Fails to Ratify - By late 1979, the arguments advanced by Congressional conservatives, combined with other events (such as the "discovery" of a clutch of Soviet troops in Cuba) derails the chance of SALT II being ratified in the Senate. When the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (see December 8, 1979), Carter withdraws the treaty from further consideration. Scoblic will note that by this point in his presidency, Carter has abandoned any pretense of attempting to reduce nuclear armaments (see Mid-January, 1977); in fact, "[h]is nuclear policies increasingly resembled those of Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger, and groups like the Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament" (see Early 1977 and Late 1979-1980). Carter notes that such a treaty as the SALT II accord is the single most important goal of US foreign policy: "Especially now, in a time of great tension, observing the mutual constraints imposed by the terms of these treaties, [SALT I and II] will be in the best interest of both countries and will help to preserve world peace.… That effort to control nuclear weapons will not be abandoned." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105-109, 117]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Committee on the Present Danger, American Security Council, 'Team B', Donald Rumsfeld, Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, J. Peter Scoblic, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., Leonid Brezhnev
President Carter authorizes covert aid for opponents of the Communist government in Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, will state in 1998, "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujaheddin began… after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan… But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.… We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would." [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/15/1998] After Brzezinski's confession, other US officials who denied US involvement prior to the Soviet invasion will change their story as well. For instance, Charles Cogan, who is head of the CIA covert aid program to Afghanistan at this time, will call Carter's approval on this day a "very modest beginning to US involvement." [Cooley, 2002, pp. 10] In fact, even this is not correct because the CIA had been aiding the rebels since at least the year before (see 1978 and 1973-1979). The Soviets invade Afghanistan by the end of 1979 (see December 8, 1979).
Entity Tags: Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., Charles Cogan
Several hundred influential conservatives launch what they call "Peace Through Strength Week," at a week-long conference in Washington, DC, held by the American Security Council (ASC—see 1978). The primary mission is to convince a majority of senators to vote against the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) arms-reduction treaty, which President Carter had signed five months before. Although the treaty sets equal limits on the number of nuclear missile launchers the US and the Soviet Union may possess, the conventioneers believe that, in the words of author J. Peter Scoblic, "it merely enshrine[s] American weakness in the face of a growing Soviet nuclear threat." The convention is timed to coincide with Governor Ronald Reagan's (R-CA) announcement that he is running for president, and borrows his signature phrase to describe his position on arms control. 'The SALT Syndrome' - The focal point of the ASC's message is a half-hour film entitled "The SALT Syndrome." Scoblic will describe it: "Set to a soundtrack fit for a horror movie, it featured image after image of missiles launching, submarines creeping, and nuclear weapons exploding, punctuated by commentary from retired generals and intelligence officials. The 'syndrome' was the American tendency to 'unilaterally disarm,' which had gripped Washington policy makers after the United States decided to follow [former Defense Secretary Robert] 'McNamara's theory of "no defense," which is called "Mutual Assured Destruction."' The movie was a concise, vivid statement of conservative nuclear thought: MAD was a choice." The movie tells its viewers that US citizens "play an important role in US strategy—that of nuclear hostage." The film goes on to avow that the Soviets have produced far more missiles, long-range bombers, nuclear submarines, and various missile defenses than the US is willing to concede, giving the Soviets the capability of coercing the US into doing pretty much whatever they demand. "The movie," Scoblic will write, "was a remarkable, and remarkably effective, piece of propaganda. It combined fact, exaggeration, and outright nonsense—one interviewee claimed the Soviet Union was on the verge of deploying particle beams that would shoot down all incoming missiles—to argue that the United States had left itself nearly helpless against a Soviet behemoth bent on world domination." The film will play on American television stations some 2,000 times, and will reach, ASC chairman John Fisher will estimate, at least 137 million Americans. Millions of Dollars Raised to Fight SALT II - The film successfully solicits millions of dollars in contributions from concerned and frightened Americans, much of which will go to advertising efforts to combat SALT II. The ASC will outspend pro-treaty forces by a ratio of 15 to 1. [American Security Council, 3/30/1980; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 72-73]
Entity Tags: John Fisher, Ronald Reagan, American Security Council, Robert McNamara, J. Peter Scoblic
Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Domestic Propaganda
Soviet tanks entering Afghanistan in late 1979. [Source: Banded Artists Productions]The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. The Russians were initially invited in by the Afghan government to deal with rising instability and army mutinies, and they start crossing the border on December 8. But on December 26, Russian troops storm the presidential palace, kill the country's leader, Haizullah Amin, and the invitation turns into an invasion. [Blum, 1995, pp. 342] Later declassified high-level Russian documents will show that the Russian leadership believed that Amin, who took power in a violent coup from another pro-Soviet leader two months before, had secret contacts with the US embassy and was probably a US agent. Further, one document from this month claims that "the right wing Muslim opposition" has "practically established their control in many provinces… using foreign support." [Cooley, 2002, pp. 8] It has been commonly believed that the invasion was unprovoked, but the Russians will later be proven largely correct. In a 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, will reveal that earlier in the year Carter authorized the CIA to destabilize the government, provoking the Russians to invade (see July 3, 1979). [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/1998; Mirror, 1/29/2002] Further, CIA covert action in the country actually began in 1978 (see 1978), if not earlier (see 1973-1979). The US and Saudi Arabia will give a huge amount of money (estimates range up to $40 billion total for the war) to support the mujaheddin guerrilla fighters opposing the Russians, and a decade-long war will ensue. [Nation, 2/15/1999]
Entity Tags: United States, Saudi Arabia, Haizullah Amin, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Central Intelligence Agency
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
Front row: Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (left) and President Carter (right). Zbigniew Brzezinski is in the center of the back row. [Source: Wally McNamee / Corbis]National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski writes a memo to President Jimmy Carter about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which has just begun (see December 8, 1979). Brzezinski focuses on fears that success in Afghanistan could give the Soviets access to the Indian Ocean, even though Afghanistan is a landlocked country. He suggests the US should continue aid to the Afghan mujaheddin, which actually began before the war and spurred the Soviets to invade (see 1978 and July 3, 1979). He says, "This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels and some technical advice." He does not give any warning that such aid will strengthen Islamic fundamentalism. He also concludes, "[W]e must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels. This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and alas, a decision that our security problem toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy." Carter apparently accepts Brzezinski's advice. Author Joe Trento will later comment, "With that, the United States agreed to let a country admittedly in turmoil proceed to develop nuclear weapons." [Trento, 2005, pp. 167-168] Trento and fellow author David Armstrong will add: "Once [Pakistan] became a partner in the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign and the Carter administration adopted a more lenient view of Pakistan's nuclear activities, the [procurement] network [run by A. Q. Khan] expanded its operations dramatically. It would soon evolve into a truly global enterprise, obtaining the vast array of sophisticated equipment with which Pakistan would eventually build a bomb." [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 99]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., David Armstrong, Joseph Trento, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, A. Q. Khan's Nuclear Network, War in Afghanistan
Worn down by incessant opposition from conservatives, neoconservatives, and hawks in both Republican and Democratic parties, President Carter has by now abandoned his goal of drastically reducing the amount of nuclear weapons in the US and Soviet arsenals (see Mid-January, 1977). Not only has he withdrawn the already-signed SALT II treaty from consideration for Senate ratification (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), he has deployed nuclear missiles in Europe, approved development of the MX missile (see June 1979), and taken other steps to increase the US military buildup, including sharply increasing defense spending from his first year in office. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 109]
Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. [Source: Associated Press]General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq seized power in Pakistan in a 1977 coup and declared himself president. The US stopped all economic and military aid to Pakistan as a result of the coup and Zia ruled cautiously in an attempt to win international approval. But immediately after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (see December 8, 1979), the US allies with Zia and resumes aid. This allows Zia to use Islam to consolidate his power without worrying about the international reaction. He passes pro-Islamic legislation, introduces Islamic banking systems, and creates Islamic courts. Most importantly, he creates a new religious tax which is used to create tens of thousands of madrassas, or religious boarding schools. These schools will indoctrinate a large portion of future Islamic militants for decades to come. [Gannon, 2005, pp. 138-142] Zia also promotes military officers on the basis of religious devotion. The Koran and other religious material becomes compulsory reading material in army training courses. "Radical Islamist ideology began to permeate the military and the influence of the most extreme groups crept into the army," journalist Kathy Gannon will write in her book I is for Infidel. [Gannon, 2005, pp. 138-142] The BBC will later comment that Zia's self-declared "Islamization" policies created a "culture of jihad" within Pakistan that continues until present day. [BBC, 8/5/2002]
Entity Tags: Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (see December 8, 1979), President Carter declares in his annual State of the Union address, "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." This will become known as the Carter Doctrine. [Scott, 2007, pp. 69, 303] The US immediately follows up with a massive build up of military forces in the region. New military arrangements are made with Kenya, Oman, Somalia, Egypt, and Pakistan. In March 1980, a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force is created, which will be renamed US Central Command (or Centcom) several years later. [Scott, 2007, pp. 78-79, 308-309]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., US Central Command
Timeline Tags: US Military, Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
Markus Wolf, the chief of East Germany's Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (HVA) intelligence agency, has a sober conversation with Yuri Andropov, the head of the Soviet Union's KGB intelligence agency. In his autobiography, Wolf will later recall: "We began discussing the East-West conflict. I had never before seen Andropov so somber and dejected. He described a gloomy scenario in which a nuclear war might be a real threat. His sober analysis came to the conclusion that the US government was striving with all means available to establish nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. He cited statements of President Carter, his adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and of Pentagon spokesmen, all of which included the assertion that under certain circumstances a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union and its allies would be justified.… Carter's presidency had created great concern in the Kremlin, because he had presented a defense budget of more than $157 billion, which he invested in the MX and Trident missiles (see June 1979) and nuclear submarines (see Late 1979-1980). One of the top Soviet nuclear strategists confided to me that the resources of our alliance were not sufficient to match this." [Fischer, 3/19/2007]
Entity Tags: Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, Yuri Andropov, Markus Wolf, KGB
Incoming presidential chief of staff James Baker asks a former chief of staff, Dick Cheney (see November 4, 1975 and After), for advice on handling the job. Baker takes four pages of handwritten notes covering his conversation with Cheney. Most of the notes cover mundane topics such as personnel and managing the president's schedule. But Cheney offers at least one piece of policy advice. According to Baker's notes: "Pres. seriously weakened in recent yrs. Restore power & auth [authority] to Exec Branch—Need strong ldr'ship. Get rid of War Powers Act—restore independent rights." Baker notes Cheney's emphasis of this last idea by marking it with two double lines and six asterisks, and a note in the margin, "Central theme we ought to push." [Savage, 2007, pp. 43]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, James A. Baker
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
Newly elected President Ronald Reagan begins his first term with a cabinet and senior staff made up of two quite different brands of conservatives. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, in his 1991 book President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, will describe an administration riven between "pragmatists" or "realists," whom their opponents dismiss as "accomodationists" or "one-worlders," and "conservatives" or "Reaganauts," whom their opponents label "crazies" or "hard-liners." Both groups staunchly oppose communism and support increased defense spending, but they diverge on the subject of negotiating with the Soviet Union. The "pragmatists" favor working to extend the idea of detente with the USSR, while the "Reaganauts" see any such negotiations as nothing but appeasement of a murderous and implacable foe (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979). During Reagan's first term, particularly in the first three years, the "Reaganauts" hold the upper hand in setting his administration's foreign policy. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, "This period marked the closest conservatives came during the Cold War to seeing their principles translated into policy." It also marks the closest the world came to an all-out nuclear war between the two superpowers since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 (see November 2-11, 1983). The "pragmatists" will have much more say in setting policy during the last five years of Reagan's presidency, and as a result will help engineer a dramatic reduction in tensions between the US and the Soviet Union as well as a treaty eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons (see December 7-8, 1987). By the end of Reagan's presidency, many conservatives have gone from enthusiastically supporting his policies to considering him a traitor to their ideology (see 1988). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 115-116]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, J. Peter Scoblic, Lou Cannon
In conjunction with his huge peacetime military buildup (see Early 1981 and After), President Reagan strongly opposes any sort of arms control or limitation discussions with the Soviet Union. Rostow to ACDA - As a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976), Reagan had spoken out against the SALT II arms control treaty with the USSR (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), calling it "fatally flawed." He has opposed every significant arms limitation agreement since 1963, no matter whether it was negotiated by Republican or Democratic administrations. To continue his opposition, Reagan appoints Eugene Rostow to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Rostow, a fellow CPD member, is flatly opposed to any sort of arms control or disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union, and had led the CPD fight against the SALT II agreement. "Arms control thinking drives out sound thinking," he told the Senate. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120] During his confirmation hearings, Rostow tells Senate questioners that the US could certainly survive a nuclear war, and gives World War II-era Japan as an example—that nation "not only survived but flourished after a nuclear attack." When asked if the world could survive a full nuclear attack of thousands of nuclear warheads instead of the two that Japan had weathered, Rostow says that even though the casualties might be between "ten million… and one hundred million… [t]he human race is very resilient." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126] Rostow's aide at the ACDA, Colin Gray, says that "victory is possible" in a nuclear war provided the US is prepared to fight. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 127] Burt to State Department - Reagan names Richard Burt to head the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, the State Department's primary liaison with the Defense Department. Burt, a former New York Times reporter, is one of the few journalists synpathetic to the CPD, and recently called the SALT agreement "a favor to the Russians." Just before joining the Reagan administration, Burt called for reductions in nuclear arms controls: "Arms control has developed the same kind of mindless momentum associated with other large-scale government pursuits. Conceptual notions of limited durability, such as the doctrine of mutual assured destruction [MAD], have gained bureaucratic constituencies and have thus been prolonged beyond their usefulness. There are strong reasons for believing that arms control is unlikely to possess much utility in the coming decade." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120; US Department of State, 2008] Perle to Defense Department - Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of arms control is neoconservative Richard Perle, named as assistant defense secretary for international security affairs. Perle, until recently the national security adviser to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), will quickly become, in author J. Peter Scoblic's words, "the administration's chief arms control obstructionist, dubbed 'the Prince of Darkness' by his enemies." Perle once said: "The sense that we and the Russians could compose our differences, reduce them to treaty constraints… and then rely on compliance to produce a safer world. I don't agree with any of that." Now Perle is poised to act on his beliefs. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120] Vice President Bush - Although seen as a pragmatist and not a hardline conservative (see January 1981 and After), Vice President George H. W. Bush is also optimistic about the chances of the US coming out on top after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. During the 1980 campaign, he told a reporter: "You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition tham it inflicts on you. That's the way you can have a winner." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126-127] Other Appointees - Perle's immediate supervisor in Defense is Fred Ikle, who headed ACDA in 1973 and helped battle back part of the original SALT agreement. Ikle will be primarily responsible for the Pentagon's "five-year plan" that envisions a "protracted nuclear war" as a viable option (see March 1982). Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger considers the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union akin to the situation between Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938, with himself and his ideological confreres as Britain's Winston Churchill and any attempt at arms control as nothing but appeasement. Energy Secretary James B. Edwards says of a hypothetical nuclear war, "I want to come out of it number one, not number two." Pentagon official Thomas Jones tells a reporter that the US could handily survive a nuclear exchange, and fully recover within two to four years, if the populace digs plenty of holes, cover them with wooden doors, and bury the structures under three feet of dirt. "If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it," he says. Reagan's second National Security Adviser, William Clark, will, according to Reagan official and future Secretary of State George Shultz, "categorically oppos[e] US-Soviet contacts" of any kind. Some of the administration's more pragmatic members, such as Reagan's first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, will have limited access to Reagan and be cut off from many policy-making processes by Reagan's more hardline senior officials and staffers. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120, 127; Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]
Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Fred C. Ikle, Committee on the Present Danger, Colin Gray, Caspar Weinberger, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Eugene V. Rostow, US Department of State, William Clark, Thomas Jones, Richard Burt, Richard Perle, Reagan administration, James B. Edwards, Ronald Reagan, J. Peter Scoblic, US Department of Defense, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, George Shultz
President Reagan, recuperating from surgery to remove an assassin's bullet, tells bedside visitor Terence Cardinal Cooke that God spared his life so that he might "reduce the threat of nuclear war." Censored Letter to Brezhnev - The day after his conversation with Cooke, Reagan pens a letter to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev calling for "disarmament" and a "world without nuclear weapons." Brezhnev does not read Reagan's words; Reagan's aides, horrified at the letter, rewrite it and strip out all the phrases calling for a reduction in nuclear weapons before sending it to Brezhnev. Aides Refuse to Draw up Plans for Disarmament - In the following weeks, Reagan will call nuclear weapons "horrible" and "inherently evil," and order his aides to draw up plans for their elimination. His aides will refuse to deliver those plans; one adviser, Richard Burt (see Early 1981 and After), will exclaim: "He can't have a world without nuclear weapons! Doesn't he understand the realities?" Wants to Stop Nuclear Armageddon - Reagan believes in the literal Biblical story of Armageddon—the End Times—and believes that it will come about through the use of nuclear weapons. Unlike some conservative Christians (and some of his advisers), he does not relish the prospect, and in fact believes it is his task to prevent it from happening. Plans to Reduce Nuclear Arms Based on Prescience, Ignorance - Author J. Peter Scoblic will note it is difficult to reconcile the view of Reagan as an advocate of nuclear disarmament with the confrontational, sometimes apocalyptic rhetoric and actions by him and his administration (see Early 1981 and After, Early 1981 and After, September 1981 through November 1983, March 1982, and Spring 1982), but Scoblic will write: "Each of these efforts, however, can also be interpreted as a sincere, if misguided, product of Reagan's hatred of nuclear weapons. Reagan believed that the Soviets would reduce their atomic arsenal only if they were faced with the prospect of an arms race." Reagan realizes—ahead of many of his advisers—that the USSR was moving towards a calamitous economic crisis, and believes that the Soviets will choose to step back from further rounds of escalation in order to save their economy from complete collapse. He also believes, with some apparent conflict in logic, that the only way to reduce US nuclear arms is to increase the nation's military arsenal. "Reagan emphasized time and again, that the aim of his arms build-up was to attain deep cuts in nuclear weapons," biographer Paul Lettow will write. "[M]ost people did not listen to what he was actually saying." Scoblic cites what he calls Reagan's profound ignorance of nuclear strategy and tactical capabilities as another driving force behind Reagan's vision of nuclear disarmament. He is not aware that submarines and long-range bombers carry nuclear missiles; he believes that submarine-based nuclear missiles can be called back once in flight. Both ideas are wrong. He tells foreign policy adviser Brent Scowcroft that he did not realize the primary threat from the Soviet Union was that its gigantic arsenal of ICBMs might obliterate the US's own ICBM stockpile. When journalists ask him how the MX missile program (see 1981) that he has asserted will rectify the threat to American ICBMs, as he has asserted, he confesses that he does not know. And he honestly does not seem to understand that his administration's confrontational, sometimes overtly belligerent actions (see May 1982 and After, June 8, 1982, March 23, 1983, and November 2-11, 1983) cause apprehension and even panic among the Soviet military and political leadership. Scoblic will write that like other hardline conservatives, "Reagan could not believe that anyone could perceive the United States as anything but righteous." 'Subject to Manipulation' - Reagan's desire for a reduction in nuclear arms is not matched by any depth of understanding of the nuclear weapons issues. Therefore, Scoblic will observe, "[h]e was susceptible to manipulation by advisers who shared his militant anti-communism but not his distaste for nuclear deterrence and who wanted neither arms reduction nor arms control." When he names George Shultz as his secretary of state in mid-1982, he gains a key ally in his plans for nuclear reduction and a counterweight to arms-race advocates such as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and other hardliners who have worked (and continue to work) to sabotage the administration's arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. He gains another ally when he replaces National Security Adviser William Clark with the more pragmatic Robert McFarlane. Both Shultz and McFarlane will support Reagan's desire to begin sincere negotiations with the USSR on reducing nuclear arms, as does his wife, Nancy Reagan, who wants her husband to be remembered by history as reducing, not increasing, the risk of nuclear war. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 136-138]
Entity Tags: Robert C. McFarlane, Leonid Brezhnev, J. Peter Scoblic, George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Brent Scowcroft, Nancy Reagan, Richard Burt, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Ronald Reagan, William Clark, Paul Lettow
President Reagan, giving the commencement speech at West Point's graduation ceremonies, makes a strong statement of his belief that the Soviet Union is an "evil empire" that must be defeated in one sense or another. "I am told there are links of a great chain that was forged and stretched across the Hudson [River] to prevent the British fleet from penetrating further into the valley," he tells the graduates. "Today, you are that chain, holding back an evil force [communism] that would extinguish the light we've been tending for 6,000 years." Days before, Reagan told another graduating class that the West would not "contain communism, it will transcend communism." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 116]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan
Osirak nuclear facility. [Source: GlobalSecurity.org] (click image to enlarge)On the order of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and after heated debate among Israeli leaders, Israeli warplanes strike the Osirak (also spelled Osiraq) Tammuz I nuclear plant at al-Tuwaitha near Baghdad, destroying it and dealing a severe setback to Iraq's nuclear program. Israel claims it fears Iraq is building a nuclear weapon with which to strike it. Osirak is a French-made nuclear reactor, which is near completion but lacks any nuclear fuel, thereby raising no danger of any radioactive link. Ariel Sharon, concurrently Defense Minister and a proponent of the strike, later says, "This was perhaps the most difficult decision which faced any [Israeli] government during all the years of the state's existence." The Israeli government states after the strike, "The atomic bombs which that reactor was capable of producing, whether from enriched uranium or from plutonium, would be of the Hiroshima size. Thus a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose.… Under no circumstances will we allow an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against our people." The reactor is slated to be completed by September, 1981, though it would be years before it could produce any nuclear-grade fissionable material. Iraq denies the reactor is developed to produce nuclear weapons, though the construction of the plant gives credence to claims that Iraq is more interested in building a weapon than generating electricity. (After the strike, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein says, "Any state in the world which really wants peace… should help the Arabs in one way or another to acquire atomic bombs," giving further credence to suspicions that Hussein wanted to build a nuclear weapon.) The Israeli strike follows up a September 1980 raid on the Osirak facility by Iranian warplanes (see September 30, 1980). Publicly, Iran and Israel are dire enemies, but Israel has begun secretly selling US-made arms to Iran as a way to counterbalance the threat posed by Iraq (see 1981). [BBC, 7/7/1981; New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Institute for Strategic Studies, 5/1995] In 1984, Brookings Institution fellow Lucien Vandenbroucke will write, "Ironically, Israel's raid may prove to be a brilliant tactical success achieved at the expense of the country's long-term interests. Certainly, the attack set Iraq's nuclear program back several years. But the strike also ushered in a de facto Israeli claim to nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, a move that in the long run generally promises to encourage the larger Arab world on the nuclear path.… In the decision-making process, Israeli fears and the propensity to rely on worst-case analyses seem to have prevailed. The advocates of the strike focused on the unreasonable, rather than the reasonable, aspects of Iraqi behavior, and thus even a limited prospect that Iraq might soon acquire a nuclear bomb became more of a risk than they were prepared to accept." [GlobalSecurity (.org), 10/1984]
Entity Tags: Brookings Institution, Saddam Hussein, Lucien Vandenbroucke, Menachem Begin
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
Reagan officials reopen the stalled Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union, against the advice of President Reagan's more hardline officials (see January 1981 and After). The talks center on the Soviets' SS-20 missile, designed to strike European targets. In return, then-President Carter had agreed to deploy US intermediate-range nuclear missiles—Pershing II's and Tomahawks—in West Germany and Italy by 1983. According to author J. Peter Scoblic, the missiles have little real military value, as American ICBMs, submarine-based nuclear missiles, and long-range bombers could destroy Soviet targets with near-impunity. They do, however, have some political significance, mostly in helping tie European security to US security. Carter had agreed to open talks with the Soviets to get rid of the SS-20s entirely. Hardliners Sabotage Talks - The more pragmatic Reagan officials succeed in reopening the talks; Reagan hardliners, thwarted in stopping the talks, set about sabotaging them in any way available. When arguments in favor of delays and "further study" finally fail, they pressure Reagan to offer an agreement they know the Soviets will refuse: the so-called "zero option," which originates with Defense Department official Richard Perle (see Early 1981 and After). Perle says that the Soviets should remove all of the SS-20s, and in return, the US will not deploy its Pershings and Tomahawks—in essence, having the Soviets concede something for essentially nothing. State Department officials suggest a fallback position in case the Soviets reject Perle's offering; in his turn, Perle appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee and compares anyone who opposes his zero-sum offering to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938. 'Walk in the Woods' - When the Soviets reject Perle's option, Reagan hardliners argue that the government should accept no compromise. The head of the INF negotiation team, Paul Nitze—a Cold War figure who has come out against arms control (see January 1976) but is not fully trusted by the hardline ideologues because of his history as an arms negotiator—wants a compromise. In official negotiations, he sticks to the all-or-nothing position of Perle, but opens private, informal negotiations with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. One afternoon in 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky go for what later becomes known as their "walk in the woods." Sitting together on a log during an afternoon rainstorm, the two hammer out an agreement that greatly favors the US—mandating a 67 percent reduction in Soviet SS-20s and allowing the US to deploy an equal number of Tomahawks. Not only would the Soviets have to reduce their already-deployed contingent of missiles and the US be allowed to deploy missiles, because the Tomahawks carry more independent warheads than the SS-20s, the US would have a significant advantage in firepower. The deal also sets limits on SS-20 deployments in Asia, and forbids the Soviets from developing ground-launched cruise missiles. In return, the US would agree not to deploy its Pershing missiles. Hardliners Block Agreement - Perle and his hardline allies in the Reagan administration succeed in blocking acceptance of the Nitze-Kvitsinsky agreement. As author J. Peter Scoblic later writes, "Perle's ideological obstructionism—concisely conveyed in his disparagement of Nitze as 'an inverterate problem-solver'—reached fantastic heights." Perle first tried to block Reagan from even learning the details of the agreement, and lied to Reagan, asserting falsely that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the agreement. Perle, in conjunction with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, eventually convinces Reagan to stick to the "zero option." Perle argues against pressure from key US allies such as Britain's Margaret Thatcher, telling Reagan, "We can't just do something; we've got to stand there—and stand firm." In 1983, Perle tells Weinberger that it would be better for the US to deploy no missiles at all than to accept the agreement. Scoblic will write: "In other words, he argued that foregoing deployment in return for nothing was better than foregoing deployment in exchange for something. The position made no sense, but the Reagan team held firm to it, once again preventing the adoption of a viable arms control deal." When the US deploys Pershing missiles in Europe in November 1983, the Soviets walk out of the talks. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 120-123]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Margaret Thatcher, Joint Chiefs of Staff, J. Peter Scoblic, Caspar Weinberger, Paul Nitze, Ronald Reagan, Reagan administration, Senate Armed Services Committee, US Department of State, Yuli Kvitsinsky
The winter issue of Kivunim, a "A Journal for Judaism and Zionism," publishes "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon. The paper, published in Hebrew, rejects the idea that Israel should carry through with the Camp David accords and seek peace. Instead, Yinon suggests that the Arab States should be destroyed from within by exploiting their internal religious and ethnic tensions: "Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon."
[Kivunim, 2/1982]
Entity Tags: Oded Yinon
Timeline Tags: Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks
In public, President Reagan says forcefully that nuclear war with the Soviet Union is not a viable option. In March, he says in response to a question as to the possibility of a victory in such a war, "I don't believe there could be any winners… everybody would be a loser." In April, he says flatly, "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." Yet out of the public eye, the Pentagon is preparing a document that espouses a "protracted nuclear war" as an officially viable alternative for the US (see March 1982). [Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]
President Reagan, giving a speech at his alma mater, Eureka College, renames the US-USSR SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiations START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). The renamed negotiations reflect profound dissension within the administration for and against arms limitation talks (see January 1981 and After and Early 1981 and After). State Department official Richard Burt, formerly opposed to arms negotiations, wants to ramp up the SALT talks and seek reductions in warheads and launchers. Defense Department official Richard Perle, the neoconservative who is working to block another arms limitation with the Soviet Union (see September 1981 through November 1983), wants to focus on payloads and "throw weight." The administration's compromise between the two positions—START—"ma[kes] no sense whatsoever," according to author J. Peter Scoblic. Initial Proposal Unacceptable to Soviets - START's initial position—reducing each side's deployment to 850 nuclear missiles and 5,000 warheads, of which no more than 2,500 can be on ICBMs—sounds like a significant reduction on paper, but many experts on all sides of the nuclear arms issue worry that such an agreement, putting so many warheads on so few missiles, would actually encourage each side to consider a first strike in a crisis. Arms control proponent Paul Warnke says, "If the Russians accept Mr. Reagan's proposal, he'll be forced to reject it himself." But because of the disparity in missile configurations between the US and the Soviets, such an agreement would require the Soviets to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenal by 60 percent, while the US would lose almost nothing; therefore, the Soviets would never agree to such a proposal. Scoblic will note that as an opening gambit this proposal might be successful, if the Americans were prepared to back down somewhat and give the Soviets something. But the US negotiators have no intention of backing down. The Soviets are keenly interested in the US agreeing to reduce the number of cruise missiles it has deployed, but Reagan signs a National Security Directive forbidding US negotiators from even discussing the idea until the Soviets made significant concessions on "throw weight," essentially tying his negotiators' hands. Chief US Negotiator Insults Soviets - The negotiations are made more difficult by the US team's chief negotiator, Edward Rowny. Rowny, a former national security adviser to hardline Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), does not believe in diplomacy with anyone, particularly the Soviets. According to Scoblic, Rowny believes in "telling it like it is" to his Soviet counterparts, which Scoblic calls "insulting one's negotiating opponents." As he has no real negotiating latitude, Rowny's diplomacy consists of little more than insults towards his Soviet counterparts. He tells them they do not understand the issues, boasts of his own Polish (i.e. anti-Russian) heritage, even stages walkouts over the seating arrangements. Rowny feels that he is opening a new era in negotiations, but in reality, the START talks are making no progress. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 123-124]
Entity Tags: Paul Warnke, Edward Rowny, J. Peter Scoblic, Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan, Richard Burt, Richard Perle
In another speech excoriating communism, President Reagan promises the British Parliament that "the march of freedom and democracy… will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expressionism of the people." He promises that the "forces of good [will] ultimately rally and triumph over evil," and says that the West cannot successfully coexist with communist regimes: "Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accomodation with totalitarian evil?" [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 116-117]
Disgusted with the Reagan administration's failure to make even the most basic progress in the START arms negotiations with the Soviet Union (see May 1982 and After), and viewing the administration's position as not only untenable but dangerous, Congress steps in and threatens to withhold funding for the MX missile (see 1981) if something is not done. In return, President Reagan appoints a blue-ribbon panel to study the negotiations and recommend alternatives (see January 1983-April 1983). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 124]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Reagan administration
One of five secret, underground 'control rooms' built by East German intelligence to help coordinate a Soviet counterattack against a US first strike. [Source: Central Intelligence Agency]By the beginning of 1983, the world seems closer to a nuclear holocaust than it has since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The idea of detente between the US and the Soviet Union has been all but abandoned, and European allies of the US use the term "Cold War II" to describe the new, chilly relations between the two superpowers. French President Francois Mitterrand compares the situation to the 1962 Cuban crisis and the 1948 confrontation over Berlin. American Cold War expert George Kennen says that the confrontation has the "familiar characteristics, the unfailing characteristics, of a march toward war—that and nothing else." While there is little confrontation between the two in a military sense, the tensions are largely manifested in the rhetoric of the two sides, with President Reagan calling the USSR an "evil empire" (see March 8, 1983) and declaring that American democracy will leave Soviet communism on "the ash-heap of history" (see June 8, 1982). In return, Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov calls Reagan "insane" and "a liar." The Soviet propaganda machine releases a storm of invective against Reagan and the US in general, comparing Reagan to Adolf Hitler and America to Nazi Germany. CIA analyst Benjamin Fischer will later write, "Such hyperbole was more a consequence than a cause of tension, but it masked real fears" (see May 1981). The Soviets are particularly worried about the US's intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), the Pershing IIs, to be deployed throughout Europe (see September 1981 through November 1983), as well as the Americans' new cruise missiles, the Tomahawks. Once those missiles are in place, the US, if it so desired, could destroy most of the Soviets' own ballistic missile sites with only four to six minutes' warning. The Soviets' own plans for pre-emptive strikes against the US have the destruction of the European Pershing and Tomahawk emplacements as a top priority. [Fischer, 3/19/2007]
Entity Tags: Francois Mitterrand, Benjamin Fischer, Yuri Andropov, George Kennen, Ronald Reagan
National Security Decision Directive 75 is signed into law by President Reagan. It further embeds the idea that a "protracted nuclear war" can be won (see March 1982), saying in part that Soviet calculations about war must always see "outcomes so unfavorable to the USSR that there would be no incentive for Soviet leaders to initiate an attack." [Air Force Magazine, 3/2008] NSDD 75 stipulates that the US must "contain and over time reverse Soviet expansionism" and "promote, within the narrow limits available to us, the process of change in the Soviet Union toward a more pluralistic political and economic system." Conservatives and hardliners will later interpret Reagan's words as indicating the US would actively engage in "rollback" of the USSR's control over other nations. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 145-146]
President Reagan gives his famous "evil empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals. The speech is designed to dissuade Christian evangelicals from supporting a freeze on the production and deployment of nuclear weapons, as the Conference of Catholic Bishops had already done. The speech, written by Anthony Dolan, a follower of hard-line conservative philosopher William F. Buckley, is what author J. Peter Scoblic calls "a model conservative blend of religious traditionalism and anticommunism [that makes] explicit the link between Manicheanism and nuclear war fighting." The cause is not merely peaceful co-existence, but an apocalyptic battle between good (the West) and evil (the Soviet empire), one that must be won no matter the costs. "We must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man," Reagan tells his listeners. "We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin. There is sin and evil in the world, and we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might." Supporting the nuclear freeze movement would be to commit the sin of moral relativism, Reagan says, putting moral strictures aside for temporal, even political concerns. "I urge you to beware the temptation of pride," he warns, "the temptation of blithely declaring yourself above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 117]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Anthony Dolan, J. Peter Scoblic, Conference of Catholic Bishops
Strategic Defense Initiative logo. [Source: United States Missile Defense Agency]President Reagan announces his proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, later nicknamed "Star Wars"), originally conceived two years earlier (see 1981). SDI is envisioned as a wide-ranging missile defense system that, if it works, will protect the United States from nuclear attacks from the Soviet Union or other countries with ballistic missiles, essentially rendering nuclear weapons, in Reagan's words, "impotent and obsolete." Reagan says, "I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." Soviet leader Yuri Andropov's response is unprececented in its anger (see March 27, 1983); Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrinyn says SDI will "open a new phase in the arms race." [PBS, 2000; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 129] US Hardliners 'Ecstatic' - Hardliners in and out of the Reagan administration are, in author J. Peter Scoblic's characterization, "ecstatic, seeing SDI as the ultimate refutation of [the principle of] mutual assured destruction and therefore of the status quo, which left [the US] unable to seek victory over the Soviet Union." The day after the speech, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) sends Reagan a one-sentence letter: "That was the best statement I have heard from any president." 'Less Suicidal' Adjunct to First Strike - Scoblic will write that if SDI is implemented as envisioned, "[a]lthough the Soviets would still be able to inflict enough damage that a first strike by the United States would be suicidal, it would be 'less suicidal' to the extent that such a concept made sense, which some Reagan officials believed it did. In short, SDI was a better adjunct to a first strike than it was a standalone defense. That made it critically destabilizing, which is why missile defense had been outlawed by [earlier treaties] in the first place." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 129-130]
Entity Tags: Strategic Defense Initiative, J. Peter Scoblic, Ronald Reagan, Anatoly Dobrinyn, Barry Goldwater, Yuri Andropov
In an unusual display of rhetorical anger, the Soviet Union's General Secretary, Yuri Andropov, responds to the US's announcement of its development of an anti-ballistic missile defense (SDI, or "Star Wars"—see March 23, 1983) by accusing President Reagan of "inventing new plans on how to unleash a nuclear war in the best way, with the hope of winning it." CIA analyst Benjamin Fischer will later call Andropov's statement "unprecedented." Ignoring the counsel of his own advisers to remain calm, Andropov, with unusually heated rhetoric, denounces the US program as a "bid to disarm the Soviet Union in the face of the US nuclear threat." Such space-based defense, he says, "would open the floodgates of a runaway race of all types of strategic arms, both offensive and defensive. Such is the real significance, the seamy side, so to say, of Washington's 'defensive conception.'… The Soviet Union will never be caught defenseless by any threat.… Engaging in this is not just irresponsible, it is insane.… Washington's actions are putting the entire world in jeopardy." Andropov's statement violates what Fischer will describe as a "longstanding taboo" against "citing numbers and capabilities of US nuclear weapons in the mass media" as well as "referr[ing] to Soviet weapons with highly unusual specificity." Fischer will go on to note: "[F]or the first time since 1953, the top Soviet leader was telling his nation that the world was on the verge of a nuclear holocaust. If candor is a sign of sincerity, then Moscow was worried." [Fischer, 3/19/2007; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 134]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, Yuri Andropov, Benjamin Fischer
The Reagan administration ignores the recommendations of a panel of experts named, at Congress's behest, to provide alternatives to the stalled START arms reduction talks with the Soviet Union (see January 1983-April 1983). Spurred by hardliners in the administration, President Reagan instead instructs his negotiators to offer, not one unacceptable alternative, as initially offered to the Soviets (see May 1982 and After), but two unacceptable alternatives: either accept drastic limits on "throw weights," or payloads, of their nuclear missiles, or accept harsh reductions in the number of ICBMs they can deploy, which will also reduce Soviet throw weight. The Soviets retort that the US is again trying to force them to disarm without agreeing to any reductions in their own nuclear arsenal. One Soviet official observes, "Your idea of 'flexibility' is to give a condemned man the choice between the rope and the ax." 'Firing' the Executive Branch - Congressional leaders have had enough of the administration's obstructionism, and brings in panel leader Brent Scowcroft to craft an alternative. In his 1984 book Deadly Gambits, future State Department official Strobe Talbott will write, "The Legislative Branch had, in effect, fired the Executive Branch for gross incompetence in arms control." Scowcroft writes a proposal that enables both the US and USSR to reduce their nuclear arsenals with a measure of equivalence, taking into account the disparities between the two. Misrepresenting the Proposal - The administration accepts Scowcroft's proposal with some minor amendments, but the Soviets balk at the agreement, in part because chief US negotiator Edward Rowny, a hardliner who opposes arms negotiations on ideological grounds, misrepresents the proposal to his Soviet colleagues. The "basic position of this administration has not changed," Rowny declares. In turn, the Soviets declare, "Ambassador Rowny is not a serious man." When the talks come to their scheduled end in December 1983, the Soviets depart without setting a date for resumption. More 'Sophisticated' Obstructionism - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write of the negotiations: "The conservative position had by now become far more sophisticated. By never rejecting negotiations outright, the administration could always claim that it was pursuing them with vigor, and if critics complained that its proposals were nonnegotiable, it could simply, if disingenuously, claim that it wanted to substantively reduce nuclear arsenals, not just perpetuate the status quo." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 124-125]
Entity Tags: Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Strobe Talbott, Brent Scowcroft, Edward Rowny, J. Peter Scoblic
The US announces that the Soviet Union has established a large early-warning radar system near the city of Krasnoyarsk. The installation violates the 1972 ABM Treaty (see May 26, 1972), which requires that such installations be located near the nation's border and oriented outward. It is possible that the Soviet radar installation is built in response to the US's recent decision to violate the ABM treaty by developing a missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
In a speech, President Reagan states what later becomes part of the ideology behind the "Reagan doctrine" of American assistance to anti-Soviet insurgencies (see May 5, 1985). "The goal of the free world must no longer be stated in the negative," he says, "that is, resistance to Soviet expansionism. The goal of the free world must now be stated in the affirmative. We must go on the offensive with a forward strategy for freedom." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 145]
Test firing of a US Pershing II IRBM. [Source: US Army / Public domain]The US and its NATO allies carry out a military exercise called "Able Archer," or "Able Archer 83," designed to simulate the use of nuclear weapons in an assault against the Soviet Union, and to test command and control procedures. The military exercise comes perilously close to touching off a real nuclear exchange with the USSR. The exercise—not the first of its kind, but the most expansive—is huge, spanning Europe from Turkey to Scandinavia; it involves the heads of state of countries like Great Britain and Germany; and, perhaps most alarmingly for the Soviets, involves NATO forces escalating their military alert levels to DEFCON-1, at which point NATO nuclear weapons have their safeguards disabled and are ready for launch. The Soviet's VRYAN program to detect a possible assault (see May 1981) is extremely active. On November 8, Moscow sends high-priority telegrams to its KGB stations in Western Europe demanding information about a possible surprise first attack on the USSR. Though little actual evidence exists, some sources erroneously tell Moscow that NATO ground forces are mobilizing. The KGB concludes that "Able Archer" is a cover for a real military assault; Warsaw Pact fighter units armed with nuclear weapons are put on alert in East Germany and Poland. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 134-135; Cardiff Western News, 11/10/2008] 'Frighteningly Close' to Nuclear War, Says Soviet Intelligence Official - Oleg Gordievsky, the intelligence chief of the Soviet embassy in London and a British double agent, warns the British that the West is entering what he calls a "danger zone." The Daily Telegraph will later write, "It was on Nov. 8-9 that the Kremlin had pressed what came close to a panic button." [Washington Post, 10/16/1988] In his memoirs, Gordievsky will write: "In the tense atmosphere generated by the crises and rhetoric of the past few months, the KGB concluded that American forces had been placed on alert—and might even have begun the countdown to war.… [D]uring ABLE ARCHER 83 it had, without realizing it, come frighteningly close—certainly closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962." [Fischer, 3/19/2007] Reagan 'Shocked' at Soviet Reaction - The exercise ends without incident, but National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane will later admit, "The situation was very grave." Secretary of State George Shultz terms the exercise "a close call" and "quite sobering." In early 1984, when the CIA reports that the Soviets had been convinced that the US was readying a nuclear strike, President Reagan will be, in author J. Peter Scoblic's words, "shocked" to realize that he and his administration "had nearly started a nuclear war." Reagan, in McFarlane's recollection, will show "genuine anxiety" and begin talking about the concept of Armageddon—the Biblical end times—with his advisers. [Fischer, 3/19/2007; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 134-135]
Entity Tags: Operation VRYAN, Ronald Reagan, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, KGB, J. Peter Scoblic, George Shultz, Robert C. McFarlane, 'Able Archer', Central Intelligence Agency, Oleg Gordievsky
Poster for 'The Day After.' [Source: MGM]The made-for-TV movie The Day After airs on ABC. It tells the story of a group of Americans in Lawrence, Kansas—the geographical center of the continental United States—who survive a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, and the harrowing days and weeks of their existence afterwards, as they slowly die from radiation poisoning and a lack of food and water. "Bootleged" copies of the movie have been available for months, adding to the anticipation and the controversy surrounding it. Concerns of 'Anti-Nuclear Bias' from White House - The movie, described by Museum of Broadcast Communications reviewer Susan Emmanuel as "starkly realistic," caused concern in the White House because of what it saw as its "anti-nuclear bias." (The production had taken place without the cooperation of the Defense Department, which had insisted on emphasizing that the Soviet Union had started the exchange depicted in the movie. The filmmakers did not want to take a political stance, and preferred to leave that question unclear.) To address the White House's concerns, ABC distributed a half-million viewers' guides to schools, libraries, and civic and religious groups, and organized discussion groups around the country. It will also conduct extensive social research after the broadcast to judge the reactions among children and adults. A discussion group featuring Secretary of State George Shultz takes place immediately after the broadcast. Its original broadcast is viewed by roughly 100 million viewers, an unprecedented audience. It is shown three weeks later on Britain's ITV network as part of a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament recruitment drive. Emmanuel will later write, "Not since then has the hybrid between entertainment and information, between a popular genre like disaster, and the address to the enlightened citizen, been as successfully attempted by a network in a single media event. " [Lometti, 1992; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 133; Museum of Broadcast Communications, 1/26/2008] Even though the filmmakers tried to remain politically neutral—director Nicholas Meyer says his film "does not advocate disarmament, build-down, buildup, or freeze"—proponents of the "nuclear freeze" movement hail the movie and conservatives call it a "two hour commercial for disarmament." (ABC's social research later shows that the film does not have a strong impact on viewers either for or against nuclear disarmament.) Conservative evangelist Jerry Falwell threatens, but does not execute, a boycott of the commercial sponsors of the film. Some Congressional Democrats ask that the movie be made available for broadcast in the Soviet Union. [Lometti, 1992] Powerful Impact on President Reagan - The movie has a powerful impact on one viewer: President Reagan. He will reflect in his memoirs that the film leaves him "greatly depressed" and makes him "aware of the need for the world to step back from the nuclear precipice." Author J. Peter Scoblic will later write: "If it seems vaguely ridiculous for a Cold War president to reach this conclusion only after watching a made-for-TV movie, remember that Reagan biographers have long noted that his connection to film was often stronger than his connection to reality. He also became far more intellectually and emotionally engaged when presented with issues framed as personal stories, rather than as policy proposals." Reagan's visceral reaction to the film heralds a fundamental shift in his approach to the US-Soviet nuclear arms race. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 133]
Entity Tags: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, George Shultz, Nicholas Meyer, American Broadcasting Corporation, Reagan administration, Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, Susan Emmanuel, US Department of Defense, J. Peter Scoblic
President Reagan, still shaken from the near-catastrophe of the "Able Archer" exercise (see November 2-11, 1983) and his viewing of the nuclear holocaust film The Day After (see November 20, 1983), receives a briefing on the nation's nuclear war plans (see March 1982). Reagan had put off the briefing for almost two years, causing some of his more hardline advisers and officials to wonder if the president was losing his taste for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. Some of them privately believe that Reagan might never order a nuclear attack on the USSR no matter what the provocation. The briefing is anchored by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Vessey. They explain to Reagan that the US has 50,000 Soviet sites targeted for nuclear strikes; half of those sites are economic, industrial, political, and population centers. If the US launches such a strike, they say, the USSR would almost certainly retaliate, destroying the US as a functional society. Officials at the briefing later recall Reagan appearing "chastened" and brooding afterwards. In his diary, Reagan calls the briefing a "most sobering experience," and writes of how much the briefing reminds him of The Day After: "In several ways, the sequence of events described in the briefings paralleled those in the ABC movie." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 133] He also writes in his diary how he is "even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and the Russians had nothing to fear from us." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139]
Entity Tags: Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan, John Vessey
Though President Reagan has long vowed to reduce the number of nuclear weapons between the US and Soviet Union (see April 1981 and After and March-April 1982), because of a variety of factors—his recalcitrant anti-communism (see May 27, 1981, June 8, 1982, and March 8, 1983), his belief that escalating the arms race between the two countries would force the Soviets to give up their attempt to stay abreast of the Americans (see Early 1981 and After, Early 1981 and After, and Spring 1982), and his aides' success at sabotaging the US-Soviet arms negotiations (see January 1981 and After, September 1981 through November 1983, May 1982 and After, and April 1983-December 1983)—recent events (see November 2-11, 1983 and November 20, 1983) have convinced him that he must fundamentally change the way he approaches the US's dealings with the Soviets. He tells reporters that he will no longer refer to the USSR as "the focus of evil." He drops what is known as "the standard threat speech" and begins speaking more frequently and openly of nuclear disarmament, to the dismay of many of his hardline advisers. In one speech, he says: "The fact that neither of us likes the other system is no reason to refuse to talk. Living in this nuclear age makes it imperative that we do talk." Speechwriter Jack Matlock, a pragmatist recently put in charge of the National Security Council's Soviet affairs desk, wins Reagan's approval to insert a quote from a speech by President Kennedy: "So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved." He stops using terms like "conflict" in favor of terms such as "misunderstandings." The rhetoric of "good vs evil," of "us vs them," is set aside in favor of discussions of mutual interests and problem solving. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 138-139]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Jack Matlock, National Security Council
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle urges the CIA to promote a propaganda program urging Soviet soldiers to defect to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. He is viewed by the CIA officers as the craziest of the many extreme right-wingers with whom they have dealt. [Crile, 2003, pp. 331-334]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle
President Reagan's new tone of reconciliation with the Soviet Union (see December 1983 and After) wins a positive response from Soviet Premier Konstantin Chernenko, a pragmatist who has just replaced the far more ideologically hardline Yuri Andropov. Chernonko writes that he sees an "opportunity to put our relations on a more positive track." The National Security Council and State Department both begin moving to renew serious dialogue with the Soviets. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139]
Entity Tags: National Security Council, Konstantin Chernenko, Yuri Andropov, Ronald Reagan, US Department of State
Buoyed by recent breakthroughs in dialogue with the Soviet Union (see February 23, 1984), the US and USSR resume arms control talks, these combining both the INF (see September 1981 through November 1983) and START (see May 1982 and After) talks into a single set of discussions. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139]
Entity Tags: Reagan administration
Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, in office just 13 months, dies of a long illness. Chernenko had moved to reopen talks with the US (see February 23, 1984 and Early 1985). President Reagan sends Vice President George H. W. Bush to the funeral with an invitation to hold a summit meeting with Chernenko's successor, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev signals his acceptance (see November 16-19, 1985). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Konstantin Chernenko
The US and the Soviet Union engage in the Nuclear and Space Talks (NST) in Geneva. The US wants to discuss a transition from mutual nuclear deterrence based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation (the concept of MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction) to increased reliance on ground- and space-based defense systems such as its Strategic Defense Initiative (see March 23, 1983). In its turn, the USSR wants a comprehensive ban on research, development, testing, and deployment of "space-strike arms." [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
Entity Tags: Strategic Defense Initiative
Secretary of State George Shultz offers prominent neoconservative and State Department official Elliott Abrams (see Early 1970s) the position of assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs (ARA), overseeing the department's South and Central American issues and initiatives, as well as those for the Caribbean. Abrams accepts and, according to State Department notes of the meeting, promises to "manage the emergence of EA [Abrams] as King of LA [Latin America]." Abrams begins his duties in July 1985, and quickly becomes one of the State Department's most vocal supporters of Nicaragua's Contra movement, often appearing before Congress as an emissary of the Reagan administration to ask for funds for the insurgent group. [Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters: Chapter 25: United States v. Elliott Abrams: November 1986, 8/4/1993]
Entity Tags: George Shultz, Contras, Reagan administration, US Department of State, Elliott Abrams
Timeline Tags: Iran-Contra Affair
Reagan officials admit the administration's policy of sponsoring armed insurgencies against Soviet-backed governments in developing nations. This policy is soon labeled the "Reagan doctrine" (see October 1983) [PBS, 2000] and credited with helping bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. However, author J. Peter Scoblic will later write that the "Reagan doctrine" never really existed. Aid to Anti-Soviet Insurgencies Far Less than Generally Thought - It is true, he will observe, that the US under President Reagan gave some assistance to countries with popular uprisings against Soviet-backed governments, but only in one—the "geostrategically insignificant" Grenada—did he send American troops to overthrow a Cuban-backed government and install a puppet government favorable to the US. In other countries such as Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Poland, and Angola, the US supported anti-communist or anti-socialist movements by funding and supplying arms to insurgents. But there is far more going on with these countries than conservatives will acknowledge. In Afghanistan, for example, the anti-Soviet mujaheddin were backed not only by the Carter administration, but by Chinese communists who opposed Soviet expansion into Central Asia. And Reagan's support is, in Scoblic's words, "equivocal"; by the time Reagan officials admit their administration's policy of supporting anti-Soviet insurgencies, it has already rolled back many of the Carter-era sanctions against the USSR even though Soviet troops still occupied Afghanistan. In 1981, when the USSR ordered the Polish government to crack down on the labor movement Solidarity, the US did little except briefly impose economic sanctions on high-tech goods. And though many Reagan officials and conservatives outside the administration called for military intervention against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the US never sends troops into that country, even though the idea of Soviet expansionism in Central America—the US's geopolitical "back yard"—is anathema to most Americans. (Reagan once complained to his chief of staff Donald Regan, "Those sons of b_tches [presumably administration hardliners] won't be happy until we have 25,000 troops in Managua, and I'm not going to do it." And it was certainly not in line with conservative thought to sell arms to Iran, even if it was to obtain the release of American hostages. No Actual Analysis of Support Strategies - Reagan's National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane, will later say: "Doctrines are things which come from thoughtful analysis of problems, threats, possible ways of dealing with them.… Not one nanosecond went into any [analysis] associated with the support of pro-democracy insurgent elements through the world." The Reagan administration reacted to events rather than followed thought-out guidelines laying out a plan of action against Soviet expansionism. Term Created by Neoconservative Columnist - The term "Reagan doctrine" was actually coined in April 1985 by neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, an obdurate advocate of the Nicaraguan Contras and for escalated US support of anti-Soviet insurgencies. He later explained that he "hoped that a 'doctrine' enshrining the legitimacy of overthrowing nasty communist governments would obviate the need for rhetorical ruses… and keep the debate—and the administration—honest." Scoblic will later write, "In other words, he knew that the administration was not naturally inclined to such an aggressive strategy." Policies Aligned with Predecessors - The Reagan policies towards the Soviet Union are actually much in line with those of his predecessors, stretching all the way back to Harry Truman, Scoblic will write. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 145-149]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Reagan administration, Robert C. McFarlane, Charles Krauthammer, J. Peter Scoblic
In 1985, US Congress passes legislation requiring US economic sanctions on Pakistan unless the White House can certify that Pakistan has not embarked on a nuclear weapons program (see August 1985 and August 1985). The White House certifies this every year until 1990 (see 1987-1989). However, it is known all the time that Pakistan does have a continuing nuclear program. For instance, in 1983 a State Department memo said Pakistan clearly has a nuclear weapons program that relies on stolen European technology. Pakistan successfully builds a nuclear bomb in 1987 but does not test it to keep it a secret (see 1987). With the Soviet-Afghan war ending in 1989, the US no longer relies on Pakistan to contain the Soviet Union. So in 1990 the Pakistani nuclear program is finally recognized and sweeping sanctions are applied (see June 1989). [Gannon, 2005] Journalist Seymour Hersh will comment, "The certification process became farcical in the last years of the Reagan Administration, whose yearly certification—despite explicit American intelligence about Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program—was seen as little more than a payoff to the Pakistani leadership for its support in Afghanistan." [New Yorker, 3/29/1993] The government of Pakistan will keep their nuclear program a secret until they successfully test a nuclear weapon in 1998 (see May 28, 1998).
Entity Tags: US Congress, White House, Pakistan
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, A. Q. Khan's Nuclear Network
Valerie Plame, the 22-year old daughter of a military family that followed its Air Force father around the globe during her childhood, joins the CIA. She is one of only 250 or so recruits accepted in the elite Career Trainee Program, a relatively new program installed by CIA Director William Casey and future director Robert Gates. These recruits receive intensive training in everything from academics, government and political structures, and paramilitary operations. Plame is one of the first women accepted in the program. She acquits herself very well in training, winning the respect of her fellow recruits. Classmate Larry Johnson, who will himself go on to a long career in the agency, will later recall of the young woman he knows only as "Val P.": "She didn't try to pretend to be something that she was not. She didn't shoot her mouth off. Looking back, for her age, how so damn young she was, she was remarkably mature, and very serious. It was clear she wanted to be taken seriously." Only three recruits from the "survivors" of the original class of 250 will go on to work as NOCs—nonofficial covered officers. Plame will be one of those three. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 315-317]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Valerie Plame Wilson, Larry C. Johnson
Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, speaking for the Reagan administration, proposes a new, "broad" interpretation of the US-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (see May 26, 1972) on national television. McFarlane proposes that space-based and mobile systems and components based on "other physical principles," i.e. lasers, particle beams, etc., should be developed and tested, but not deployed. (The traditional, "narrow" interpretation of the treaty is more restrictive.) Days later, President Reagan announces that while he and his administration support this "broad" interpretation, as a matter of national policy, the US's Strategic Defense Initiative (see March 23, 1983) will continue to observe the more traditional interpretation. [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
Entity Tags: Robert C. McFarlane, Strategic Defense Initiative, Ronald Reagan
Days before President Reagan's scheduled Geneva summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (see November 16-19, 1985), Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger attempts to sabotage the meeting by leaking to the press a letter he had recently written to Reagan outlining what he called systematic Soviet violations of existing arms treaties, and warning Reagan that if he makes any deal with Gorbachev, he implicitly accepts those infractions. Author J. Peter Scoblic will call it "a clumsy attempt to undermine the talks," and one that angers the more moderate administration officials. Instead of undermining the negotiations as he had intended, Reagan takes Weinberger off the Geneva delegation. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, J. Peter Scoblic
Reagan and Gorbachev at the Geneva summit meeting. [Source: Ronald Reagan Library]The long-awaited summit meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev takes place in Geneva. The meeting, later known as the "fireside summit," comes after months of Gorbachev's reforms in the USSR—"glasnost," or openness to government transparency; "perestroika," a retooling of the moribund Stalinist economy; and a dogged anti-alcohol campaign, among others. Gorbachev has packed the Kremlin with officials such as new Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze and chief economist Alexander Yakovlev, who back his reform campaigns. (Yakolev has even proposed democratization of the Soviet Communist Party.) Reagan and Gorbachev have exchanged several letters which have helped build relations between the two leaders. Reagan, unlike some of his hardline advisers, is excited about the summit, and has diligently prepared, even holding mock debates with National Security Council member Jack Matlock playing Gorbachev. Reagan has also quietly arranged—without the knowledge of his recalcitrant hardline advisers—for an extension of the scheduled 15-minute private meeting between himself and Gorbachev. The two actually talk for five hours. Nothing firm is agreed upon during this first meeting, but as Reagan later recalls, it marks a "fresh start" in US-Soviet relations. Gorbachev returns to the USSR promoting his and Reagan's agreement on the need to reduce nuclear arms; Reagan presents the summit as a "victory" in which he did not back down to Soviet pressure, but instead emphasized the need for the Soviets to honor basic human rights for their citizens. Gorbachev realizes that Reagan's abhorrence of nuclear weapons and his desire for a reduction in nuclear arms (see April 1981 and After) is personal and not shared by many of his administration's officials, much less the US defense industry. As a result, he focuses on personal contacts and appeals to Reagan, and puts less stock in formal negotiations between the two. [National Security Archive, 11/22/2005; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139-140; Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 1/23/2008]
Entity Tags: Soviet Communist Party, Alexander Yakovlev, Edvard Shevardnadze, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jack Matlock, Ronald Reagan
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, following up on the successful "fireside summit" between himself and Ronald Reagan (see November 16-19, 1985), sends Reagan a letter calling for drastic reductions in US and Soviet nuclear weapons. He proposes the complete eradication of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. He proposes cutting strategic arsenals by half, banning space-based weapons outright, and halting nuclear testing. He also proposes the complete dismantlement of all intermediate-range systems in Europe—in essence accepting the US's "zero option" that was such a sticking point in earlier negotiations (see September 1981 through November 1983). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 139-140] One administration hardliner, chief arms negotiator Edward Rowny (see May 1982 and After), warns Reagan that the Soviets are inherently untrustworthy and begs him "not to go soft on this." Instead of giving Rowny what he wants, Reagan launches into what Rowny will later recall as a Martin Luther King-like speech: "I have a dream. I have a dream of a world without nuclear weapons. I want our children and grandchildren particularly to be free of those weapons." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143]
Entity Tags: Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Edward Rowny
Gorbachev and Reagan at the Reykjavik summit. [Source: Ronald Reagan Library]President Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a second summit, to follow on the success of their first meeting almost a year before (see November 16-19, 1985). They base their discussion on Gorbachev's January proposals of deep cuts in the two nations' nuclear arsenals (see January 1986). Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons by 1996 - Gorbachev and his negotiators begin by reiterating Gorbachev's proposals for a 50 percent cut in all nuclear weapons, deep reductions in Soviet ICBMs, and the elimination of all European-based intermediate nuclear weapons. Reagan and his negotiators counter with a proposal for both sides to destroy half of their nuclear ballistic missiles in the next five years, and the rest to be destroyed over the next five, leaving both sides with large arsenals of cruise missiles and bomber-based weapons. Gorbachev ups the ante, proposing that all nuclear weapons be destroyed within 10 years. Reagan responds that it would be fine with him "if we eliminated all nuclear weapons," implicitly including all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and everywhere else. Gorbachev says, "We can do that," and Secretary of State George Shultz says, "Let's do it." Agreement Founders on SDI - The heady moment is lost when the two sides fail to reach an agreement on SDI—the Americans' "Star Wars" missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). Gorbachev cannot accept any major reductions in nuclear weapons if the US has a viable missile defense system; Reagan is convinced that SDI would allow both sides to eliminate their nuclear weapons, and offers the SDI technology to the Soviets. Gorbachev finds Reagan's offer naive, since there is no guarantee that future presidents would honor the deal. Reagan, in another example of his ignorance of the mechanics of the US nuclear program (see April 1981 and After), does not seem to realize that even a completely effective SDI program would not defend against Soviet cruise missiles and long-range bombers, and therefore would not end the threat of nuclear destruction for either side. Author J. Peter Scoblic will later write, "[SDI] would have convinced the Soviet Union that the United States sought a first-strike capability, since the Americans were so far ahead in cruise missile and stealth bomber technology." Gorbachev does not ask that the US abandon SDI entirely, but simply observe the terms of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (see May 26, 1972) and confine SDI research to the laboratory. Reagan refuses. Gorbachev says that if this is the US's position, then they would have to "forget everything they discussed." Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze breaks in, saying that the two nations are "so close" to making history that "if future generations read the minutes of these meetings, and saw how close we had come but how we did not use these opportunities, they would never forgive us." But the agreement is not to be. Participants' Reactions - As Shultz later says, "Reykjavik was too bold for the world." Shultz tells reporters that he is "deeply disappointed" in the results, and no longer sees "any prospect" for a third summit. Gorbachev tells reporters that Reagan's insistence on retaining SDI had "frustrated and scuttled" the opportunity for an agreement. Gorbachev says he told Reagan that the two countries "were missing a historic chance. Never had our positions been so close together." Reagan says as he is leaving Iceland that "though we put on the table the most far-reaching arms control proposal in history, the general secretary [Gorbachev] rejected it." Scoblic will later write, "In the end, ironically, it was Reagan's utopianism, hitched as it was to a missile shield, that preserved the status quo." [Washington Post, 10/13/1986; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142] Hardline Sabotage - One element that contributes to the failure of the negotiations is the efforts to undermine the talks by hardline advisers Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, who tell Reagan that confining SDI to research facilities would destroy the program. Perle and Adelman are lying, but Reagan, not knowing any better, believes them, and insists that SDI remain in development. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143-144] Going Too Far? - Reagan's negotiators, even the most ardent proponents of nuclear reduction, are shocked that he almost agreed to give up the US's entire nuclear arsenal—with Shultz's encouragement. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand are horrified at the prospect, given that NATO's nuclear arsenal in Europe is the only real counterweight to the huge Red Army so close to the borders of Western European nations. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142] Failure of Trust - The US-Soviet talks may well have foundered on an inability of either side to trust the other one to the extent necessary to implement the agreements. During the talks, Soviet aide Gyorgy Arbatov tells US negotiator Paul Nitze that the proposals would require "an exceptional level of trust." Therefore, Arbatov says, "we cannot accept your position." [National Security Archives, 3/12/2008]
Entity Tags: Paul Nitze, J. Peter Scoblic, Kenneth Adelman, Gyorgy Arbatov, George Shultz, Francois Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev
Richard Perle serves as a member of the Defense Policy Board, an unpaid but influential position in the Pentagon. [Inter Press Service, 6/29/2004]
Gorbachev and Reagan sign the INF treaty. [Source: Ronald Reagan Library]US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a fundamental disarmament agreement. The two sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which has been stalled for years (see September 1981 through November 1983). The INF Treaty eliminates an entire class of intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missiles. It also provides for on-site verifications for each side (which agrees with Reagan's signature quote, "Trust but verify"). And it marks the first real multi-lateral reduction of nuclear weapons, even if it is only a 5 percent reduction. Strong Approval from American Public - Reagan's approval ratings, weakened by public outrage over the Iran-Contra affair, rebound, and Gorbachev becomes a celebrity to many Americans (he causes a near-riot in Washington when, the day before signing the treaty, he spontaneously leaps out of his limousine and wades into the gathered crowd of well-wishers). Altogether, some 80 percent of Americans support the treaty. Unable to Continue Longer-Range Negotiations - Reagan wants to build on the INF agreement to reopen the similarly moribund START negotiations (see May 1982 and After), but recognizes that there is not enough time left in his administration to accomplish such a long-term goal. Instead, he celebrates his status as the first American president to begin reducing nuclear arms by scheduling a visit to the Soviet Union. Conservative Opposition - Hardline conservatives protest Gorbachev's visit to Washington, and the signing of the treaty, in the strongest possible terms. When Reagan suggests that Gorbachev address a joint session of Congress, Congressional Republicans, led by House member Dick Cheney (R-WY—see 1983), rebel. Cheney says: "Addressing a joint meeting of Congress is a high honor, one of the highest honors we can accord anyone. Given the fact of continuing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, Soviet repression in Eastern Europe, and Soviet actions in Africa and Central America, it is totally inappropriate to confer this honor upon Gorbachev. He is an adversary, not an ally." Conservative Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Committee is more blunt in his assessment of the treaty agreement: "Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as in clout, and not in a position to make judgments about Gorbachev at this time." Conservative pundit William F. Buckley calls the treaty a "suicide pact." Fellow conservative pundit George Will calls Reagan "wildly wrong" in his dealings with the Soviets. Conservatives gather to bemoan what they call "summit fever," accusing Reagan of "appeasement" both of communists and of Congressional liberals, and protesting Reagan's "cutting deals with the evil empire" (see March 8, 1983). They mount a letter-writing campaign, generating some 300,000 letters, and launch a newspaper ad campaign that compares Reagan to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Steven Symms (R-ID) try to undercut the treaty by attempting to add amendments that would make the treaty untenable; Helms will lead a filibuster against the treaty as well. Senate Ratification and a Presidential Rebuke - All the protests from hardline opponents of the treaty come to naught. When the Senate votes to ratify the treaty, Reagan says of his conservative opposition, "I think that some of the people who are objecting the most and just refusing even to accede to the idea of ever getting an understanding, whether they realize it or not, those people, basically, down in their deepest thoughts, have accepted that war is inevitable and that there must come to be a war between the superpowers." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 142-145]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jesse Helms, George Will, Free Congress Committee, Neville Chamberlain, Steven Symms, Paul Weyrich, William F. Buckley, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
As the end of President Reagan's final term approaches, conservatives and hardliners have radically changed their view of him. They originally saw him as one of their own—a crusader for good against evil, obstinately opposed to communism in general and to any sort of arms reduction agreement with the Soviet Union in specific. But recent events—Reagan's recent moderation in rhetoric towards the Soviets (see December 1983 and After), the summits with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (see November 16-19, 1985 and October 11-12, 1986), and the recent arms treaties with the Soviets (see Early 1985 and December 7-8, 1987) have soured them on Reagan. Hardliners had once held considerable power in the Reagan administration (see January 1981 and After and Early 1981 and After), but their influence has steadily waned, and their attempts to sabotage and undermine arms control negotiations (see April 1981 and After, September 1981 through November 1983, May 1982 and After, and April 1983-December 1983), initially quite successful, have grown less effective and more desperate (see Before November 16, 1985). Attempts by administration hardliners to get "soft" officials such as Secretary of State George Shultz fired do not succeed. Conservative pundits such as George Will and William Safire lambast Reagan, with Will accusing him of "moral disarmament" and Safire mocking Reagan's rapport with Gorbachev: "He professed to see in Mr. Gorbachev's eyes an end to the Soviet goal of world domination." It will not be until after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall (see November 9, 1989 and After) that conservatives will revise their opinion of Reagan, in the process revising much of history in the process. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143-145]
Entity Tags: George Will, George Shultz, William Safire, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan
Veteran diplomat Joseph Wilson arrives in Baghdad to assume the post of Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) under US Ambassador April Glaspie. Wilson has extensive experience throughout sub-Saharan and Central Africa, as well as brief stints on the staffs of Senator Al Gore (D-TN) and Representative Tom Foley (D-WA). Wilson will later write that he and his colleagues share the belief that Iraq is ruled by "a shockingly brutal regime… an ugly totalitarian dictatorship" and its leader, Saddam Hussein, a "sociopath." For the next three years, Wilson and his colleagues will send harsh reports of Hussein's systematic violations of the human rights of his subjects to Washington. Walking a Fine Line between Isolation and Appeasement - Still, most of the embassy staff, including Wilson and Glaspie, are not advocates of totally isolating Hussein with extreme economic and diplomatic sanctions. Wilson will write, "Isolating a regime often results in isolating ourselves, and we then lose any leverage we might have to influence outcomes. On the other hand, when dictators are treated like any other leaders, it's often interpreted by them as a free pass to continue in their autocratic ways, while critics label it as appeasement.… The merits of ideologically driven diplomacy versus a more pragmatic approach have been a recurring theme of foreign policy debates throughout the history of international relations and America's own domestic policies." 'Tread Lightly' - Wilson will note that "Iraq's Arab neighbors unanimously urged us to tread lightly. They argued that after almost a decade of a grinding war with Iran, Saddam had learned his lesson and that his natural radicalism would now be tempered by the harsh experience.… [I]t was better to tie him to relationships that would be hard for him to jettison than to leave him free to make trouble with no encumbrances. Engaging with him at least kept him in our sights." Iraq had behaved monstrously during its war with Iran, and had offended the world with its chemical attacks on its own citizens (see August 25, 1988) and its Iranian enemies (see October 1988). But it had emerged from the war as a powerful regional player both militarily and economically. The Bush administration is torn between trying to moderate Hussein's behavior and treating him as an incorrigible, irredeemable enemy of civilization. And Washington wants Iraq as a balancing force against Iran, which is awash in virulently anti-American sentiment (a sentiment returned in full by many American lawmakers and government officials). No other country in the Gulf region will tolerate the presence of US forces as a counterbalance to Iran. So, as Wilson will write, "All of Iraq's neighbors continued to argue for a softer approach; and since they clearly had at least as much at stake as we did, the Bush administration was willing to follow their lead." [Wilson, 2004, pp. 78-79, 451]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Saddam Hussein, April Glaspie
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
President George H.W. Bush says he will "vigorously pursue" the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars") missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]
Entity Tags: Strategic Defense Initiative, George Herbert Walker Bush
Dick Cheney's official photo as Secretary of Defense. [Source: US Department of Defense]Former Representative Dick Cheney (R-WY) becomes secretary of defense under President George H. W. Bush. [US Department of Defense, 11/24/2005] Cheney is the second choice; Bush's first consideration, former Texas senator John Tower, lost key Senate support when details of his licentious lifestyle and possible alcoholism became known. Cheney was the choice of, among others, Vice President Dan Quayle and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who both feel that Bush needs someone in the position fast, and the best way to have someone move through the confirmation process is to have someone from Congress. Although Cheney never served in the military, and managed to dodge service during the Vietnam War with five student deferments, he has no skeletons in his closet like Tower's, and he has the support of Congressional hawks. His confirmation hearings are little more than a formality. Cheney Leaves the House, Gingrich Steps In - Cheney's House colleague, Republican Mickey Edwards, later reflects, "The whole world we live in would be totally different if Dick Cheney had not been plucked from the House to take the place of John Tower." Cheney was "in line to become the [GOP's] leader in the House and ultimately the majority leader and speaker," Edwards will say. "If that [had] happened, the whole Gingrich era wouldn't have happened." Edwards is referring to Newt Gingrich (R-GA), the future speaker of the House who, in authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein's own reflections, "ushered in fifteen years of rancorous, polarized politics." While Cheney is as partisan as Gingrich, he is not the kind of confrontational, scorched-earth politician Gingrich is. According to Edwards, no one can envision Cheney moving down the same road as Gingrich will. Successful Tenure - As the Pentagon's civilian chief, many will reflect on Cheney's tenure as perhaps his finest hour as a public servant. "I saw him for four years as [defense secretary]. He was one of the best executives the Department of Defense had ever seen," later says Larry Wilkerson, who will serve in the Bush-Cheney administration as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "He made decisions. Contrast that with the other one I saw [Clinton Secretary of Defense Lester Aspin], who couldn't make a decision if it slapped him in the face." Cheney will preside over a gradual reduction in forces stationed abroad—a reduction skillfully managed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. Bringing Aboard the Neoconservatives - Cheney asks one of Tower's putative hires, Paul Wolfowitz, to stay; Wolfowitz, with fellow Pentagon neoconservatives Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad, will draft the Pentagon's 1992 Defense Planning Guide (DPG) (see February 18, 1992), a harshly neoconservative proposal that envisions the US as the world's strongman, dominating every other country and locking down the Middle East oil reserves for its own use. Though the DPG is denounced by President Bush, Cheney supports it wholeheartedly, even issuing it under his own name. "He took ownership in it," Khalilzad recalls. Cheney also brings in his aide from the Iran-Contra hearings, David Addington (see Mid-March through Early April, 1987), another neoconservative who shares Cheney's view of almost unlimited executive power at the expense of the judicial and legislative branches. [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 87-95]
Entity Tags: Lester Aspin, George Herbert Walker Bush, David S. Addington, Dan Quayle, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, Jake Bernstein, Lawrence Wilkerson, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, John Tower, Newt Gingrich, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Mickey Edwards, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Lou Dubose, Paul Wolfowitz
Timeline Tags: US Military
When Dick Cheney becomes defense secretary (see March 20, 1989 and After), he brings into the Pentagon a core group of young, ideological staffers with largely academic (not military) backgrounds. Many of these staffers are neoconservatives who once congregated around Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s). Cheney places them in the Pentagon's policy directorate, under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, himself one of Jackson's cadre. While most administrations leave the policy directorate to perform mundane tasks, Wolfowitz and his team have no interest in such. "They focused on geostrategic issues," one of his Pentagon aides will recall. "They considered themselves conceptual." Wolfowitz and his team are more than willing to reevaluate the most fundamental precepts of US foreign policy in their own terms, and in Cheney they have what reporters Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman call "a like-minded patron." In 1991, Wolfowitz will describe his relationship to Cheney: "Intellectually, we're very much on similar wavelengths." A Different View of the Soviet Union - Cheney pairs with Wolfowitz and his neoconservatives to battle one issue in particular: the US's dealings with the Soviet Union. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has been in office for four years, and has built a strong reputation for himself in the West as a charismatic reformer. But Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the others see something far darker. Cheney opposes any dealings with the Soviets except on the most adversarial level (see 1983), and publicly discusses his skepticism of perestroika, Gorbachev's restructing of the Soviet economy away from a communist paradigm. In April, Cheney tells a CNN news anchor that Gorbachev will "ultimately fail" and a leader "far more hostile" to the West will follow in his footsteps. Some of President Bush's more "realistic" aides, including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Bush himself, have cast their lot with Gorbachev and reform; they have no use for Cheney's public advocacy of using the USSR's period of transitional turmoil to dismember the nation once and for all. Cheney's Alternative Policy - Cheney turns to the neoconservatives under Wolfowitz for an alternative strategy. They meet on Saturday mornings in the Pentagon's E ring, where they have one maverick Sovietologist after another propound his or her views. Almost all of these Sovietologists echo Cheney and Wolfowitz's view—the USSR is on the brink of collapse, and the US should do what it can to hasten the process and destroy its enemy for good. They assert that what the Soviet Union needs is not a reformer guiding the country back into a papered-over totalitarianism, to emerge (with the US's help) stronger and more dangerous than before. Instead, Cheney and his cadre advocate enforced regime change in the Soviet Union. Supporting the rebellious Ukraine will undermine the legitimacy of the central Soviet government, and supporting Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, will strike at the heart of the Gorbachev regime. Bush and his core advisers worry about instability, but Cheney says that the destruction of the Soviet Union is worth a little short-term disruption. Failure - Bush will not adopt the position of his defense secretary, and will continue supporting Gorbachev through the Soviet Union's painful transition and eventual dissolution. After Cheney goes public one time too many about his feelings about Gorbachev, Baker tells Scowcroft to "[d]ump on Dick" with all deliberate speed. During the final days of the Soviet Union, Cheney will find himself alone against Bush's senior advisers and Cabinet members in their policy discussions. [New Republic, 11/20/2003]
Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Boris Yeltsin, Franklin Foer, US Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, James A. Baker, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Spencer Ackerman
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal (see February 1989), is convicted of three counts of falsifying and destroying documents (see November 21-25, 1986 and March 16, 1988), of obstructing a Congressional investigation, and of illegally receiving a gift of a security fence around his home. He is acquitted of nine other counts. Though facing up to ten years in prison and a $750,000 fine, North receives an extremely lenient sentence: three years' suspended, two years' probation, community service, and a $150,000 fine. He also has his Marine service pension suspended. During the trial, North admits he lied repeatedly to Congress during his testimony (see July 7-10, 1987), but says that his superiors, including National Security Adviser John Poindexter, ordered him to lie under oath. North contends that he was made a scapegoat for the Reagan administration. "I knew it wasn't right not to tell the truth about these things," he says, "but I didn't think it was unlawful." US District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell calls North a "low-ranking subordinate who was carrying out the instructions of a few cynical superiors," and says to North: "I believe you still lack understanding of how the public service has been tarnished. Jail would only harden your misconceptions." North, who had been staunch in justifying his actions in the Iran-Contra hearings, now expresses remorse over his crimes, saying, "I recognize that I made many mistakes that resulted in my conviction of serious crimes… and I grieve every day." North, who is a popular speaker with conservative organizations, can pay off his fine with six speaking engagements. Nevertheless, he says he will appeal his conviction. [BBC, 7/5/1989; New York Times, 9/17/1991] North's conviction will indeed be overturned by an appeals court (see September 17, 1991).
Entity Tags: John Poindexter, Reagan administration, Oliver North, Gerhard Gesell
Ahmed Chalabi, the charismatic, MIT-educated head of Jordan's Petra Bank, flees to London before charges can be filed against him in regards to the collapse of his bank (see August 2, 1989 and April 9, 1992). Unworried about the Jordanian charges, Chalabi, whose formerly wealthy family fled Iraq in 1958, establishes a loose grouping of Iraqi exiles called the Iraqi National Congress, with the aim of overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Chalabi has already forged ties with some US neoconservatives like Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Perle. Now he begins cultivating ties with other influential neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Douglas Feith, and Perle's protege, David Wurmser. Chalabi makes the rounds of the symposia and conferences, and wins new allies in pro-Israeli think tanks such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Chalabi's appeal to the neoconservatives is directly linked to his support for Israel as a regional power. The new Iraq he will build, he promises, will have strong relations with Israel. He even declares his intention to rebuild the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, which has been inoperative since the 1940s. The neoconservatives ignore his close ties with the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy, as well as the Petra Bank's funding of the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Amal. Instead, the neoconservatives view Chalabi as a potential savior of the Middle East. Patrick Clawson of WINEP says, "He could be Iraq's national leader." [Unger, 2007, pp. 123-125]
Entity Tags: Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Albert Wohlstetter, Ahmed Chalabi, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, Iraqi National Congress, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Saddam Hussein, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson
Valerie Plame, a young CIA case officer (see Fall 1985), begins her first tour of foreign duty in Athens, Greece. She will remain there for three years, functioning out of the US Embassy under diplomatic cover as, primarily, a recruiter of foreign nationals to serve as CIA assets. Athens is a beautiful but dangerous assignment, with the radical leftist group known as "November 17" having killed a number of US officials over the past years, including CIA station chief Richard Welch in 1975. Plame's station chief, Doug Smith, will remember her as an ambitious agent who worked hard: "It's rare that someone on a first tour does a really wonderful job. She did well." Her deputy station chief, who only allows himself to be identified as "Jim," will add that he has "a very high opinion of Valerie" and the caliber of her work. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 319-321]
Entity Tags: Doug Smith, Central Intelligence Agency, Valerie Plame Wilson, "Jim" (CIA case officer)
West and East Germans come together as the Berlin Wall is torn down. [Source: FreedomAgenda (.com)]The Berlin Wall, the fortified network of guarded walls and fences that separates East and West Berlin, is officially breached. East Germany's communist government gives reluctant permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of protesters in the East, and thousands in the West, converged on crossing points and demanded that the Wall be opened. When the gates open, hundred of East Berliners surge through to be welcomed by their Western fellows; shortly thereafter, crowds of people clamber atop the Wall and begin tearing it apart, chunk by chunk. The 28-mile Wall has stood since 1961, and has served as a symbol of the so-called "Iron Curtain" forcibly separating the communist East from the democratic West. The Wall became symbolically breached days before when a new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border and allowed its citizens to flee into West Germany. Czechoslovakia followed suit shortly thereafter. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl calls the decision to open the Wall "historic." [BBC, 11/9/1989; Chronik Der Mauer, 2/9/2008] Symbolic End to Cold War - Many reporters and historians will mark the "Fall of the Wall" as the date, symbolic or real, when the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union officially ended. [US News and World Report, 11/13/2008]
Entity Tags: Helmut Kohl
American conservatives, recently contemptuous of former President Ronald Reagan (see 1988), use the fall of the Berlin Wall (see November 9, 1989 and After) to resurrect the image of Reagan as the victorious Cold Warrior who triumphed over world communism. Historical Revisionism - In doing so, they drastically revise history. In the revised version of events, Reagan was a staunch, never-wavering, ideologically hardline conservative who saw the Cold War as an ultimate battle between good (Western democracy) and evil (Soviet communism). As author J. Peter Scoblic will describe the revision, it was Reagan's implacable resolve and conservative principles—and the policies that emanated from those principles—that "forced the Soviet Union to implode." Conservatives point to the so-called "Reagan Doctrine" of backing anti-Soviet insurgencies (see May 5, 1985) and to National Security Decision Directive 75, accepting nuclear war as a viable policy option (see January 17, 1983), as evidence of their assertions. But to achieve this revision, they must leave out, among other elements, Reagan's long-stated goal of nuclear disarmament (see April 1981 and After, March-April 1982, November 20, 1983, and Late November 1983), and his five-year history of working with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear arms between the two nations (see December 1983 and After, November 16-19, 1985, January 1986, October 11-12, 1986, and December 7-8, 1987). USSR Caused Its Own Demise - And, Scoblic will note, such revisionism does not account for the fact that it was the USSR which collapsed of its own weight, and not the US which overwhelmed the Soviets with an onslaught of democracy. The Soviet economy had been in dire straits since the late 1960s, and there had been huge shortages of food staples such as grain by the 1980s. Soviet military spending remained, in Scoblic's words, "enormous, devouring 15 percent to 20 percent of [the USSR's gross national product] throughout the Cold War (meaning that it imposed three times the economic burden of the US defense budget, on an economy that was one-sixth the size)." Reagan did dramatically increase US military spending during his eight years in office (see Early 1981 and After), and ushered new and potentially devastating military programs into existence (see 1981 and March 23, 1983). Conservatives will assert that Reagan's military spending drove the USSR into implicit surrender, sending them back to the arms negotiation table with a newfound willingness to negotiate the drawdown of the two nations' nuclear arsenals (see Early 1985). Scoblic will characterize the conservatives' arguments: "Whereas [former President] Carter was left playing defense, the Gipper [Reagan] took the ball the final 10 yards against the Reds, spending them into the ground and leading the United States into the end zone." Scoblic calls this a "superficially… plausible argument," but notes that Carter, not Reagan, began the tremendous military spending increase (see Late 1979-1980), and more importantly, the USSR made no effort to match Reagan's defense spending. "Its defense budget remained essentially static during the 1980s," he will write. "In short, the Soviet Union suffered no economic distress as a result of the Reagan buildup." Scoblic will also note that conservatives had long insisted that the USSR could actually outspend the US militarily (see November 1976), and never predicted that increasing US military spending could drive the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 145-149]
Entity Tags: J. Peter Scoblic, Ronald Reagan
Conservative defense analyst Frank Gaffney calls for a second round of "Team B" competitive intelligence exercises (see November 1976), writing, "[N]ow is the time for a new Team B and a clear-eyed assessment of the abiding Soviet (and other) challenges that dictate a continued, robust US defense posture." [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]
Entity Tags: Frank Gaffney, 'Team B'
Iraqi tanks poised to roll into Kuwait. [Source: Kristina Greve]Iraq invades Kuwait. In response, the US suspends National Security Directive 26 (see October 2-6, 1989), which established closer ties with Baghdad and mandated $1 billion in agricultural loan guarantees to Iraq. [Los Angeles Times, 2/23/1992] The secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, begins pressing President Bush to go to war with Iraq without securing Congressional approval. His rationale is two-fold: he doesn't need Congressional authority, and he might not get it if he asks. Cheney moves the Pentagon onto a full war footing, even going so far as to create what author and former White House counsel John Dean calls "his own concocted high-risk plans of battle, which he tried but failed to sell at the White House." Bush will juggle Cheney's view with that of House Speaker Tom Foley, who will give the president a document signed by 81 Democratic members who insist that if Bush wants to go to war, he needs the authorization of Congress. Dean will write that Cheney's arguments "are based on bogus legal and historical arguments that have been made before, but no one has pushed them longer or harder than he has." [Dean, 2007, pp. 89-91] Bush decides not to follow Cheney's advice. In 2007, author and reporter Charlie Savage will observe: "By urging Bush to ignore the War Powers Resolution on the eve of the first major overseas ground war since Congress enacted the law, Cheney was attempting to set a powerful precedent. Had Bush taken his advice and survived the political fallout, the Gulf War would have restored [former President] Truman's claim that as president he had 'inherent' powers to send American troops to the Korean War on his own" (see June 30, 1950). [Savage, 2007, pp. 62]
Entity Tags: John Dean, George Herbert Walker Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Bush administration (41), Charlie Savage, US Department of Defense
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US-Iraq 1980s
Over 100 Americans are trapped in the US Embassy in Kuwait City. Perhaps 2,000 Americans are hiding from Iraqi soldiers throughout the capital city, and at least 115 are already in Iraqi custody, essentially being held as hostages. Iraqi forces bring a number of Americans, mostly oilfield workers, to Baghdad, where they are put up at local hotels. The Iraqis do not allow the "freed" Americans to leave the hotels or meet with US Embassy officials. It is clear that though the Iraqis call them "guests," they are hostages. Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson, the ranking US diplomat in Baghdad, learns to his dismay that his superiors in the US are similarly reluctant to consider the Americans as hostages, arguing that if US officials begin calling them hostages, then the Iraqis will treat them as such. Perhaps Iraq is holding the Americans only until their control of Kuwait is complete, and will release them. But, except for the release of a single American girl (see Early August, 1990), the Iraqis release no hostages. Embassy personnel succeed in rounding up around 100 Americans, mostly workers for the Bechtel Corporation, and housing them in the confines of the Embassy building. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 117-118, 126]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Bechtel
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