Arming the Reagan Doctrine

Charles Wolf, Jr.

Published 1986

This Note originally appeared in The National Interest, no. 5, Fall 1986. In it, the author proposes a change in U.S. foreign policy to offset the advantages that the Soviet Union enjoys as a result of its indirect, cooperative, and coordinated operations in the Third World. He suggests that the United States establish, as a formal and explicit element in U.S. policy and in the programs that reflect it, the provision of material and nonmaterial support for developing multinational, cooperative, mobile military and paramilitary forces of various types and sizes, capable of conducting low-intensity military operations in the Third World. The purpose of these forces would be, in cooperation with the United States, to contain and to reverse communist imperialism in the Third World; to advance legitimate, indigenous movements that seek liberation from communist imperialism; and to further the mutual interests of the United States and its cooperators in developing more pluralistic and more open political systems in the Third World.

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Wolf, Charles, Jr., Arming the Reagan Doctrine. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1986. https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N2541.html.
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