ABSTRACT
The election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States in 1980 signified a change in method rather than aims in US Third World policies. Jimmy Carter’s last two years in office, especially, had pointed directly to the key priorities of the new administration-stepping up the pressure against radical regimes and gaining new allies among indigenous anti-communist movements. But while Carter-a hands-on president if ever there was one-had at first been held back by moral reservations and disagreements among his advisers, Reagan from the outset gladly left both policy implications and policy execution to others. The result was a host of new and sometimes contradictory initiatives, all carried out with the blessing of the president, that sought to target Third World regimes seen as closely allied to the Soviet Union, such as Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola. The president wanted to see Soviet defeats and an internal change of political direction in these countries, because such changes would confirm Reagan’s own conviction that his country was on the side of history and that socialism was a thing of the past. But even as he strove to overcome the effects of the Vietnam War, Reagan was aware that he had to do so without risking the US losses that conflict had hitherto produced. This renewed dedication to interventionism thus implied finding allies who were willing to do the fighting. Reagan was not looking for regional policemen of the Kissingerian type-he, or rather his ideologically driven advisers, were looking for revolutionary movements of the inverse kind, those that for their own reasons were willing to let left-wing regimes bleed.1
