While the administration had put a portion of its cards on the table through the release of the DOD plan, Reagan officials still kept a few aces up their sleeves. Despite their strong language and clear purpose, NSDD-24 and NSDD-32 were merely the beginning of the directives handed down by Reagan that would change the face of the Cold War. Carefully crafted to maximize their potential impact, these initiatives would search new fronts for confrontation with the Soviet Union, always seeking ideas and means to erode Soviet infrastructure.
Though confident in these endeavors, Reagan hoped to enlist the aid of a crucial figure. Economics had constituted one front; religion was another. It was thus that he decided to keep true to his words of the previous Christmas and engage Pope John Paul II in helping him elicit change in the Soviet empire.
10. The Vatican and Westminster: June 7–8, 1982
ON MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1982 RONALD REAGAN WAS IN ROME. He was there as part of a brief trip to Europe. It was a straightforward trip lacking many stops, but in its simplicity, it contained unparalleled steps in the rhetorical and symbolic war against the Soviet Union. For two seminal days in June 1982, Reagan made some of his strongest gestures to date, signaling to America and to the world his belief that Communism’s days were running out.
With a media crush outside, as reporters jockeyed for position and at times literally tripped over one another, Reagan and the pope met at the Vatican, a little over a year after assassination attempts that almost took their lives.1 The day he was shot the pope had received a cable from Reagan, in which the president expressed his shock and prayers.2 Since then, the staffs of the two men had worked diligently to arrange a meeting between them. “It was always assumed the president would meet with the Holy Father as soon as feasible,” said Bill Clark, among those most excited about the prospects, “especially after they both took shots…only a few weeks apart. I don’t know if any one person said ‘we have to see the pope.’ It was just assumed because of their mutual interests that at some point the two men would come together and form some sort of collaboration.”3
Reagan had long coveted such an idea, and the events in Poland the previous December merely reinforced the importance of such a meeting. Not only had he long viewed the pope as the key to Poland’s fate, but among his earliest goals as president was to officially recognize the Vatican as a state “and make them an ally.”4
Now, for the first time, the men spoke face to face inside the venerable Vatican Library. The subject of the shootings was broached. Pio Cardinal Laghi said that Reagan told the pope: “Look how the evil forces were put in our way and how Providence intervened.” Bill Clark said that both men referred to the “miraculous” fact that they had survived; indeed, only later did we learn that both men had come perilously close to dying.5
The Protestant and Catholic, said Clark, shared a “unity” in spiritual views and in their “vision on the Soviet empire,” namely, “that right or correctness would ultimately prevail in the divine plan.” That day, each shared their view that they had been given “a spiritual mission—a special role in the divine plan of life.” Both expressed concern for “the terrible oppression of atheistic communism,” as Clark put it, and agreed that “atheistic communism lived a lie that, when fully understood, must ultimately fail.”6
Together they expressed a common vision to end the Cold War. As Reagan said, “We both felt that a great mistake had been made at Yalta and something should be done. Solidarity was the very weapon for bringing this about.”7 It was an important unity, and in his dramatic 1992 story for Time magazine, Carl Bernstein reported that it was at this meeting where Reagan and the pope secretly joined forces not only to strengthen Solidarity and pressure Warsaw “but to free all of Eastern Europe.” In that first meeting, wrote Bernstein, they consented to undertake a clandestine campaign “to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire.” The two men “were convinced that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if the Vatican and the United States committed the resources to destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial law in 1981.”8 Reagan told the pope: “Hope remains in Poland. We, working together, can keep it alive.”9
Both leaders were convinced that a free, non-Communist Poland would be, in Bernstein’s words, “a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire.” They were certain that if Poland became democratic, other Eastern European states would follow.10 A cardinal who was one of John Paul II’s closest aides put it this way: “Nobody believed the collapse of communism would happen this fast or on this timetable. But in their first meeting, the Holy Father and the President committed themselves and the institutions of the church and America to such a goal. And from that day, the focus was to bring it about in Poland.”
THE PUBLIC FACE
While the two figures clearly shared a bond over their recent experiences and distaste for Communism, there was very little that they were able to share openly. In his subsequent remarks to the press, Reagan said that he left the encounter with a feeling of hope and dedication, knowing that a world which produced such “courage and vision” from a man like Karol Wojtyla, a survivor of adversity, was capable of “building a better future.” Telling the gaggle of frenetic media that he felt a dedication “to do all in one’s power to live up” to the faith and values of the “free West,” he then pointed to general “certain common experiences” of him and the pope which “gave our meeting a special meaning to me.”11
In his press remarks, Reagan also stated that God had blessed America with a freedom and abundance that had been denied to less fortunate brethren. Since the end of World War II, he said, America did its best to provide those less fortunate with billions of dollars in food, medicine, and materials. “And we’ll continue to do so in the years ahead.” Shifting to contemporary Poland specifically, he pledged, “While denying financial assistance to the repressive Polish regime, America will continue to provide the Polish people with as much food and commodity support as possible through church and private organizations.” Like the Church in its spiritual role, America would “seek to pursue the same goals of peace, freedom, and humanity along political and economic lines.” Applying his Christian faith to the fight against Communism, Reagan cited a Scriptural rationale for U.S. aid: “Americans have always believed that in the words of Scripture, ‘Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.’”12
He concluded by asking the pope for his prayers “that God will guide us in our efforts for peace on this journey and in the years ahead.” For his part, the pope closed: “With faith in God and belief in universal human solidarity may America step forward in this crucial moment in history to consolidate her rightful place at the service of world peace.”13 It was a bargain that Reagan was happy to try to meet.