AFP NOTES 4/3
sorry, missed the last lecture. lets see if baia, lazer, and danielle can put some halfway decent notes together for us...
Lecture 19: The End of the Cold War

A) Carter, 1977-81
a 'new, fresh approach to foreign policy'
Human Rights
-made 'decency and optimism' guiding lights of foreign policy
-human rights come to the forefront here
-hoped to promote human rights in the soviet union while maintaining detente
-essentially does exactly the wrong thing
-SENDS MIXED SIGNALS
-geopolitical arena turns right against us, lowest point of american prestige was in 1979
-there was the second oil shock in the decade during the iranian revolution
-sets off a spiral of stagflation
-this was the 'malaise' period of american history

"Crisis of Confidence"
-that's essentially what this time was
-nicaraguan rebels take control against US will and wish
The Hostage Crisis
-november, iranians seize american embassy in tehran
Afghanistan
-december, soviets invade afghanistan
-this is the FIRST overt soviet expansion in 30 years
-july 1979, americans start funding afghan rebels
-END of detente
-immediately placed sanctions on USSR, withdrew from the olympics in moscow
-most importantly, starts funding the mujaheddin fighters in afghanistan
-not surprisingly, carter loses the election
B) Reagan, 1981-89
-not seen as any sort of significant figure
-people were underestimating him his entire political career, he played on this
-when he took office, soviet union was on a roll
-however, beneath the facade it was essentially a paper tiger
-extremely fragile, people realized this
-for many reasons, people were DELIBERATELY overestimating the soviet threat
-people like the CIA, 'committee on the present danger' (a private anti-soviet group), etc
-lots of pressure of the US to take on the soviets
-however, some people such as the marshall group realized that the soviets were faltering
-soviet command economy was failing due to fall of oil prices (1982 essentially), subsidization of satellite states, etc
-as much as 1/3 of soviet GDP was being spent on military expenditures, this is NOT SUSTAINABLE
-even under reagan, with massive defense spending, US doesnt spend more than 6%
-CIA overestimates soviet industrial capacity by 90% in the 70s, and 200% in 1980-85
-strategy now became 'cost imposing strategy'
-now, instead of backing off with detente, US has to press EVERYWHERE
-individual victories and defeats are IRRELEVANT
-this is a war of attrition now
-the plan is to out-spend the soviet union
-we can afford to fight war longer than the soviets
-eventually, the soviets would arrive at a tipping point and lose

3-pronged of the Reagan strategy
-direct confrontation
-massive arms buildup
-proxy war in the 3rd world
-win the wars there, force engagement around the world
-war of ideas
-maintain moral superiority, win the hearts and minds
Arms Race

The Brezhnev Doctrine
-if any country had gone socialist or entered the soviet bloc, soviets claim the right to intervene to put down counter-insurgencies
The Reagan Doctrine
-US asserts its right to intervene to help ANY nation win its freedom which wants to
Solidarity
-trade movement arises in poland, wants freedom here
-soviets CRUSH these poor fuckers
-US can do nothing about it, because it's clearly in the soviet bloc in europe
-the real war is being fought in the third world
-much more flexibility here

'the soviet union is behind all the unrest around the world' - reagan
-reagan says that the soviet union is the source of 'all the evil around the world'
-this is the source of the label 'evil empire'
NSDD 75
there are some problems now
-seems like containment had failed
-soviet union is expanding throughout the 3rd world
-there's little possibility for expansion of confrontation to the nuclear level, because they're proxy wars
-reagan doctrine therefore says essentially, we'll help you, under three conditions

these conditions are:
1) indigenous democratic resistance
2) against a 'soviet client state'
3) with a population denied representation within its own government (illegitimate government)
under those criteria, reagan doctrine will be applied

now, the reagan doctrine's being used to rebut soviet moves in afghanistan
-policy of ROLLBACK
-3 main groups of people with regards to roll back
-advocates
-wooooo rollback
-pragmatists
-evaluate on a case-by-case basis, make sure we can win every single time
-opponents
-only use it in the face of overt soviet aggression

Contras
resistance movement fighting the Sandinista rule in Nicaragua
Boland Amendment
-places a band on military support to the contras in 1984
-private sector begins secretly providing funds
-allows the CIA to covertly provide funds to the contras
-says that they're the moral equivalent to our revolution
-uses the funds gained from this to try and pay the iranians for giving back the hostages
the only real time that the reagan doctrine won out was afghanistan
-however, people believed the soviet empire was a 'house of cards'
-win one, and they all fall down
-there was a broad support in congress for the mujaheddin resistance
-97-3 in senate, 100% in the house
Stinger Missiles
this one technology became decisive in the war
-no longer could the soviets dominate by use of helicopter and low-level bombing
-high-level bombing is essentially useless against the guerillas
-US aid goes up to $650 million in 1987
-back down to $350 million in 1988
-essentially, the stinger missiles broke the back of the soviet invasion
-feb 1988, soviets announced they were withdrawing from afghanistan
C) "Star Wars"
Reagan rejected the balance of power theory
-Mutually Assured Destruction was bullshit to him
-also thought that SALT was BS, all it did was institutionalize MAD
-his long-term objective is the REDUCTION of nuclear arms
-force the soviet union into economic collapse by overspending, force them to reduce their arms themselves

START

SDI
Strategic Defense Initiative
-plans to protect america from the nuclear threat
-this was a problem for our allies
-if the US and Soviet Union both had their own SDI, any nuclear war would just destroy the rest of the world
-Soviets were like oh shit
-started the policy of SWARMING or MIRVing
-just shoot more missiles than the US can shoot down
-this, however is EXTREMELY expensive
-if SDI ever worked out, the balance of power was decisively shifted in the USs favor
-most effective point of the SDI was the psychological war being waged
-Soviets were so frightened that the US could get this then they'd just flip out
-soviets realized they couldn't build one
-americans actually couldn't build on either, but they succeeded in shanking the soviets
-lol hax. noobs.

reagan believed that the strategy of detente had failed
-soviets could be taken down if its population turned against it
-there was a strategy for making this happen
-challenging legitimacy
-superiority over parity
-fight the war from a position of superiority
-capitalizing on human rights rather than compromising
-no more mr. nice guy
-work with liberalizing, nationalist forces


Reykjavik
what is he doing with this lecture? fuck you, outline!

D) The War of Ideas

Mikhail Gorbachev
gorbachev wants to REFORM communism
-throw off the old shackles of stalinism
-starts two main reforms, perestroika and glastnost
-he and reagan hit it off right away
-gorbachev realizes that the Soviet Union could not afford to fight the arms race
-they kept one-upping eachother during negotiations so much that they actually considered disarming eachother ENTIRELY
-another aspect was that the Soviets could NOT keep funding all of these satellite states
-so he just stopped
-berlin falls, third world and all the proxy states collapse
-problem with Gorbachev's reforms was that the Soviet Union just couldn't handle it
-USSR collapses
-gorbachev sincerely believed that they could compete, but the system just wouldnt take it
-soviet union collapses
Perestroika

Glasnost


GG, SOVIET NOOBS!!