The Reagan Administration’s Latin America Policy: An Appreciation (English Version)

It’s hard to believe that anything as complicated, convoluted, multi-faceted, highly dramatic, globally controversial and history-shaping as the Reagan Administration’s Latin America policy could be summed up in a single sentence.  But if it could be, that sentence would be: “Ronald Reagan saved Central America – and the Caribbean – from Communism – and the effort nearly cost him his Presidency.”

There was, of course, much more to Ronald Reagan’s Latin America policy than Central America – and, indeed, more to it than the fight against Communism.  But that single sentence captures the two dominant, intimately related landmarks of the Reagan presidency.  On the one hand, the 8-year-long running battle with Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, El Salvador’s FMLN, and other Central American guerrilla groups -- and with their Cuban and Soviet backers, the U.S. Congress, and assorted regional and European kibitzers, interlopers and critics – to contain and roll-back Communist in-roads in Central America.  On the other, the Iran-Contra scandal -- involving, in part, the diversion of funds from secret arms transfers to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan ‘contras’ – a scandal that rocked the Reagan Administration to its foundations and might have cost the President his job.

In this essay, I will try to discuss a series of ironic contrasts and paradoxes about the Reagan Administration’s Latin America policy – a policy that established to a very important degree the agenda for U.S. relations with Latin America for Ronald Reagan’s next three successors.  But since this essay is thematic, it might be important at the outset to briefly summarize what was Reagan Administration policy toward Latin America.  This policy, in my analysis, contained six main elements.

•    Preventing take-overs by Marxist guerrillas or movements in El Salvador, Guatemala, or any other threatened Central American or Caribbean country and, if possible, rolling back such take-overs where they had already occurred (Grenada, Nicaragua).
•    Providing economic support to the Central American and Caribbean region to address the root causes of economic stagnation and weakness in these societies and strengthen them against  Marxist influences – but to do so not merely through direct transfer payments but by opening wider trade opportunities in the U.S. market, to provide a partially market-based solution.  Hence, the Caribbean Basin Initiative – the Reagan Administration’s signature economic initiative for the region.
•    Promoting the restoration of democratic governments across Latin America to replace the military dictatorships that predominated across the region – with the exceptions of Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Ecuador (recently restored to democracy at the time), the Dominican Republic, Mexico (then a one-party monopoly ratified by regular elections) and almost all of the English-speaking Caribbean.  Democratic government – and with it, economic freedom – provided the best guarantees of respect for human rights and the best insurance against the appeal of Marxist tyrannies, and therefore should be promoted as a global initiative.  This was the principal point of Reagan’s June, 1982 Westminster speech to the British Parliament – dubbed the “Reagan Doctrine” at the time.
•    Strengthening economic relations and other forms of cooperation with Mexico and Canada – our two nearest neighbors (though the latter is certainly not part of Latin America) – and in the process converting our thinking process about our Hemisphere from one that was conceptually divided into “north” and “south” to one that encompassed all of the Western Hemisphere in a single vision.
•    Energetically combating narcotics trafficking through a variety of initiatives with both producer and entrepot nations.
•    Isolating Castro’s Cuba internationally, pressing for the withdrawal of Cuban advisers from Nicaragua and their adventurous deployments in far-flung Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, and taking a tough – apparently successfully intimidating – line against future provocations like the 1979 Mariel boatlift that averted a repetition of such incidents.
These were the main outlines of the Reagan Administration’s policy toward Latin America.  Almost any particular action, reaction or initiative by the Administration within the region during its 8 years in office – 1981-89 – could be either encompassed within or deduced from these principles. 

So what can be said about Reagan Administration Latin America policy that hasn’t been said already?  I will try to discuss Reagan Administration Latin America policy as a series of contrasting propositions – some embraced, at least in part, by Reagan’s fiercest and most vehement critics; others extolled by his most ardent supporters.  My point is simple: Reagan’s Latin America policy was so multi-faceted, so philosophically grounded, and also so internally contentious and controversial that it defies simple characterization.  Indeed, it embraced – in a positive way – many of the features that its critics vehemently excoriated.  But these very features – when combined with other features to which Reagan’s critics gave scant acknowledgement or credit – helped ensure its ultimate success.  That success, though somewhat frayed by events of the last 12 years, continues to pay dividends for the United States and the Western Hemisphere today.

Reagan Latin America Policy Was a Reaction to the Carter Administration’s Policies.  Five key policy ideas of President Jimmy Carter’s Administration clearly formed a backdrop to and helped shape Reagan Administration Latin America policy.

1.    President Carter had declared, in a 1977 Notre Dame commencement speech, “We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear.”  This phrase – our “inordinate fear of Communism” -- was viewed by many Reagan supporters to form leitmotif of the Carter Administration, helping to explain its passivity in the face of the manifest spread of Soviet and Cuban influence and Marxist regimes in Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa, culminating in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  Reagan certainly did not share such a non-chalant attitude toward the threat of Communism – Soviet, Cuban or otherwise.  His Administration was bound to strike an opposite posture when the threat of Soviet, Cuban or Marxist expansion was concerned.

2.    One of President Carter’s signal accomplishments – and one he ensured was completed before his term of office ended – was the negotiation and signing of the Panama Canal Treaties, ceding the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, as had been demanded by Panama’s then dictator, leftist/populist General Omar Torrijos.  The Treaties transitioned the Canal to Panamanian operation. Under their terms, the U.S. would eventually vacate its military bases in Panama protecting the Canal.  The treaty for the Carter Administration was intended to signal a new U.S. relationship with Latin America – one involving less intervention, interference or extraterritorial presence, and more equality, reciprocity, and partnership.  To many of Reagan’s supporters, however, the Treaties symbolized American weakness and retreat – entrusting what was presumably a strategically vital ocean link to a historically unstable government of a poor and otherwise vulnerable country at the demand of a mercurial and often vociferously anti-American dictator whose legitimacy came from his monopoly of force.  Reagan campaigned against the treaties in his Presidential race.  It was an open question whether he would permit them to go into force on his watch.

3.    One of the hallmarks of President Carter’s Administration was his espousal of an activist human right policy internationally.  He and his Administration clearly saw this as not only a moral imperative but as a unique and special mission of the United States in the world: standing up for our highest values and employing our power in defense of the world’s downtrodden and oppressed.  Patricia Darian, whom Carter appointed as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (a new re-naming and expansion of the responsibilities of this State Department Bureau) took the lead for the Administration – publicly and in policy councils – to promote this agenda.  Principled and rooted in American values as it was, to many of Carter’s critics and Reagan’s supporters this policy often translated, as a practical matter, into hectoring, bullying, excoriating, and punishing friendly governments with leaders who were not democratically elected while “giving a pass” to radically anti-American, leftist or Marxist regimes – perhaps because we had little or no influence with them in any case.  The energetic and dogged pursuit of Carter’s human rights policies led to serious friction and deteriorating relations with a number of Latin American governments – notably Brazil and Chile.  This struck many in the Reagan camp as a poor way to advance either respect for human rights or America’s foreign policy interests.

4.    The Carter Administration had helped ensure the downfall of the long-running, corrupt Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua by embargoing arms and assistance to the Somoza government and helping to force the Somoza family and their allies to flee in the face of rising street protests and guerrilla violence.  The nominally “coalition” government that replaced Somoza, however, was quickly dominated by the Marxist Sandinista guerrilla movement, which promptly forged close ties with Cuba, suppressed democratic opponents, and began channeling Cuban assistance to Marxist guerrillas fighting to overthrow the governments of neighboring Central American countries – notably El Salvador, where a military regime was replaced by a feeble coalition junta in the year before Reagan’s inauguration.  Reagan and his supporters viewed these trends with alarm.  The Carter Administration seemed content to sit on the sidelines while Marxist guerrillas with Cuban and Nicaraguan support toppled one Central American government after another and installed regimes hostile to the U.S. in their places.  Worse, its “principled” stances on human rights, arms sales, and such issues led it to take stances that, wittingly or unwittingly, abetted these trends.  The Reagan Administration came to office determined to reverse this course.

5.    When Castro unleashed the Mariel boatlift in 1979, the Carter Administration was caught flat-footed.  Refugees from Cuba were suddenly streaming into southern Florida by the tens of thousands, picked up by relatives permitted briefly into Cuban waters to collect them, or arriving by craft they had secured or commandeered in Cuba.  The strain on local relief resources and law enforcement was enormous – especially once it became evident that Castro was using the opportunity to empty his prisons of some of his worst offenders and deposit them on U.S. territory.  The Carter Administration’s response was hesitant and paralyzed.  Castro had, in a stroke, shown that he had significant capacity to unleash a serious problem of social dislocation on the United States and the U.S. Administration appeared helpless to stop it.  Carter’s political popularity in south Florida promptly and consequently plummeted.  Reagan and his supporters sized up this situation and determined that they would never be caught unprepared for such a migratory flood across the Florida straits again.  And they would make sure that Castro would not succeed in inflicting another such toll on the U.S. – economically, socially or politically – on their watch.

Reagan Latin America Policy Built and Expanded on Carter Administration Policies.  In many respects Reagan Administration Latin America policy was rooted in opposition to and rejection of the Carter Administration approach.  Viewed from another vantage-point, however, Reagan policies offered important points of continuity with certain Carter policies, overcoming their limitations by expanding on them more ambitiously than President Carter would have considered.  The primary example of this is Reagan’s democracy initiative and its application to Latin America.  By promoting something more over-arching and ambitious than simply urging governments to respect their citizens’ human rights, Reagan arrived at a formula that had the potential of universal appeal and applicability.  Given the choice, Reagan and his team reasoned, everyone everywhere would prefer to be able to elect – and peacefully change -- their leaders than have them imposed by force.  And democratically elected leaders and governments would naturally respect their citizens’ human rights – certainly moreso than dictatorships.  Additionally, democracies had an historical track record of not waging aggressive or subversive warfare against their democratic neighbors – making democratic government a further antidote to Marxist guerrilla subversion and an asset in resolving border conflicts and other irritants around the region.

The democracy formula equipped Reagan and his Administration with a powerful, positive agenda to promote with military or personalistic dictatorships in Latin America, Africa and Asia – coaxing them to lead their people back to, or forward toward, democracy – as well as with entrenched, ideologically driven Marxist systems in the Soviet bloc and China.  Its potential universalism provided the antidote to the “selective indignation” ascribed to Carter Administration human rights policies.  And it was even truer – if such could be imagined – to the United States’ founding principles.

The Carter Administration’s ambition of forging a relationship of greater equality, reciprocity, and partnership with Latin America was also embraced by the Reagan Administration – but with two important caveats.  First, to these hopes of the Carter team, Reagan policy-makers would have added “responsibility” – encouraging the United States’ Latin American neighbors to take more responsibility for their own destinies and well-being and to be less implicitly reliant on the United States as either the explanation for or the solution to their problems.  Second – and very much unlike Carter – the Reagan team was not nearly so phobic about intervention or involvement in the affairs of the U.S.’s hemispheric neighbors – particularly when things seemed “headed off the rails.”  The dispatch of U.S. military advisers to El Salvador; fomenting and supporting the ‘contra’ guerrillas against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, the tenacious legislative battles to sustain or restore assistance flows for the ‘contras’ and the anti-Communist struggle in Central America; the quick decision to intervene to oust Grenada’s Marxist government when a coup threatening the safety of American students there presented the opportunity – these were all as natural and integral to Reagan Latin America policy as they would have been alien to President Carter’s approach.

Reagan also passed up his chance to derail one of the Carter Administration’s legacies in Latin America policy: the Panama Canal Treaties.  He and his Administration recognized, whatever their campaign rhetoric, that trying to “walk back the cat” on the deal with Panama would make for strained relations with Panama for decades ahead, would likely make the U.S. tenure in the Canal Zone even more untenable in the long run and, above all, would send a signal of U.S. and Reagan Administration intentions that would be misread and exploited by America’s enemies all over Latin America.  Repudiation of the Treaties would get his Administration off on the worst possible foot with the Hemispheric neighbors with whom he hoped to form closer partnerships.  So Reagan accepted the treaties he had vocally criticized on the campaign trail.

Reagan Administration Latin America Policy Was Highly Successful.  In 1986, sitting across the table from the assembled leaders of the Eastern Caribbean on a visit to Grenada almost a year and a half after the October, 1983 rescue operation, Reagan showed the leaders two two-color maps of the Western Hemisphere – one color denoting democratic countries, the other non-democratic ones.  The first map illustrated the state of affairs when Reagan assumed office five years earlier – and the only countries colored in as democracies were the seven mentioned above and the independent Caribbean micro-states (except Grenada).  The second map illustrated the situation five years later – and the only countries colored in as dictatorships were Cuba, Nicaragua, and Chile.  (The Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti had recently been ousted and an interim government was forming up – though no one could have accurately forecasted Haiti’s long and tortured path to a semblance of democratic government today.) 

This was the first-order measure of the success of Reagan Administration Latin America policy -- a continent undergoing a political transformation, largely supported and encouraged by the United States.  But there were other measures as well. 

Central America was preserved against the spread of Cuban-supported Marxist dictatorships.  The guerrilla assault on El Salvador’s interim and then Christian Democrat-led permanent government was being beaten back even while the leaders of Salvador’s myriad security services were being cajoled and bludgeoned into desisting counter-productive “death squad” activities against those they considered enemies.  Guatemala’s government was similarly stabilized and supported in its struggles against its Marxist guerrillas.  Honduras and Costa Rica were supported against the intimidation of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and persevered with their democratic governments – deep-rooted in Costa Rica’s case, fledgling in the case of Honduras.

The Caribbean Basin Initiative was enacted – a signal economic achievement of Reagan’s Administration.  It provided an imaginative one-way free trade area offering the democratic, qualifying countries of Central America and the Caribbean duty-free access to the U.S. market for almost all products and commodities.  The CBI had two other components as well: “permanently” (actually temporarily, for most of the next decade) elevated levels of economic assistance; and a convention tax exemption (permitting the same tax deductibility of business meetings and conventions held in CBI countries as if held within the U.S.) as an incentive to the tourism industry.  The former had a significant impact in Central America and the Caribbean, with each participating Caribbean country receiving at least one major infrastructure project that would not otherwise have been attainable.  The latter had limited impact, even though most CBI-eligible countries signed the Tax Information Exchange Agreements required by Congress to qualify, because few if any of the countries had or built facilities large enough to attract and accommodate large U.S. business conventions.  Initially time-limited, the CBI was progressively expanded and extended (and eventually, during the Clinton Administration, made permanent) to enhance its effectiveness in fostering employment, export-led growth, foreign exchange earnings, and economic diversification.  By the end of the Reagan Administration, the United States had surpassed Great Britain as the largest trading partner of the Caribbean region – underscoring the CBI’s impact.

Thanks to the Grenada Rescue Operation alluded to earlier, Cuban influence in the Caribbean region was dealt a nearly 20-year setback.  With the ejection of Cuban troops and presence from Jamaica after the 1980 election of Prime Minister Edward Seaga – replacing his leftist/populist predecessor, Michael Manley – and the expulsion of the Cubans from Grenada in 1983, Castro’s forces were almost literally “kicked back home all the way across the Caribbean.”  The record of bloodshed and brief anarchy spawned when Greada’s Marxist Prime Minister was toppled and killed by even more radically doctrinaire Marxists, and the documentary and physical evidence of Cuban influence, plans, and activities uncovered in the wake of the rescue operation, made an impression on Caribbean leaders that “put them off” ties with Castro and Cuba for more than a decade.  Only in the mid- to late-1990s – with the Cold War ended and Cuba, limping along economically in the absence of Soviet economic support, desperately searching for friends – did Cuba begin to break out of its post-Grenada isolation in the Caribbean region.

In its efforts to stem narcotics trafficking to the United States – diagnosed as another threat to the stability and democratic governability of narco-trafficking and transit countries – the Reagan Administration scored some important successes, and certainly exerted prodigious energies.  Reagan assigned Vice President Bush to head the South Florida Task Force – a concerted effort to combat rampant narco-related gun violence, murders, court calendar backlogs, over-crowding of prison facilities, and – at the root of all this – unprecedented drugs smuggling into the area.  The result was a concerted, multi-agency “push” – engaging the military and U.S. intelligence assets for the first time in the counter-narcotics fight --that “mopped up” most of these South Florida problems by 1983-84.  The targeted drugs interdiction effort focused on South Florida and its Caribbean approaches was subsequently widened into a National Narcotics Border Interdiction System – again under the Vice President’s direction – to coordinate a multi-agency crackdown along the Gulf coast and the Mexican border, as well as the east and west coasts and the Canadian border.  These, combined with expanded eradication and interdiction programs in cooperating countries like Colombia, produced some spectacular drugs hauls, arrests, and cocaine laboratory disruptions.  (These vigorous initiatives, which included efforts to extradite drugs kingpins from Colombia to the U.S. for trial and imprisonment, also spawned the subsequent terrorism campaigns by the Cali and Medellin cartels against the Colombian government and led, for a time, to the prohibition of extradition of Colombians under their revised Constitution.)  In hindsight, though, the dimensions of the drugs problem the Reagan Administration was confronting – and its subsequent growth despite these efforts – make the Regan-era initiatives look like an effort to “sweep back the sea.” 

Reagan Administration Latin America Policy Courted Disaster.  The zealous conduct of Reagan’s Central America policy – particularly the publicly and Congressionally controversial initiative to arm the ‘contra’ guerrillas in Nicaragua – led, of course, to the Iran-Contra scandal – a furor so intense that, at one time, it might have resulted in the impeachment of the President.  Although it certainly wasn’t the intention of President Reagan or his policy makers to court disaster in this way, the zealous, risk-taking approach of some key staffers – notably Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North – abetted by other, more senior Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level officials, nearly cost the President his job when the scandal came to light. 
Funding for the ‘contra’ guerrillas had been controversial from the outset – from the moment the Reagan team calculated that the best and perhaps the only way to effectively pressure the Nicaraguan government to desist support for the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation front) guerrillas in El Salvador would be to confront them with an armed insurgency of their own inside Nicaragua.  In the simplest terms, the ‘contra’ effort amounted to “fighting fire with fire.” 

Congressional opponents – particularly those who either sympathized with the Marxist Sandinistas or believed such tactics represented violations of international law and another nation’s sovereignty in which the U.S. should not be involved, as well as those who simply saw an issue on which they could attack the Reagan Administration in the name of seemingly sacred principles – tried repeatedly to restrict or cut off funding for this effort altogether.  At one stage, for a time in 1985-86, they definitively succeeded via the third so-called Boland Amendment, which closed loop-holes left open by earlier efforts. 

Determined not to abandon fighters who had bet their lives and their families’ safety on the reliability of U.S. support, the Reagan Administration scrambled for ways to keep the ‘contras’ supplied and “in the field” while it struggled to reverse the funding cut-off.  A too-clever-by-half plan was devised with the participation of Lt. Col. North, in which proceeds from secret arms transfers to Iran – separately authorized by President Reagan in an effort to court what were imagined to be Iranian “moderates” who could intercede and effect the release of American hostages taken in Lebanon – could be used to provide arms and supplies to the ‘contras.’ 

The plan was very ingenious and creative, and it would have worked but for two problems.  First, it was apparently illegal.  Many subtle legal points were involved.  Was the Arms Export Control Act violated if the President had actually authorized arms transfers prohibited to Iran as a designated terrorist-supporting country?  Were funds from those transfers remitted to private intermediaries – and then channeled to the ‘contras’ in the form of in-kind supplies – actually Federal Government funds whose disbursement to the ‘contras’ was prohibited?  These and many other interesting points would have made for fascinating debate in legal proceedings.

Second – and equally important – the scheme was exposed … by the Iranians, and on the eve of the 1986 mid-term Congressional elections!  The revelation of the Iranian connection led to an urgent inquiry by then-Attorney General Ed Meese that inevitably uncovered the ‘contra’ connection – resulting in the resignations of the President’s National Security Adviser and, subsequently, his Chief of Staff, the firing of Lt. Col. North, prolonged investigations by two special commissions appointed by the President, by Congressional committees, and by an Independent Counsel, leading eventually to a number of guilty pleas, convictions, suspensions from law practice, indictments, and Presidential pardons – as well as some acquittals.

While the Reagan Administration obviously never intended for the Iran-Contra arms deal to come to light, it was clearly an extremely high-risk strategy undertaken to further one of the Administration’s most central foreign policy goals – but carrying the risk of completely devastating that goal if exposed.  Many questions have swirled around Iran-Contra for the two decades since its revelation.  Was it the by-product of over-zealous staff, operating without proper oversight and supervision, blundering into a potentially explosive initiative without proper regard for its potential political fall-out – and hence compromising the Presidency?  (It is hard to imagine that the staff and senior officials involved miscalculated or underestimated the risk – considering that some of them, at the time, were operating under the personal threat of terrorist attack.)  To what extent was the Iran-Contra scandal a result of President Reagan’s own management style – his detachment, his big-picture focus, and his delegation of details to others – or of an “end-justifies-the-means” attitude that his critics claim he fostered in his Administration?  Questions like these will be endlessly debated by scholars and historians.  What is clear is that this stratagem to save the ‘contra’ effort during the drought of official assistance while the Boland Amendments were in force was so risky that it not only jeopardized Reagan’s Latin America policy but also his Presidency.  Only his formidable skills as a communicator, his forthright style with the American people, and his decision to cooperate fully with investigators, wherever their investigations might  lead – bolstered by a bravura defense of his own actions by Lt. Col North before the combined House and Senate investigative committees – saved the day.

Reagan’s Latin America Policy Was Unbalanced.  A criticism frequently heard of Reagan’s Latin America policy in the 1980s was that it was so tightly focused on Central America that it ignored or paid short shrift to other larger, more important countries of the Western Hemisphere.  There is perhaps something to this point – but only up to point.  It is true that Central America – and the complicated legislative politics involved in sustaining military advisory presence in El Salvador, dealing with issues like “death squad” activity that threatened to undermine Congressional support for U.S. efforts there, lethal and non-lethal aid to the ‘contras’, etc. – consumed enormously more of the Administration’s energy than all other aspects of U.S. Western Hemisphere relations combined.  That’s especially true if one considers also that the efforts expended on behalf of the Caribbean – enacting the CBI, fostering a Regional Security System for the Eastern Caribbean micro-states, the Grenada Rescue Operation – were ultimately connected to U.S. strategic objectives in Central America.

But two questions seem pertinent in response: “So what?”; and “Why not?”.  Of course, Central America was the consuming focus for Reagan Administration Latin America policy.  Here was the “main threat” – at that moment in time – from Soviet- and Cuban-supported Marxist expansion.  Here, too, was the main opportunity – to reverse an adverse trend of events Reagan inherited while preserving and defending U.S. interests and the freedom of Central American people.  Why shouldn’t President Reagan have focused his Administration’s energies in this area?  Where else in the Hemisphere would they have been better or more productively focused at that period?  (Ironically, many of the initiatives fomented by the Reagan Administration in support of its Central America policy or that arose in consequence of those policies involved the Reagan Administration in intense diplomatic contacts with virtually all of the important nations of Latin America.  These included its initial efforts to enlist Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia as donors to the CBI, which led instead to the San Jose accords by which these countries provided petroleum on concessionary terms to the CBI recipient countries, as well as the years-long, multi-party “Contadora” negotiations seeking a regional solution to the Central American imbroglio.  This was certainly an interesting diplomatic by-product of Reagan’s reputed Central American “obsession.”)

Reagan Administration Latin America Policy Was Finely Balanced --Complex, Comprehensive and Multi-faceted.  Side-by-side with its intense focus on Central America – an intensity of U.S. focus on that region never duplicated before or since – the Reagan Administration conducted a remarkably balanced, complex, comprehensive, and multi-faceted policy toward Latin America and, indeed, toward the whole Western Hemisphere.  Far from being uni-dimensional, Reagan policies toward the region had a major economic focus – the CBI, as already mentioned, and, toward the end of the Administration, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement that became the foundation and pattern for NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) with Mexico and Canada in the George H.W. Bush Administration four years later. 

Additionally, a major emphasis of the Reagan Administration’s foreign assistance programs world-wide had important ramifications in Latin America.  The Reagan team came to office convinced that U.S. economic assistance programs were too heavily focused on government-to-government transfer payments and did little or nothing to foster private sector growth and development.  (Since the government recipients often adopted statist policies that similarly short-shrifted private sector growth in favor of state-led development plans or other official ambitions, this critique held that, in effect, U.S. assistance programs were helping these governments strangle their private sectors while propping up ultimately unsupportable schemes of state-run monopolies and enterprises.)  Reagan’s team came to office determined to channel more U.S. assistance funding to schemes and projects that provided the private sectors of recipient countries access to credit and opportunities to participate in development and economic diversification activities.  An important new thrust of Reagan era policies was to promote “private sector-led growth and development.”  The seeds planted by the Reagan Administration through this effort in the 1980s bore fruit in the 1990s, when many countries throughout Latin America adopted extensive programs of privatization and explicitly adopted strategies of export-driven, private-sector led growth and development.  (Admittedly, this approach has become unfashionable in several Latin American countries – Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia -- since the dawn of the new century.  But the ideas and initiatives that Reagan planted – policies with a proven track-record of success – will still be there, ready for adoption by those countries when their recent policies – policies with a decades-long proven track-record of failure  -- inevitably collapse.)

Despite its preoccupation with Central America, the Reagan Administration, as mentioned, pursued policies that broke new ground in bilateral relations with its North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico.  The most tangible manifestation of this is the U.S- Canada Free Trade Agreement already mentioned – the first tangible building block toward a vague idea Reagan mentioned in his 1980 Presidential campaign but never fully elaborated or developed: a North American accord between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.  With Mexico, Reagan set a regular annual meeting with his Mexican counterpart, alternating between a site in the U.S. and a city in Mexico, and established a bi-national commission headed by Secretary of State Shultz and the Mexican Secretary for Foreign Relations to address the range of bilateral issues.  During his Presidency, Reagan dealt with Mexican Presidents Jose Lopez Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid; the end of his term nearly coincided with the inauguration of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.  Bilateral relations on most issues that were materially consequential between the two countries steadily improved.  For instance, the U.S. launched two major financial bail-outs for Mexico’s collapsing peso during the Reagan Administration and Mexico joined the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, predecessor to the World Trade Organization) at this time.  But bilateral relations continued to be bedeviled by Mexico’s long-standing tradition of appeasing its domestic left by challenging and criticizing U.S. policy toward the region and pursuing much friendlier relations with Castro’s Cuba.  Successive Mexican Foreign Secretaries under the Lopez Portillo and de la Madrid governments continued this practice.  Real change on this point of perennial irritation came only during the Salinas government after Reagan left office.

Reagan policy toward Latin America also involved a major counter-narcotics efforts, noted earlier – yet another aspect of a multi-faceted, complex, comprehensive and – in this sense – balanced overall policy toward the region.

Reagan’s Latin America Policy Was “Militaristic.”  During the 1980s a common refrain criticizing Reagan’s policies – in Latin America, but also further afield – was that his approach was “militaristic.”  The counter-guerrilla focus in Central America, with the attendant involvement of military advisers, security assistance personnel, intelligence collectors and analysts, and military equipment and supplies, undoubtedly contributed to this impression.  And there was an element of truth to it.

Reagan’s Administration did not embrace, as its chief strategic tool, what has come today to be called “soft power.”  That is not to say that Reagan’s team ignored or minimized the importance of communications and public opinion in the battle for people’s “hearts and minds” in the guerrilla conflicts of Central America – or in the wider perception of the U.S. and its policies, in Latin America and beyond.  Indeed, Reagan’s Administration devoted more effort and energy -- and created more new and innovative programs – in the field of “public diplomacy” than any other before or since.  It used “public diplomacy” as a strategic asset in the “battle of ideas” with the Soviet Union and its Cuban clients.  This was perfectly predictable given the years of experience many members of the Reagan team had accumulated observing, studying, and trying to counter Soviet “active measures” disinformation programs around the world.  Naturally they would not ignore or overlook the importance of affirmatively explaining and defending U.S. policies in creative, sophisticated, and media-savvy ways – and of exposing the hard evidence that they gradually accumulated – in places like Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Africa – of what the Soviets and their clients were up to.  So central was “public diplomacy” to Reagan Administration Latin America policy that, eventually, a special, Ambassadorial-level Coordinator for Latin America Public Diplomacy was created in Secretary of State George Shultz’s office, specifically charged to “get the facts out” regarding U.S. policy and Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan activities.

But, for all its emphasis on “public diplomacy”, the Reagan Administration was definitely not a “soft power” Administration.  In the Grenada Rescue Operation, it employed U.S. forces in an interventionist context for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War (discounting President Ford’s ill-fated rescue attempt of the freighter Mayaguez in Southeast Asia shortly after the fall of Saigon).  It sent advisers and assistance to beleaguered militaries in Central America.  It armed and supported the ‘contras’ against the Sandinistas.  It mined Nicaragua’s harbors – to pressure the Sandinistas and hamper the delivery of arms.  It promoted, as mentioned, the development of a Regional Security System among the Eastern Caribbean micro-states which, lacking any armed forces, were otherwise vulnerable to being taken over by the proverbial dinghy filled with a handful of heavily armed fighters – an initiative that led former Barbados Prime Minister Errol Barrow, then in opposition, and other left-leaning Caribbean leaders to decry what they styled the “militarization” of the Caribbean.  (This leftist/populist critique of the sitting governments and their role in this Reagan Administration initiative may have made for good electoral politics – but none of these opposition parties withdrew their countries from the RSS when they eventually achieved or regained power.)

Did Reagan’s Latin America policy have an important – even major – military component?  Absolutely.  That’s what enabled it to fight the Sandinistas, FMLN, and other Central American guerrillas to a stand-still – setting the stage for their repeated defeat through democratic elections – and what made it possible to drive the Cubans back across the Caribbean and keep them “bottled up” at home for more than a decade.

Reagan Latin America Policy Was Diplomatic.  Despite its reputation in some quarters for pursuing a militaristic approach to Western Hemisphere relations, Reagan Administration Latin America policy was involved heavily and from the outset in regional and multi-lateral diplomacy.  It was simultaneously involved in repeated efforts to build political consensus and Congressional support for its Central America policy.  Among the earliest efforts in this direction was the Kissinger Commission – a “blue ribbon”, bi-partisan panel of respected foreign policy and regional experts assembled by the Administration to report on the situation in Central America and what would be required to address it.  The Commission’s report lent support to the Administration’s central diagnosis of the regional situation and its policy of providing military and economic assistance to the Salvadoran and other Central American governments threatened by Marxist guerrillas.  It also urged pursuit of diplomacy as an additional track to resolve regional conflicts.  As an outgrowth of the Commission’s report, President Reagan appointed a succession of Special Envoys for Central America – first, former Democratic Senator from Florida Richard Stone (a choice, it was hoped, that would garner more bi-partisan support for the Central America policy on Capitol Hill), and subsequently Ambassador Harry Schlaudeman, one of America’s most widely experienced diplomats in the Latin American region, and later Ambassador Phillip Habib, a highly regarded global trouble-shooter.

Throughout the Reagan Administration the United States deployed and engaged in diplomacy as one track of its efforts to rein in the Marxist insurgent threats to Central America – in frequent exchanges with Soviet leaders; in the multi-lateral diplomacy among the Central American states that led to adoption of the San Jose principles in 1982; and through the “Contadora process” of multi-laterally led regional dialogue among the Central American countries, promoted by Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama.  While the United States and Cuba were not formally part of the “Contadora process” talks, the U.S. followed the process closely and was properly – and safely -- receptive and supportive of these efforts in public.  Privately, though, the Reagan Administration was skeptical -- of the motives of some of the countries involved, of the objectives of the negotiating process, of the risk that these talks were simply a stalling tactic and a smoke-screen for continued Cuban and Nicaraguan support to the Salvadoran guerrillas which would nevertheless hamper an effective U.S. response. 

The United States’ hand in the search for a diplomatic solution to Central America’s conflicts – and the overall credibility of Reagan’s Central America policy – was strengthened by the success of a series of elections held in El Salvador – first for a constituent assembly to re-write El Salvador’s constitution, and then for a national government – over the course of Reagan’s first three years in office.  The overwhelming turn-out of Salvadoran voters; their courage standing in line to vote, sometimes for hours, in the face of guerrilla threats, intimidation, and violence; the fairness and integrity of the results as attested by large numbers of international observers; and the results, clearly favoring democratic candidates and parties -- all these helped isolate the FMLN and their Sandinista backers – and raised the obvious and awkward question of why free, open and genuinely competitive elections weren’t happening in Nicaragua.  The Salvadoran elections, and elections held in Honduras and Nicaragua, represented early successes of the Reagan Administration’s democracy initiative – and in the area of the world where Reagan foreign policy was subject to the most heated partisan debate.  They were a veritable “life-saver” for the Administration’s Central America policy, in both its diplomatic and military dimensions.  They strengthened the legitimacy of the democratic parties at the negotiating table and of the U.S. while weakening the credibility of the Sandinistas and the FMLN guerrillas.  And they provided Congressional supporters of Reagan’s Central American policies with a potent new set of talking points while confronting the Congressional critics of the policy with some awkward moral dilemmas.

Reagan Latin America Policy Was “Ideological” – and Principled.  Supporters of Reagan’s policies toward Latin America would have called it “principled”; his opponents would have scored it as “ideological” – particularly in its focus on the Cuban/Marxist threat to Central America and the Caribbean.  To some extent both characterizations are merited.  There was an indisputable and manifest “anti-Communist” ideological component to Reagan Administration policy which helped account for its particular focus and its outcomes.  What else would one expect?  Ronald Reagan had been for many years an outspoken anti-Communist and advocate of a strong national security posture for the United States.  Arguably, it was this very “ideological” – or, better, “principled” – character of his Administration that made it possible to persevere through the scorching opposition of Congressional Democrats to Reagan’s Central American policy and their repeated efforts to undermine and reverse it.  It certainly helped the Administration to keep its policy on-course in the face of the strong cross-currents of national politics, the distraction of events elsewhere in the world, and the eventual consequences of the Iran-Contra scandal that emerged from it.  While Reagan’s critics had a field day ridiculing his outlook as “blinkered” or “narrow-minded”, it was the steadfastness of conviction shared by the President and most members of his team that ultimately enabled his policies – particularly in Central America -- to pull through.

The “principled” character of Reagan-era Latin America policy was perhaps best illustrated by the Falklands/Malvinas War between Argentina and Great Britain.  Much has been written about the diplomatic maneuverings, strategic and alliance calculations, and military events – too much to replicate here.  For present purposes, however, it seems clear that the ultimate U.S. decision to provide material and intelligence support to Britain against Argentina – a critical issue in both sides’ appraisal of the episode – was, at bottom, a principled one.  Although an ally of both countries, U.S. alliance commitments to Britain, under NATO and a web of other security agreements, were stronger, more automatic, and more reciprocal than its alliance commitments to Argentina under the Rio Treaty.  Argentina resorted to force without specific provocation to change the international territorial status quo – recognized almost universally, if not by Argentina.  In so doing, an unelected Argentine military junta had attacked a possession of the world’s oldest democracy – in an effort to place islanders there who did not share Argentina’s ethnicity, national identity, or political traditions under Argentine rule by force.  This enterprise was undertaken ostensibly to recover a piece of Argentina’s territory long-alienated from its sovereignty and redress a perceived, enduring insult to national pride.  But to the outside world it was a transparent attempt by a floundering dictatorship to save itself through the distraction of a (presumably cheap and easy) military adventure and a successful “re-conquest” of Argentine territory. 

There was some debate in Reagan Administration circles about the appropriate posture for the U.S. to take in this conflict – whether to side with Britain or Argentina or remain completely neutral and aloof, rendering assistance to neither.  But, at the end of the day, no one in the White House at the time with any knowledge of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her budding relationship with Reagan, or of Reagan’s character and outlook, or of the balance of equities at stake could have had any doubts about the ultimate U.S. stance.  Faced with such a dilemma, it was inconceivable that Reagan would have opted to support a dictatorship in an aggression against a closely-allied democracy’s possession – especially when it would soon become announced U.S. policy to try, as much as possible, to do away with such dictatorships. 

The Reagan Administration’s principled stance in the Falklands/Malvinas War may have temporarily set back U.S.-Argentine relations 25 years ago – a setback that would probably have lasted longer if Argentina’s succession of military governments had not quickly given way to the return of democracy with the election of Raul Alfonsin.  Fortunately, no lasting damage was done.

Reagan Latin America Policy Was Pragmatic.  Despite its “principled” character, Reagan’s approach to Latin America was at the same time highly pragmatic.  This was arguably a necessity.  There would have been no way to achieve anything close to a vision as sweeping as the democracy initiative of the Westminster speech without making some temporary and pragmatic compromises along the way.  It would have been impossible to advance the Administration’s counter-narcotics agenda with a wholly purist, “all-or-nothing” approach.  The core objectives of Reagan’s Central America policy could never have been preserved and achieved without tactical accommodations and concessions along the way.

One example of Reagan-style pragmatism has already been mentioned: his acquiescence in the Panama Canal Treaties and the eventual turn-over of the operation, the Canal itself, and the bases.  Another example can be seen in his approach to relations with Mexico.  Here Reagan’s California experience undoubtedly impressed on him the enormity of the bilateral issues affecting both countries, and specifically Mexico’s ability to have an enormous impact – for good or ill – on U.S. society and economy, particularly in the border states, through illegal immigration.  The United States’ interest in achieving cooperation with Mexico on issues like narcotics enforcement, immigration enforcement and border control, water and environmental issues in the border area, etc. was strong.  And the recognition of the importance of these shared interests led Reagan and his Administration to forbear Mexico’s usually critical and contrary stance on many foreign policy issues – even when Mexico’s stance toward Cuba and Nicaragua was posing new hurdles for U.S. Central America policy.

Reagan’s Policies Were the Product of a Constantly Changing Cast of Characters.  One of the paradoxes of Ronald Reagan’s Latin America policy is that, for all its singleness of purpose and constancy of focus – particularly on Central American issues but really on all of the principal features of the policy sketched earlier – it was devised and implemented by a kaleidoscopically changing cast of officials who were constantly feuding and battling for “turf”.  To be sure, there was broad continuity in some key roles in Reagan’s foreign policy team.  Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger served for roughly the first seven years of the eight year Administration, being replaced for the last year by his one-time Deputy, Frank Carlucci.  Secretary of State George Shultz, taking over about a year and a half into the Administration from his predecessor, Alexander Haig, served until the end of the Administration.  And CIA Director William Casey similarly served for roughly the first six years of the Administration before his final, fatal illness.  But apart from – and below -- these Cabinet-level figures, a veritable “revolving door” of personnel characterized the Reagan Administration’s Latin America team.  There were six different Presidential National Security Advisers in eight years, and as many Deputy National Security Advisers.  Three different men held the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (as it was then called) – the Administration’s point person on Western Hemisphere relations.  Five different people held the post of Senior Director for Latin American Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 8 years, and a slightly larger number (including me) rotated through the NSC in Director-level positions responsible for the region during that period.  Lt. Col. North, whose actions were at the core of the Iran-Contra scandal, was not even assigned to the NSC’s Latin America Directorate.  Career personnel rotations and shifts of political appointees at the CIA resulted in a succession of people holding the posts of National Intelligence Officer for Latin America and Assistant Director of Operations for Latin America – two of the key posts responsible for the region in that agency.

Accompanying this cavalcade of rotating officials was an incessant internecine battle over the course of Administration policy – over tactics, timing, responses to foreign overtures and initiatives, release of information, briefings to and relations with Congress, etc.  These are nowhere more thoroughly described than in Secretary of State George Shultz’s memoir of his service, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. 

So how did they do it?  How did Ronald Reagan and his team succeed to craft a policy for the Western Hemisphere – Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico and Canada – that produced such remarkable successes and enduring legacies despite all the setbacks, the in-fighting, the domestic opposition and the international forces arrayed against them, and ultimately the nearly fatal Iran-Contra Scandal?  How did they manage it with this ever-changing roster of responsible personnel?

Reagan Latin America Policy Enjoyed One Great Constant.  Rising above the other elements of continuity in Ronald Reagan’s Latin America policy – and the few points of continuity in his team – there was one great constant in this eight-year-long effort: Ronald Reagan himself.  President Reagan’s bedrock convictions – his faith in freedom and in free men and women; his opposition to Communism and other tyrannies; his determination not to merely accept things as he found them and turn them over to his successor in much the same condition, but to alter what he saw as a fundamentally adverse set of trends for the United States and restore America’s prominence, confidence and spirit; his willingness to consider as possible what conventional wisdom claimed was impossible – all these characteristics and more impelled his Administration to their achievements in Latin America policy.  His vision of the goal and his steadfast determination to keep marching toward it inspired his team to do the same.  He sought to rescue Central America from the threat of Communism.  He wanted Cuban mischief in the Hemisphere contained on that island.  He wanted vulnerable societies of the Caribbean economically stabilized and protected from easy take-over by adventurers, Marxist or otherwise.  He foresaw and fostered democratic governments with freer, more market-oriented and private-sector-led economies all around the Hemisphere.  Officials may have come and gone – and quarreled and fought among themselves while they were responsible for aspects of his Latin America policy – but no one who worked for Ronald Reagan’s Administration in this field for very long had any doubts about the ultimate goals they were expected to achieve, about the depth of the President’s commitment to achieving those goals, or about the price he was prepared to pay to realize them.

Many of his lieutenants merit their share of credit for the successes achieved in the Latin American region during Reagan’s Administration – and some deserve a heaping portion of blame, particularly for nearly fatally jeopardizing the whole enterprise.  But ultimately, the achievements of the Reagan Administration’s Latin America policies rest on the one great constant underpinning those policies throughout the Administration’s eight years: President Ronald Reagan.

G. Philip Hughes, currently a Senior Director with the White House Writers Group in Washington ,D.C., served as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs to Vice President George Bush (1981-85) and Director for Latin American Affairs on the National Security Council staff of President Ronald Reagan (1985-86).  He further served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs and as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement under President Reagan and as Executive Secretary of the National Security Council and Ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean under President George H.W. Bush.