Soviet Allies within the Soviet Empire. NSDD-75 said there were “a number of important weaknesses and vulnerabilities within the Soviet empire which the U.S. should exploit.” U.S. policies, said the NSDD, “should seek wherever possible to encourage Soviet allies to distance themselves from Moscow in foreign policy and to move toward democratization domestically.” (p. 4)
Eastern Europe. “The primary U.S. objective in Eastern Europe,” NSDD-75 made clear, “is to loosen Moscow’s hold on the region” while also promoting human rights in the region. The directive said the Reagan administration could advance this objective by “carefully discriminating” in favor of countries that “show relative independence” from the USSR in their foreign policy, or those that show “a greater degree of internal liberalization.” (p. 4) The White House had in mind Yugoslavia and Poland, respectively.
Afghanistan. The document affirmed that in Afghanistan, “The U.S. objective is to keep maximum pressure on Moscow for withdrawal and to ensure that the Soviets’ political, military, and other costs remain high while the occupation continues.” (p. 4)
Soviet Third World Alliances. The Reagan team listed an added objective “to weaken and, where possible, undermine the existing links” between the USSR and its Third World allies. U.S. policy “will include active efforts to encourage democratic movements and forces to bring about political change inside these countries.” (p. 5)
China. NSDD-75 happily reported that China “continues to support” U.S. efforts to “strengthen the world’s defenses against Soviet expansionism.” The directive said the United States should seek enhanced cooperation with China and reduce the possibility of a Sino-Soviet rapprochement. (p. 5)
Arms Control. The directive advised that the White House only enter into arms-control talks when they serve U.S. objectives. Speaking Reagan’s own language, NSDD-75 insisted that arms-control agreements were “not an end in themselves.” (p. 5)
Official Dialogue. The directive said the White House “should insist” that Moscow address the “full range of U.S. concerns about Soviet internal behavior and human-rights violations.” The administration should resist a U.S.–Soviet agenda focused on arms control at the expense of human rights. (p. 5) This reflected Reagan’s long-held belief that it was wrong to ignore Soviet brutalities merely for the sake of gaining arms-control agreements; that was what détente had produced, and that was why it was wrong.
Brezhnev’s successor. The directive even addressed the issue of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s successor. On that, NSDD-75 said the administration would “try to create incentives (positive and negative) for the new leadership to adopt policies less detrimental to U.S. interests.” (p. 7) Even that would later be fulfilled in the form of a man named Gorbachev.
Spanning almost every continent, NSDD-75 proved to be the most ambitious assault on Soviet interests in decades, maybe ever. In fact, it held no recognition of Soviet interests. The document assumed that not only should the United States encourage support for democratic forces throughout the world but that it should discourage the USSR’s ability to support Communist forces, which were repressive and undemocratic and thus illegitimate.
NSDD-75 revealed not only an intention to deter Soviet aggression but also to roll back the empire when possible. In a calculated move to avoid overt conflict, NSDD-75 did not advocate taking on the Soviets at every point of incursion, but instead focused merely on the areas where the Soviets were most vulnerable and the United States most capable of inflicting damage. Clark’s deputy, Robert McFarlane, emphasized: “NSDD-75 did not say we should confront the Soviets at every point. It said we should look for vulnerabilities and try to beat them.”14
Though this language concerning the reversal of Soviet expansionism was explicit, NSDD-75 did not explicitly predict a disintegration of the USSR. It did, however, seek to make overt attempts to change the nation internally or to make life miserable for the Soviet system. Unlike Reagan, the document made no predictions of victory or of placing Soviet Communism on the ash heap of history, as such a declaration would have been out of character for an official document.
Other similar distinctions are in order: NSDD-75 sought to reverse not only future but past Soviet expansion, and stated such a goal more explicitly than any previous Reagan administration document. “Past” expansion was cruciaclass="underline" That reflects an intention to roll back territory already taken by the Soviet Union. Tellingly, the name applied to NSDD by some administration insiders was “Operation Rollback.” One can rightly say that the intent of NSDD-75 was to alter both the Soviet empire and the USSR.
Further, NSDD-75 endeavored to “change” and “gradually reduce” the Marxist system within the USSR. By seeking political pluralism, it also hoped to repudiate the Communist Party monopoly on power. Alas, because the Communist system and USSR were one in the same, the intent of NSDD-75 was to transform the USSR itself.
Somehow the Soviets were able to procure a copy of the highly classified document. The Moscow Domestic Service released two statements on the directive, dubbing the “plan” a “subversive” attempt “to try to influence the internal situation” within the USSR. “[T]he task,” said Moscow, was “to exhaust the Soviet economy.” The Reagan administration had “drawn up aggressive plans” for “mass political, economic, and ideological pressure against the Soviet Union in an attempt to undermine the socioeconomic system and international position of the Soviet state.”15 This interpretation was correct on all counts.
Throughout the Soviet media, the directive resonated, as the propaganda machine sought to make sense of the confrontational wording. A piece in Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya stated, “Directive 75 speaks of changing the Soviet Union’s domestic policy. In other words, the powers that be in Washington are threatening the course of world history, neither more nor less.”16 In doubting such Washington ability, the publication quoted editorials in the Toronto Star and Los Angeles Times. “Our country,” it quoted assurances from the Los Angeles Times, “simply has no means of exerting pressure of this sort (on the Soviet Union), and it was staggering to hear that the Reagan administration thinks otherwise.” Going by such accounts, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya confidently told Soviet readers that the general opinion of Western observers was that the grandiose “ideas of Reagan and Pipes” were “staggeringly naïve.”17
LATE JANUARY TO FEBRUARY 1983
Despite the domestic and Soviet blowback, it was clear that NSDD-75 was a bold declaration of the administration’s vision—one that Reagan sought to embrace publicly. A week after signing NSDD-75 in private, Reagan spoke of this vision openly in his January 25 State of the Union, in which he called for a “comprehensive strategy for peace with freedom.” He referred to his Westminster Address in London the previous June and reiterated his commitment to the development of an “infrastructure of democracy” throughout the world. “We intend to pursue this democratic initiative vigorously,” said Reagan. “The future belongs not to governments and ideologies which oppress their peoples, but to democratic systems of self-government which encourage individual initiative and guarantee personal freedom.” Though he did not outline these initiatives in his speech, they would take the form of the National Endowment for Democracy, the modernization of the Voice of America and other broadcast facilities, and the launch of Radio Marti, a station designed to broadcast inside Cuba.18