Nevertheless, all were vetoed by Reagan, who liked the idea and included it in NSDD-32.69 Pipes recalled: “The president talked about… how we had to do everything possible to help these people in Solidarity who were struggling for freedom…. Reagan really understood what was at stake.”70 The president instructed Bill Casey to draw up a covert plan; the DCI enthusiastically complied. In fact, Casey had moved to prepare plans for aiding Solidarity as early as April 1981, a half year before martial law, and as such he became the principal architect of the operation.71
Throughout the document there were continual references to places where Reagan wanted to discourage the Soviets from active expansion. Page two alone featured three calls to curb the USSR and its activities. The first desired to “neutralize the efforts of the USSR to increase its influence.” The second called for economic pressure by the Reagan administration to “foster” restraint in Soviet military spending, to discourage Soviet “adventurism,” and to “weaken the Soviet alliance system by forcing the USSR to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings, and to encourage long-term liberalizing and nationalist tendencies within the Soviet Union and allied countries.” Within those allied countries, meaning the Soviet bloc, the directive called for the “independent evolution” of “popular movements and institutions in Poland and other East European countries.”72 The third objective sought to limit technology and resources sent to the USSR, and to stymie “Soviet military capabilities by strengthening the U.S. military.”
In short, NSDD-32 constituted a formal assault on Soviets interests, intended to rupture the empire, a declaration of which the USSR was quite aware: Writing in Pravda, Yuri Zhukov told citizens that the aim of the directive was to place “massive pressure” on the Soviet Union, with an intent to “bring about internal reforms” in the country.73 A later article in Pravda derided NSDD-32 as “adventuristic,” “insane,” and as the “administration’s bible.” Pravda directly attributed the directive to Reagan, asserting that he “personally put forward his observations” on each section.74 It is not clear how Pravda knew such a Reagan imprint; nonetheless, it grasped NSDD-32’s importance as a reflection of Reagan personally and as a barometer of the USSR’s rocky road ahead.
LATE MAY 1982
While NSDD-32 had laid the groundwork, much of the administration’s thinking remained elusive to the public until the days immediately following NSDD-32’s authorization. In a speech at Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies on May 21, Bill Clark offered a rare public admission by a Reagan official. In that speech, Clark explained the administration’s aims as candidly as then possible: “We must force our principal adversary, the Soviet Union, to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings.” This was a cornerstone of a “new strategy” by the United States, reported Richard Halloran in the New York Times. Halloran noted that the strategy was based on the classified NSDD-32, authorized the previous day. (Not providing the exact number of the directive, the Times referred only to “an eight-page National Security Decision Memorandum.”) That strategy laid out by Clark on that day, said the Times, “made official a theme that several administration officials have hinted at, that of exploiting Soviet economic weaknesses.” The Times reported that nine drafts of the strategy document had been examined in previous months. It quoted Clark as saying that “the President played an extraordinarily active role” in commenting on all nine drafts. “When it was done,” said Clark, “the study and the decision were the President’s.”75
One of the chief contributors to Clark’s Georgetown speech was Tom Reed, who delivered a second speech on NSDD-32 to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association a few days later. In that unnoticed address, Reed shared the ambition of the administration that NSDD-32 would start the process to “one day convince the leadership of the USSR to turn their attention inward, to seek the legitimacy that comes only from the consent of the governed.”76
Despite these public declarations, it was not until the release of the five-year defense plan that the public began to feel the larger significance of NSDD-32. On May 29, a top-secret document known as the “five-year defense plan” was released to the public. Pentagon officials termed it the “first complete defense guidance of this Administration,” drafted for Secretary Weinberger’s signature. It was a document designed to “form the basis,” reported the New York Times, for DOD’s budget requests for the next five years. It was also a “basic source” for NSDD-32, which, added the Times, was now “the foundation of the Administration’s overall strategic position.”77
Although the release of this “overall strategic position” was captivating, the public was more attuned to the plan because of its examination of strategy for fighting a nuclear war with the USSR. Importantly, examining options for fighting a nuclear war did not mean an endorsement of the policy. On the contrary, it was merely standard procedure for military planners to devise options for potential scenarios. This was true in May 1982 as well, though one might not have imagined judging by the hysterical reaction of those who feared that the plan meant the Reagan administration favored nuclear war. The 125-page unpublished document instructed the armed forces to draw up scenarios for defeating the USSR at any level of conflict.78
More significantly, the DOD plan, formally titled, “Fiscal Year 1984–1988 Defense Guidance,” echoed NSDD-32’s economic-warfare aspects. In a front-page article on May 30, the New York Times reported that the plan stated that Western trade policies “would put as much pressure as possible on a Soviet economy already burdened with military spending.”79 The Times was candid with readers: “As a peacetime complement to military strategy, the guidance document asserts that the United States and its allies should, in effect, declare economic and technical war on the Soviet Union.”
The DOD plan spoke of challenging the USSR with military systems the Soviets could not afford to match, advocating that the United States develop weapons that “are difficult for the Soviets to counter, impose disproportionate costs, open up new areas of major military competition and obsolesce previous Soviet investment.” This emphasis on “putting economic pressure on the Soviet Union,” asserted the Times, in the article’s biggest nonrevelation, was a marked departure from the Carter administration.80
Moreover, reported the Times, the plan made clear that, “Particular attention would be given to eroding support within the Soviet sphere of Eastern Europe.” Again, here was more formal intent to stir dissension within the Soviet empire, and the Communist bloc in particular. The plan said that the Reagan administration should “exploit political, economic, and military weaknesses within the Warsaw Pact.” American “special operations forces” would conduct operations in Eastern Europe with the aim of diminishing Soviet support. The Times explained that special operations were a euphemism for guerrillas, saboteurs, commandos, and “similar unconventional forces.”81