U.S. SHAPES NEW 3RD WORLD ROLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130053-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: June 16, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130053-4 STAT
,I!T-- I r APP ARED
LOS ANGELES '1VTS
C:d P'; 16 June 1985
U.S. Shapes New
3rd World Role
`Reagan Doctrine' Would Actively
Support Anti-Leftist Rebellions
By DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer within the Administration and
WASHINGTON-The Reamaan
Administration is developing a
sweeping new foreign policy doc-
trine that provides for a more
assertive U.S. role in the Third
World. From Nicaragua to Angola,
from Afghanistan to Cambodia,
Administration officials say, the
United States should actively-and
overtly-back rebellions against
unfriendly leftist regimes.
Born largely of necessity in the
congressional fight over aid to the
anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicara-
gua, the idea of publicly backing
"freedom fighters" around the
world has been elevated to a basic
principle of foreign policy by Presi-
dent Reagan.
Hawks in the Administration,
allied with hard-liners in Congress
and conservative lobbying groups
outside the government, are work-
ing to promote a steadily wider
application of what some call the
"Reagan Doctrine."
`Must Not Break Faith'
"We must not break faith with
those who are risking their lives-
on every continent, from Afghani-
stan to Nicaragua-to defy Sovi-
et-supported aggression and se-
cure rights which have been ours
since birth," Reagan declared in his
State of the Union Address this
year. "Support for freedom-fight-
ers is self-defense."
Asst. Secretary of Defense Rich-
ard L. Armitage, one of the archi-
tects of the new doctrine, said. "If a
group is fighting a repressive re-
gime and shares our values and our
goals, then we have very little
choice but to support them. For us,
the issue is not whether freedom
fighters deserve our support; the
real question is what support
should be offered."
Behind those ringing words,
there is continuing disagreement
among its outside supporters over
exactly how a policy of support for
anti-communist rebels should be
carried out. At issue are such
questions as how much aid should
be sent, to whom and how openly.
Senate conservatives, for eam-
pie, advocate a major increase in
overt aid for a wide range* of
insurgent movements. State and
Defense Department officials,' by
contrast, tend to argue for more
covert aid, and more caution.
Formulating Doctrine
"We're still working on a doe-
trine on this," a senior State De-
partment official said. "I don't
think anybody had thought about it
in global terms before.... It's all
been on a case-by-case basis."
As the new doctrine gains public
visibility, officials acknowledge
that they will have to answer sop e
fundamental questions. Among
them:
-Should the United States adopt
the Soviet strategy of promoting
revolutions against governments it
dislikes?
-How should the President
choose which regimes to destabi-
lize and which to leave alone?
-Will U.S. support for insur-
gencies make peaceful solutions
more difficult?
Nonetheless, although the. de-
tails are subject to debate, the
Administration has clearly settled
on the basic theme of a new policy
toward Third World conflicts, The
United States has a right and a duty
to help rebels who take up arms
against leftist regimes-and an op~
portunity to help topple some gov-
ernments.
"After years of guerrilla insur-
gencies led by Communists against
pro-Western governments, we
now see dramatic and heartening
examples of popular insurgencies
against Communist regimes," Sec-
retary of State George P. Shultz
told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee earlier this year. "If we
turned our backs ... we would be
C9nceding the Soviet notion that
eogimunist revolutions are irre-
VIlble while everything else is up
bs."
4 Defense Department official
more bluntly: "We're talking
getting involved in insurgen-
w-rather than what we did
to a '8k, which was mainly
Counterinsurgency. Socialism is not
irreversible.... We do not rule
out playing by the same kind of
rules the Soviets do. Up until now,
we haven't been playing on a level
geld. We'd like to even it out a little
bit."
Moral Duty Seen
In the Past, U.S. involvement in
scruslure against a List re ' is
has been limited in SCODe agm v, as clandestine as th e CIA
Could make it. The United States
supported an abortive insurgency
in Albania in 1949, successful coups
in Iran and Guatemala in 1954, the
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in
1961 and the opposition to Chile's
Marxist government in 1973. But
those actions were neither publicly
announced nor raised to the level of
a general "doctrine."
Today, however; Reagan Ad-
ministration spokesmen argue that
the rash of new pro-Soviet regimes
which came to power after the fall
of South Vietnam in 1975-in Cam-
bodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethio-
pia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan-
prompted spontaneous rebellions
from their citizens, and that the
United States has a moral duty to
lend them at least political support.
Ironically borrowing a Phrase
once used by Americans who com-
plained that the U.S. government
too often supported repressive re-
gimes abroad, proponents of the
Reagan Doctrine contend that it is
putting this country "on the side of
history."
CAYj-` 1]L')
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Perhaps surprisingly, the basic
premises of the new Reagan Doc-
trine have drawn little criticism
from Democrats in Congress. Some
have fought the President on aid to
rebels in Nicaragua. But some, like
liberal Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-
N.Y.), have actually led the drive
for more overt aid to insurgents in
Afghanistan and Cambodia.
Administration officials suggest
that Solarz "does that so he can
attack us on Nicaragua without
looking soft on communism."
But Solarz waves away theaccu-
sation, saying: "In the debate be-
tween internationalism and isola-
tionism, I definitely come down on
the side of internationalism. We
should not try to be the world's
policeman, but we can't afford to be
a naive bystander watching with
indifference while the Soviet Union
and its surrogates subvert coun-
tries.;'
A few lonely voices on Capitol
Hill still inveigh against interven-
tion in the Third World in tones
reminiscent of the Vietnam War
era.
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), a
moderate GOP maverick, com-
plained: "We're doing things just
because the Soviets and their sur-
rogafes are doing them, and that
puts us in the same gutter with
them. Where has American inter-
vention ever helped in the Third
World? I'd rather play on our field,
by our rules."
But Leach admitted that the tide
is running ag~ainst him. Last week,
the emocratic-le house voted
solidly to renew U.S. funding for
the Nicaraguan rebels known as
contras, reversinj_ two years of
opposition to th& nce-covert prg
gram. And the Senate voted to
repeal the 1975 prohibition on aid to
Angolan rebels, a measure that had
been a landmark of anti-interven-
tionist sentiment after the debacle
of Vietnam; the House has yet to
act oil the issue.
The new doctrine of aiding an-
ti-communist rebels, proponents
say, is a logical outgrowth of the
developments of the last decade.
After the fall of Vietnam, pro-So-
viet regimes came to power in
Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and
Nicaragua; communist Vietnam in-
vaded neighboring communist
Cambodia; and in 1979, the Soviet
Union itself invaded Afghanistan.
In all those countries, Adminis-
tration officials argue, the new
leftist regimes proved to be bellig-
erent and repressive, and pro-
Western insurgencies formed to
fight"them.
An equally important factor may
be the return of both the Demo-
cratic and Republican parties to the
moralistic tradition of American
foreign policy-the Democrats in
the human rights crusade of Jimmy
Carter, the GOP in the fervent
anti-communism of Ronald Rea-
gan-"The United States today is not
the United States of a decade ago,
one that was full of self-doubts,"
the Pentagon's Armitage said.
"We're a different nation now.
We're a very confident nation.
Under Ronald Reagan, we're a
stronger nation. We aren't afraid to
stand up for what we believe in,
and that includes human
rights.... Under communist re-
gimes, human rights are not highly
regarded."
Although the political climate
may have turned friendly to the
kind of indirect intervention the
Reagan Administration endorses,
debate continues over how many
insurgencies the United States
should sponsor, what kind of aid it
should give, and whether the U.S.
role should be covert or publicly
declared.
The Administration, in a series of
case-by-case decisions, has come
to adopt a patchwork of positions
that senior -officials concede is
inconsistent:
*In Afghanistan, it secretly sent
more than $380 million in military
aid to the anti-Soviet rebels before
pressure from Senate conserva-
tives prompted it to acknowledge
openly that it has supplied small
amounts of "humanitarian aid" as
well.
?In Nicaragua, the Administra-
tion began by secretly sending the
contras more than $80 million in
military aid as well as CIA con,-
mando teams, but found itself
forced to o public with support for
the contras after Congress-angry over a covert effort to mine Vica-
rao a's harbors-cut the rebels off,
oi Cambodia, the Administra-
tion wanted to aid anti-communist
rebels indirectly, through other
Southeast Asian countries, but So-
larz and others in Congress are
insisting on at least a symbolic $5
million in direct, overt U.S. aid.
'Rebel Fund' Weighed
Conversely, in Angola, the Ad-
ministration has been barred by
law from helping pro-Western
rebels, but officials say they have
made no decision on whether they
would want to do this. And in
Ethiopia and Mozambique, the Ad-
z
ministration has looked stint-l;o-
viet guerrilla movements and de-
cided that they do not deserve U.S.
support-
Conservatives such as Sens.
Steven D. Symms (R-Idaho), Rob-
ert Kasten (R-Wis.) and Malcolm
Wallop (R-Wyo.), backed by a
growing number of would-be rebel
lobbyists, want the Administration
to increase its aid to insurgents,
especially the Angolans and Mo-
zambicans.
Kasten, chairman of the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee on
foreign operations, is considering a
proposal to give'the President ar
unrestricted $50-million "rebel
fund" for the insurgents of his
choice.
The conservatives charge that
the State Department has been
resisting any expansion of rebel aid,
despite Shultz's frequent speeches
on the subject. Some even complain
that the CIA has been insufficiently
enthusiastic about the g re
els. Wallop has proposed a new
White House "office for freedom
fighters" to take charge of promot-
ing insurgents' causes.
"The bureaucracy doesn't al-
ways work the way it should,"
Symms complained. "Our over-
whelming urge to be diplomats
sometimes overcomes our ability to
lay down the gauntlet."
Invasion the Test
Prof. Charles A. Moser of George
Washington University, one of the
organizers of a new Resistance
Support Alliance, charged:
"There's great resistance from the
State Department every time
someone suggests adding another
country to the list. George Shultz
seems to be saying he's glad to see
these people fight for freedom, but
he won't do anything about it."
State Department spokesman
Edward P. Djerejian responded:
"The idea that there's an institu-
tional resistance here to containing
Soviet expansionism is nonsense.
)ur support for the Afghan rebels,
cur support for the Cambodian
resistance and our policy in Central
America should be clear on that
point."
On the other side of the issue,
Democrat Solarz has argued that
the Administration should finance
rebel movements only in countries
under foreign invasion-a test that
would allow aid to the Afghans and
Cambodians but not the Nicara-
guans, Angolans or Mozambicans.
"We need to make these deci-
sions in a conceptual framework
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that will not lead to us getting
involved in all kinds of conflicts
that may not be in our national
interest," Solarz said. "There are
those who think the only criterion
should be whether the rebels op-
pose the Communists.... That
seems to me to be a formula for
widespread interventionism."
Solari said he opposes aid to the
Nicaraguan contras, for example,
because "we would be supporting
an effort to overthrow an interna-
tionally recognized government."
Within the Administration, the
debate is narrower. Officials say
Defense Secretary Caspar,
W.Weinberger and the Pentagon
are enthusiastic about expanded aid
to rebels, while Shultz's State De-
partment is more cautious. Defense
Department officials have argued
in favor of overt aid, but Shultz and
National Security Adviser Robert
C. McFarlane are said to prefer
covert aid.
"Covert action is carried out for
the most part in cooperation with
somebody else-some friendly
government that is often weak,
anxious and fearful of the cost of
open dependence on us," Donald R.
Fortier, a McFarlane aide, said in a
recent speech. "We have to be
sensitive to (our allies') weakness-
es and vulnerabilities."
Rebel Lobby Growing
Meanwhile, the Administration's
conservative allies-and prod-
ders-are busy creating a new
factor on Capitol Hill: a rebel lobby.
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former am-
bassador to the United Nations, and
former Treasury Secretary Wil-
liam E. Simon are making speeches
and raising money for the Nicara-
guan contras. Moser and an assort-
ment of other anti-communist ac-
tivists have formed the Resistance
Support Alliance.
And conservative GOP activist
(and millionaire) Lewis Lehrman,
who airlifted Nicaraguan, Afghan
and Laotian opposition figures into
the Angolan bush two weeks ago
for a first-ever convention of
"freedom fighters," has undertak-
en a new project: a professionally
staffed Washington lobbying office
for the rebels.
"These guys haven't really been
able to articulate to Congress how
they should be helped," said Jack
Abramoff, a former Republican
National Committee staff member
and Lehrman aide. "We hope to
give them some help on that. We
see this as a contribution to the
overall Reagan Doctrine. Every
time we've worked with anybody
in the Administration, we've gotter
nothing but help.... It's a trend.
and we're on the move."
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130053-4