Transcript presidential term

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