The Crusader

George Stone of the National Farmers Union, Archbishop John R. Roach of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, David Preuss of the American Lutheran Church, and Rabbi Alexander Schindler of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. These men commended Reagan for his “firm and unmistakable” position, but expressed concern about the sanctions weighing “more heavily upon the Polish people then upon the ruling government.”¹⁰² Kirkland and crew laid out a list of emergency food supplies that could be shipped to Poles. “America,” the telegram concluded, “must not let them down.” Reagan’s immediate response is seen in his handwritten one-line reaction at the top of his copy of the telegram: “I believe we should give this urgent consideration. RR.”¹⁰³

It is also important to understand that the sanctions harmed economically pressed Americans. The Reagan NSC estimated that sanctions would exact a $500 million loss to the U.S. economy in 1982 alone—an economy in a recession.¹⁰⁴ Nonetheless, Reagan felt that the domestic sacrifice in the shortterm was well worth the long-term gain.

Reagan later said that he did not think the decision to impose martial law and crush Solidarity “could stand” because of “the history of Poland and the religious aspect and all.”¹⁰⁵ But regardless of the immediate outcome, there were larger issues at stake. The most important element to December 1981, as Cap Weinberger put it, was that the administration “decided on the need to make a stand in Poland—not only to prevent an invasion, but to seek ways to undermine [Communist] power in Poland.”¹⁰⁶

REAGAN’S UNMISTAKABLE INTENTIONS

Sensing Reagan’s broader objectives, the USSR and its Communist bloc regimes reacted with fear and loathing, as they pumped their propaganda machines for a response. One spin by the Communist press was to attempt to argue that the aggressor was somehow to be found in Washington, not in Moscow or Warsaw, from where martial law was imposed. TASS argued: “The U.S. administration has undertaken a provocative act with the aim of still further poisoning the international climate, increasing tension, making confrontation harsher and pursuing a harder militarist line in foreign policy.”¹⁰⁷

A key component of this spin was to frame Reagan as the aggressor. Driven to a “blind rage” that removed “every vestige of common sense,” TASS said that Ronald Reagan had personally lashed out at the USSR when announcing, “a whole range of unilateral discriminatory measures against the Soviet Union.” TASS dubbed these U.S. sanctions “blackmail and pressure,” saying that by justifying this “unprecedented crude diktat,” Reagan “resorted to direct forgery and lies.” “The White House boss clearly needed these unsubstantiated accusations in order to distort generally known facts,” said TASS, such as the “fact” that the “trials” which had befallen the Polish people “are primarily the result of direct interference in Poland’s affairs by American imperialism.” “It is precisely the United States,” said TASS, “which reared the Polish counterrevolution.”¹⁰⁸

Much to Reagan’s chagrin, in their clamor over U.S. interference, Iron Curtain Communists could count on occasional support among America’s Western allies, which they in turn used as a central facet of their PR war against the United States. Such support was most salient among the West German left, from the rank-and-file protester to top government officials. The Communist press frequently quoted West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, the latter of whom, according to a UPI quote borrowed extensively by the Soviet media, said he opposed “external intervention” in Poland’s internal affairs—meaning strictly American external intervention, not Soviet.¹⁰⁹ The Communist press also cited the leftist Pierre Trudeau government of Canada, especially relishing a quote from the prime minister’s spokesman, who said: “We do not stand at attention whenever Reagan speaks.”¹¹⁰

What Moscow’s anti-Reagan campaign proved was that Reagan certainly had the attention and great concern of Communist headquarters. Moreover, all of the bluster and hyperbole in these statements revealed something significant: as early as December 1981, the Kremlin accurately understood what much of America had yet to learn: Reagan wanted to subvert Soviet Communism in Poland and, more so, to spark a chain reaction throughout the Communist bloc.

“Washington is behaving as the patron of Polish counterrevolution [with] plans to overthrow the socialist order,” asserted a January 1982 Pravda piece by Aleksey Petrov. “The White House figures would like to see in Poland a kind of rallying point in order to attempt to introduce a split in the socialist world and, at the same time, to shake the whole existing system of international relations.” The White House, said Petrov, saw Poland as a “fulcrum” to split the Communist bloc.¹¹¹ TASS correspondent Yuri Kornilov agreed, saying it was “quite obvious” that the United States was seeking a situation “in which a weak Poland, torn by internal contradictions, is weakening the whole socialist camp.”¹¹²

From inside Poland, Adam Rostowski wrote in Zolnierz Wolnosci that the Reagan team held “hopes that the events in Poland would trigger an avalanche of evolutionary or, under suitable circumstances, revolutionary (read counterrevolutionary), changes in other socialist countries in East Europe, and particularly Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Romania, and maybe—for the second time—in Hungary.”¹¹³ It was as if Rostowski, Kornilov, and Petrov had been reading Ronald Reagan’s diary—or perhaps his Christmas list that December 1981.

BY THE END OF DECEMBER, REAGAN’S SANCTIONS WERE IN place. He had faced the first clear test of his anti-Communist resolve. Neither international nor domestic pressure was capable of dissuading him from the course that he deemed proper, and the sanctions would remain in place until he deemed it appropriate to lift them. In Poland he had witnessed the true nature of Communism reveal itself, a nature he had known for forty years.

While the dramatic events of that December loomed large over the new year, they were merely a precursor for the exciting year that lay ahead. It was a year which would set the stage not only for Reagan’s bold initiatives in 1982, but for the years of his presidency that lay ahead. It was a year in which the glove which fit so comfortably during 1981 would come off.

9. Commencing the Crusade: January to June 1982

ON JANUARY 1, 1982, THE FRONT PAGE OF THE WASHINGTON POST featured three lead stories of high interest. In the top right corner was a dispatch from Solidarity’s Zbigniew Bujak, smuggled from his undisclosed hideout. Bujak wanted to assure the world that Solidarity had not been vanquished and that “final victory” would come. In the middle of the top-ofthe-fold was an interview with another Solidarity activist that the Post identified only by pseudonym. He expressed betrayal by his own military. “[I]t’s our own Army,” he despaired. “We’re confused and we don’t know how to react.”

Most significant of these three stories was the one in the top left column, which reported that Richard Allen’s job as national security adviser was expected to go to Bill Clark, a fervently anti-Communist Catholic with a special sympathy for Poland, who was about to become Ronald Reagan’s indispensable point man in laying the groundwork for Cold War victory.¹

Reagan awoke as usual at 7:00 am and read these stories among his standard stack of newspapers—the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Times. He then attended his regular morning briefings. On this New Year’s Day, he had planned two public appearances, both via video link. The first concerned football, which he hoped to catch on TV for a few minutes that afternoon. Speaking with actor Michael Landon, who was covering the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena for NBC, Reagan helped ring in the new year for the millions of Americans watching the parade.

In his other appearance, Reagan gave a short talk broadcast worldwide by the U.S. International Communication Agency. “We look forward to the coming year as a time of opportunity,” said the president. “We hope and pray… that mankind will be a little better for things which we as individuals and as a nation will do in the year ahead.” He noted that in the previous year Anwar Sadat, “a great man of peace,” was murdered, and that