The Reagan Doctrine aimed to eliminate communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America backed by the Soviet Union. The focus shifted from containment to elimination and promoting capitalism and democracy. The Heritage Foundation chose nine countries to focus on, and the policy succeeded in preventing Soviet control. Critics argue that it was not a complete success and had negative consequences, such as the backlash in Afghanistan.
The Reagan Doctrine was the foreign policy in the United States, implemented by Ronald Reagan during his presidency, to help eliminate communist governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America that were backed by the Soviet Union. The implementation of this plan provided both open and private support to the Soviet-backed guerrilla and resistance movements in communist countries. This doctrine was US foreign policy from about 1980 to 1991.
During the early years of the Cold War, official US policy toward communism was one of containment. With the creation of the Reagan Doctrine the focus shifted from keeping communism from spreading to eliminating existing communist governments. In addition to withdrawing these communist governments, the US also wanted to encourage capitalism and democracy in those places.
The philosophy behind the Reagan Doctrine originated before Reagan’s presidency. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. President Jimmy Carter helped Afghanistan in the form of weapons and military training to defeat the Soviet forces. The Reagan Doctrine has been seen by many proponents as an expansion of this philosophy.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, is responsible for the concrete foreign policy of the Reagan Doctrine. This organization chose nine Soviet-backed communist countries on which the United States should focus its attention: Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. He then encouraged the president’s administration to focus on giving these countries military and financial aid, endorsing the doctrine in books written to advise his administration on foreign policy.
The Reagan Doctrine is credited by its proponents with helping to end the Cold War by preventing the Soviet Union from extending its communist control over specific regions of the world. The philosophical justifications of the policy were to eliminate tyrannical governments and to promote individual liberties, liberty and democracy. The policy succeeded because the United States financed these resistance movements with a relatively small amount of money, while the Soviet Union had to use more resources and suffered more casualties than its own armed forces.
Although some credit the Reagan Doctrine with ending the Cold War, there are critics who argue that this foreign policy was not a complete success. US-backed contras in Nicaragua have been found to be engaged in illegal activities, such as drug trafficking and the violation of people’s basic human rights inside the country. Supporting the contras in Nicaragua also garnered criticism because the country was a target of the Soviet Union. Others argue that the Reagan Doctrine was too broad because the resources spent supporting the overthrow of these governments outweighed the benefits gained.
A new term, backlash, is also used to refer to the negative impact of the rollback of communist governments. The backlash has occurred in countries like Afghanistan, where US-supplied weapons to fight the Soviet Union are turned against the United States. For example, military training and supplied weapons ended up in the hands of terrorists.
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