ABSTRACT
Ronald Reagan’s presidency witnessed a movement in U.S. policy from hard adversary of the UN to an active diplomacy within the province of the UN. The first cabinet members were hostile to the UN and to multilateralism in general. Reagan withdrew from UNESCO, rejected the Law of the Sea Treaty, and cut funding to the United Nations. However, following the trauma of the Iran–Contra scandal, most of the hard-liners in the administration were removed, replaced by moderates and internationalists. The ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union affected Reagan’s foreign policy. Gorbachev and Reagan, working through the UN, addressed major world problems, including bringing an end to the Iran–Iraq War, expediting the removal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, fostering the independence of Namibia, and setting the stage for the end of apartheid in South Africa. The two also signed the historic Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement. The careful diplomacy of Secretary of State George Shultz, utilizing Security Council Resolution 242, resulted in the U.S. recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasir Arafat officially recognizing Israel. The original unilateralist cold war approach of the Reagan administration proved much less effective than the more multilateral, UN-linked methods of the late years.
