An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  Tip O’Neill and his leadership called me and with complete graciousness congratulated us on our win.

  Now we must make it work—and we will.

  The economic program I’d brought to Washington six months earlier was now in place. Next on my agenda was realizing another dream I had brought with me: reducing the threat of nuclear war.

  48

  IN EARLY AUGUST, a senior admiral came to the White House to brief me and the cabinet about the maneuvers that were scheduled to begin in the Gulf of Sidra later that month. He said Libyan planes were already sporadically harassing our ships and aircraft in the Mediterranean north of the gulf, and it was likely the level of harassment would heighten substantially once the maneuvers began. It was clear he wanted guidance from me on how the navy should react if the Libyan planes fired on our aircraft or vessels or otherwise interfered with their freedom of movement on the high seas.

  My response was simple: Whenever our ships or planes were fired upon or otherwise deprived of rights granted sovereign countries in international waters, the navy was to respond in kind. “Any time we send an American anywhere in the world where he or she can be shot at, they have the right to shoot back,” I said.

  One cabinet member asked: “What about hot pursuit?”

  He wanted to know the extent to which our planes should be permitted to pursue Libyan planes if they harassed our aircraft or ships in violation of international law.

  The admiral stopped, cleared his throat, and looked over at me, waiting for an answer from me, and suddenly it was very quiet in the room.

  “All the way into the hangar,” I said.

  A smile broke out on the admiral’s face, and he said, “Yes sir.” A few days later, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Washington for a state visit. In the Oval Office, I revealed our plans for the maneuvers; before I could finish, he almost shouted: “Magnificent.”

  Sadat was a very likable man with both a sense of humor and a sense of dignity, and he had a good grasp of events and personalities in the Middle East. He was a staunch ally of the United States and also a courageous statesman whose efforts to achieve peace with Israel had isolated him from most other Arab nations. As had Jimmy Carter, I regarded him as a giant figure in the Middle East and thought he might hold the key to resolving that region’s long and bitter struggle between Arab and Jew.

  During his visit, Sadat had other things on his mind besides the difficult task of resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute. Terrorists and radical Muslims who were allied with Qaddafi and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in trying to create an Islamic fundamentalist state were trying to subvert his government and were making significant inroads in neighboring Sudan and Chad. The goal of Libya and the fundamentalists, Sadat said, was to remove him and impose a government in Egypt modeled after Iran’s fundamentalist regime. The Soviet Union, Sadat said, was working hard to gain influence over the Islamic fundamentalist movement and was using Libya as its surrogate in the region, supplying it with large amounts of arms that Libya transferred to terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere. In response to indications that Libya was building up hostile forces along its border with Egypt, we had agreed to give limited technical assistance and other support to Egypt if Qaddafi did attack.

  I assured him we would continue doing everything we could to help Egypt, and as he left I had a good feeling about the visit. That night, writing in the diary, I said, “I’m encouraged that between us, maybe we can do something about peace in the Middle East.”

  Two weeks later, on August 20, Qaddafi sent up several of his planes and they fired at two F-14 jets from the USS Nimitz that were participating in our naval maneuvers. The incident took place in the Gulf of Sidra about sixty miles off the coast of Libya, well into international waters, and in compliance with my instructions, the F-14’s turned on their tails and shot down the two Libyan aircraft.

  We’d sent Qaddafi a message: We weren’t going to let him claim squatters’ rights over a huge area of the Mediterranean in defiance of international law. I also wanted to send a message to others in the world that there was a new management in the White House, and that the United States wasn’t going to hesitate any longer to act when its legitimate interests were at stake.

  A few days after the incident over the gulf, security people obtained secret information indicating that Qaddafi had advised some of his associates that he intended to have me assassinated. So, it was back into my iron vest whenever I was out in public.

  Subsequently, security people obtained what they considered highly credible information that not only I, but George Bush, Cap Weinberger, and Al Haig were targeted by Libyan hit squads that had been smuggled into this country. From then on, security precautions became even more rigid—not only was my iron vest de rigueur, a variety of other steps I can’t even now discuss were put in place. One thing I can mention is that whenever we went anywhere by helicopter, the route was selected only minutes before takeoff because of intelligence reports that a Libyan group armed with a heat-seeking missile capable of being launched by hand had entered the country with the intention of shooting down the presidential helicopter, known as Marine One.

  Just two months after Nancy and I said good-bye to Anwar and Jehan Sadat at the White House, I was awakened by an early morning call from Al Haig. He told me Sadat had been shot, but was expected to live.

  Several hours later we learned he had died instantly, assassinated by Muslim fundamentalists. I had to continue my regular schedule that day, but it was very difficult.

  The news had hit Nancy and me like a locomotive: we had spent only a few hours over two days with the Sadats, but felt we had formed a deep and lasting friendship with them. Now, suddenly, this great, kind man filled with warmth and humor was gone; it was an enormous tragedy for the world and a terrible and painful personal loss for us.

  A few hours after we got news of Sadat’s death, I watched Muammar al-Qaddafi on television. He was almost doing a jig, gloating over Sadat’s death while Libyans danced in the streets. We discovered that even before Sadat’s death was confirmed, Qaddafi had gone on the radio to call for a holy war on behalf of Islamic fundamentalism—propaganda material tied to Sadat’s murder that had to have been prepared before the shots were fired in Cairo. He had to have known in advance that Sadat was going to be assassinated.

  As I prayed for Sadat, I tried to repress the hatred I felt for Qaddafi, but I couldn’t do it. I despised him for what had happened in Cairo.

  With hundreds of Americans living in Libya, there were limitations on what we could do in response to this evil man. Through diplomatic back channels, we sent word to Qaddafi that any acts of terrorism directed against Americans would be considered acts of war and we would respond accordingly.

  After the dogfight over the Gulf of Sidra, I hoped he realized I meant what I said.

  49

  I DECLARED OUR COMMITMENT to reducing the risk of nuclear war and asked the Soviet Union to join us in doing so in a television address from the National Press Club in Washington on November 18, 1981. The address was broadcast live via Worldnet, a worldwide satellite system developed by the director of USIA, Charles Wick. As I made the speech, I couldn’t resist an ironic thought: I was talking about peace but wearing a bulletproof vest. Our intelligence agents had been told that a Libyan assassin named Jack was in the country and planning to kill me on the day of the speech. There may have been more security agents than reporters at the National Press Club, and no one was happier about it than I: if Jack was there, he wasn’t able to get through the wall of security and pull off his assignment, and I was able to deliver the most important speech on foreign policy I’d ever made.

  The principles contained in the speech took shape during months of debate within the administration. Hoping it would be received in Moscow as a sincere effort to begin the process of arms reduction, I called for the elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) weapons in Europe by both sides, a proposal that came to be
known as the “zero” or “zero-zero” option.

  In addition, I invited the Soviet Union to enter with us in new negotiations aimed at reducing our mutual stockpiles of long-range strategic nuclear weapons to equal and verifiable levels. I proposed that, instead of referring to our next round of negotiations as SALT, for “Strategic Arms Limitation Talks” (the name of the largely futile previous meetings on controlling intercontinental-range nuclear weapons), we adopt a more positive approach and we call them START—for “Strategic Arms Reduction Talks.”

  I also suggested we begin negotiations aimed at bringing conventional forces in Europe down to parity between East and West, a step that was essential if we were to reduce the arsenal of nuclear weapons in Europe.

  The journey leading to arms reduction wasn’t going to be short or easy. And I knew it had to begin with an increase of arms. A few weeks before this speech, I had given the final approval to blueprints for a multibillion-dollar modernization of our strategic forces. In order to assure that we would regain and sustain a military superiority over the Soviet Union, which for a decade had been moving forward with the largest and costliest military buildup in the history of man, we had decided to build one hundred B-1B bombers to replace our deteriorating fleet of B-52 bombers (the B-l’s development had been canceled by the Carter administration); to build one hundred new intercontinental-range missiles, the MX Peacekeeper; to deploy new Trident nuclear submarines and develop a new missile to be launched from them; to develop the Stealth bomber, which was to be capable of penetrating Soviet defense radars; and to construct a wide array of new surface ships, fighter aircraft, and space satellites for communications and other military purposes. Over the next few years, many of my critics would claim it was contradictory and even hypocritical to embark on a quest for nuclear peace by building more nuclear weapons. But it was obvious that if we were ever going to get anywhere with the Russians in persuading them to reduce armaments, we had to bargain with them from strength, not weakness. If you were going to approach the Russians with a dove of peace in one hand, you had to have a sword in the other.

  Most of the time since World War II, we had maintained a lead over the Soviets in nuclear weapons. But during the late 1970s, they had caught up with and exceeded us in a number of critical areas, including the development of unusually powerful ICBMs capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads and of wreaking enormous devastation over great distances. They had also produced new missile-launching submarines, a vast fleet of modern surface ships, and tens of thousands of tanks and other conventional weapons, all of which had changed the balance of power.

  At the time of the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s, it had been relatively easy to stand up to the Soviets: Our nuclear weapons outnumbered theirs almost ten to one; the Soviets took their missiles out of Cuba and Khrushchev backed down. But the balance of power had all been changed by the early 1980s. The Soviet Union was building missiles hand over fist, and their nuclear forces outnumbered ours.

  During the period of this great Soviet military expansion, we had built no new bombers, developed no new missiles, and the morale, weapons, and readiness of all our military forces had deteriorated. If we were ever going to stop Soviet troublemaking around the world, we’d have to persuade them to sue for peace. And so, as we prepared for new arms control talks, we began the task of undoing the years of neglect of our armed forces.

  My proposal of the zero-zero option sprang out of the realities of nuclear politics in Western Europe: In 1979, the Soviets began deploying at a rate of two a week a new three-thousand-mile-range mobile missile with three warheads called the SS-20. It was designed specifically to reach cities in Western Europe from the Soviet Union. In response, our NATO allies asked America to send them nuclear weapons of comparable range that they could hurl back at Moscow if attacked. The Carter administration then initiated development of the Pershing II and the cruise missiles. Parallel with this decision, in what was called the two-track policy, the NATO countries agreed to seek negotiations with the Russians aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.

  Now that I was in office and the American-made INF missiles were being scheduled for shipment to Europe, some European leaders were having doubts about the policy. Whipped up by Soviet propagandists, thousands of Europeans were taking to the streets and protesting the plans to base additional nuclear weapons in Europe, arguing that their presence would cause future nuclear wars to be confined to Europe. (I’ve often wondered why these antiwar groups got so angry at their own leaders; it was the Soviets who had targeted nuclear weapons at them.)

  Helmut Kohl, leader of the opposition party in Germany, told me during a White House visit that the propaganda offensive was becoming highly sophisticated and effective in convincing Europeans that the United States was a bloodthirsty, militaristic nation. This view of America shocked me: We were the most moral and generous people on earth, we’d spent thirty-five years since World War II helping to rebuild the economies of our former allies and enemies, we had gone to the corners of the world in the defense of freedom and democracy, and now we were being cast—effectively, Kohl said—as villains. It was clear we’d have to do a better job of conveying to the world our sense of morality and our commitment to the creation of a peaceful, nuclear-free world.

  After considerable discussion with the cabinet and our arms control experts, I decided to propose the zero-zero plan, which was also advocated by the then-chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt: If the Russians would dismantle their SS-20 missiles and two shorter-range missiles—the SS-4 and SS-5—that they had targeted at Western Europe, I told the Russians, we would scrap plans to install the Pershing II and cruise missiles. Then there would be zero INF weapons in Europe.

  Al Haig was not keen about the zero-zero proposal. He felt NATO required the new missiles to counter the Soviet threat, and argued that it did not leave enough room for bargaining with the Russians; he suggested that in offering the zero-zero plan, we should indicate that we would be willing to consider leaving a few INF weapons in Europe on both sides—a “zero-plus” option. Cap Weinberger, on the other hand, was strongly in favor of the zero-zero option; he said it would get the arms control talks moving on a realistic basis and put the Soviets on the defensive in the European propaganda war.

  It was one of many instances I faced as president when my policy of encouraging cabinet members to speak frankly and to fight for their points of view put me in the middle. The hardest decisions to make are in those situations where there are good arguments on both sides of a question; as you think out the problem you have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the two options against each other. Usually, the debate would rage, the meeting would end, and then I’d say: “I’ll make my decision after I’ve given some more thought to this.” Sometimes, I might call another meeting and say I hadn’t heard enough from the two sides on the issue and get them into another debate to help me reach a decision. As this was going on, I kept a poker face. Then, after more debate, I’d end the meeting, go away, and make my decision. If a horse was nearby, that always helped in my decision-making, but sometimes I might just stand in the shower or think out a problem at my desk or before going to sleep.

  In this instance, I had time to think over my choices while flying cross-country in a unique and very special Boeing 747. Sometimes called the “doomsday plane,” it was a windowless jumbo jet, with an interior stuffed with communications equipment, that reminded me of a submarine. During an airborne briefing in the plane, I learned that wherever I was, the doomsday plane was never far away; during a major crisis, I was to go there to keep the government functioning during the onset of a nuclear attack. It was a heady environment for making a decision regarding nuclear arms control.

  Al’s idea of leading with a flexible proposal had merit, but I’d learned as a union negotiator that it’s never smart to show your hole card in advance. If we first announced that our goal was the total elimination of intermediate-range
nuclear weapons from Europe and then hinted we might be willing to leave a few, we’d be tipping off the bottom line of our negotiating position before the negotiations even began. I thought our goal should be the total elimination of all INF weapons from Europe, and stating this before the world would be a vivid gesture demonstrating to the Soviets, our allies, the people storming the streets of West Germany, and others that we meant business about wanting to reduce nuclear weapons.

  We eventually achieved our goal of zero-zero intermediate-range missiles in Europe. But it took longer than I hoped it would, and it was a lot more difficult than I expected.

  50

  MY FIRST YEAR in the White House was coming to an end. I had some things to feel good about: The first phase of the largest tax cut in the nation’s history had gone into effect, allowing Americans to keep and spend more of the money they earned, and, I hoped, sowing the seeds for a resurgence of the economy. Congress had approved more cuts in federal spending than in any previous year in history while still maintaining a broad safety net for unemployed, disabled, and destitute Americans. The prime interest rate had fallen six points and, thanks in part to a tight money policy (which I supported) on the part of the Federal Reserve Board, inflation was below ten percent for the first time in three years.

  We had begun the task, as I promised in my inaugural address, of making government work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. The annual rate of growth of federal spending had been cut almost in half, to 7.5 percent from an average of fourteen percent during the previous three years. Under George Bush, we had begun storming the citadel of unnecessary restrictions that obstructed the workings of our economy, eliminating thousands of pages from the federal bureaucracy’s rules and regulations. We had begun to restore to states and cities authority usurped from them by the bureaucracy, broadening the use of “block grants” that gave local teachers and community officials more say over how to spend federal aid—and less say to social engineers on the Potomac who had been setting policies and dictating rules for states and cities under strings-attached “categorical” grants.