ABSTRACT
Commentators and scholars have regularly labelled the Nixon-Kissinger period as non-ideological and the Ronald Reagan administration as the opposite, with Reagan often described as a Cold War ideologue who placed the ideological contest between the United States and the Soviet Union at the heart of his administration. The constant emphasis on the virtues of ‘freedom’ as a guiding force of American public and foreign policy was at the centre of Reagan’s nationalist and anti-communist ideology. The Reagan Doctrine built on Reagan’s dictum that the USSR and communists the world over “fear the infectiousness of even a little freedom, and because of this in many ways their system has failed.” One consequence of Reagan’s ardent anti-communist ideology was a tendency to exaggerate the threat that left-wing governments and movements in Latin America and elsewhere posed to the USA.
