Solidarity was underway. Lech Walesa, after all, was in prison—a metaphor for the whole of the Communist bloc, a living martyr. As the Poland situation festered, Reagan reviewed his options. He was bucked up by a persuasive, well-timed two-page memo written by Richard Pipes (urged by Norm Bailey) and handed to Reagan by Bill Clark on the morning of May 24, shortly before a definitive NSC meeting.17 That memo seemed to further convince him to hang tough. In his diary later that evening, Reagan wrote of the NSC meeting that day: “We had a session on sanctions [over Poland], limiting Soviet credit and the Versailles [June economic summit] meeting. There was a lot of talk about… our allies. I firmly said to hell with it. It’s time to tell them this is our chance to bring the Soviets into the real world and for them to take a stand with us, shut off credit, etc.”18 The French, in particular, would hear none of this. On June 15, the Washington Post carried an exclusive front-page interview with the French president. The article, pointedly titled “France Refuses to Wage Economic War on Soviets,” began: “France will reject efforts by the Reagan administration to enlist Western Europe in a campaign of economic warfare against the Soviet Union, President Francois Mitterand has declared.” The Post reported that Mitterand was prepared to cooperate with the United States in “defensive measures” against the Soviets, such as, for instance, “to contain their ambitions.” However, he “firmly” rejected an offensive strategy based on trade and financial restrictions intended to “undermine” Soviet strength. “We are not going to wage any kind of war on the Russians,” declared Mitterand. “You have to be serious about such a course. It could lead to a real war. If economic embargo is a first act of war, it risks being caught up by a second. No, it is not the right move.”19
The front-page article was a coup for the Kremlin, for Western Europe, and for the U.S. State Department. Perhaps now, thought State, President Reagan would drop his stubborn crusade against the Soviet pipeline. The article was met with anxiety at Bill Clark’s NSC; the pressure on Reagan to reverse his course was mounting.
All of this came to a head on June 18, 1982. At a meeting that day, the bulk of Reagan’s Cabinet pressed him to abandon his position on the pipeline, and quickly it became clear that this meeting would prove to be the decisive moment in this debate. Most of the Cabinet, including the secretaries of Commerce, Treasury, Defense, and State were represented, as was the CIA, USTR, OMB, plus members of what Ed Meese called “The Establishment,” that is, the soft-liners who held out hope that the president would think reasonably and agree with them.
At the end of a heated discussion, everyone listened in hushed anticipation as Reagan spoke up: “Well, they can have their damned pipeline.” He paused and glanced at the enormous sighs of relief exhaling from pragmatists around the table. The Establishment was relieved—but not for long. Just then, the former actor hit the table with his fists and finished: “But not with American equipment and not with American technology!” He stood and left the room.20
THE SOVIETS RESPOND
The State Department was quite displeased. Al Haig, for this and many other reasons, offered to resign, and Reagan accepted his resignation. By June 22, Haig was out.
Likewise, the Soviets were not happy with the president’s decision. “In general, we have noticed that the current American administration is very successfully blowing up bridges, one after another, that were built over decades,” fumed Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at a New York press conference. “As soon as Washington notices that some bridge or other is still intact, it at once plants a mine and blows up that bridge.”21
Complaints from Moscow were omnipresent, and sometimes vicious. The publication, Za Rubezhom, took special umbrage; it seemed to carry the banner as the flagship Soviet source for expressing outrage over the pipeline obstruction. Reagan’s statements were alternately denounced in Za Rubezhom as “absurd, stupid fabrications,” just plain “stupid fabrications,” or “fantastic lies,” or “crude” lies, or “disgraceful” lies, or, as the title of one resourceful article relayed, “Lies as Policy, or the Policy of Lies.”22
These accounts from Za Rubezhom reveal how protests by Western European governments played into Soviet hands. A page-one editorial in Za Rubezhom accused Reagan of a sort of U.S. imperialism, treating West European allies like American states:
With rare unanimity, almost all of the West European countries have risen up against official Washington’s crude arbitrariness. Indeed, having decided to prevent at all costs the construction of the Siberia-West Europe gas pipeline in order to damage our country, U.S. President Reagan deemed it possible at the same time to “punish” the non-American firms that are cooperating with the Soviet Union. He announced that the “sanctions” provided for by U.S. domestic legislation would be employed against them, as though the FRG (West Germany), Britain, France, Italy, Japan and other sovereign states were now part of the United States or had to submit to U.S. jurisdiction….
The intention of the most aggressive U.S. circles to impede socialist building in our country is nothing new. Attempts to finish off socialism by means of an economic blockade have been made repeatedly in the past….
Washington’s intention to delay the commissioning of the gas pipeline, if only for a short time, will not be realized. The American President’s arrogant statements have had the opposite effect in the Soviet Union to what he was expecting. Instead of the pace of construction work slowing, it has quickened.
Finding himself in a mess with his venture against the gas pipeline and having reduced relations between the United States and its allies to their lowest point in the entire postwar period, Reagan has begun feverishly patching up the holes he himself has created in the capitalist community.23
Also unhappy with Reagan’s decision were America’s Western European allies, who quickly sought to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Moscow. On June 30, 1982 a reporter told Reagan that even the government of his good friend Margaret Thatcher, to whom he had delivered his Westminster Address only twelve days earlier, had just taken steps to enable British companies to get around the U.S. embargo on pipeline equipment to the Soviet Union. Reagan’s reply at a news conference reflected his wider thinking:
This is simply a matter of principle. We proposed that embargo back at the time when the trouble began in Poland—and we believe firmly that the Soviet Union is the supporter of the trouble in Poland…. [T]hese sanctions were imposed until [the United States sees a relaxation of] the oppression… of the people of Poland…. Now, if that is done, we’ll lift those sanctions. But I don’t see any way that, in principle, we could back away from that.
I understand that it’s a hardship [for Britain and Western Europe]. We tried to persuade our allies not to go forward with the pipeline for two reasons. One, we think there is a risk that if they become industrially dependent on the Soviet Union for energy—and all the valves are on the Soviet side of the border—that the Soviet Union can engage in a kind of blackmail when that happens. The second thing is, the Soviet Union is very hard pressed financially and economically today. They have put their people literally on a starvation diet with regard to consumer items while they poured all their resources into the most massive military buildup the world has ever seen. And that buildup is obviously aimed at the nations in the alliance. And they, the Soviet Union, now hard- pressed for cash because of its own actions, can receive anywhere from ten to twelve billion dollars a year in hard cash payments in return for the energy when the pipeline is completed—which I assume, if they continue the present policies, would be used to arm further against the rest of us and against our allies and thus force more cost for armaments for the rest of the world.24
A month later, Reagan reiterated this thinking with a bit of an edge in a July 22 interview with KMOX-TV in St. Louis, saying of the Soviets: “They’re up against the wall. They don’t have cash… the way they did.” The pipeline, he repeated, would give Moscow 10 to 12 billion dollars per year in “cold, hard cash,” aided and abetted by “cash customers” in Western Europe.25
Reagan sounded this message wherever he could, campaigning for his cause like a wartime president.26 Even though his decision had been made, he still faced an uphill PR battle. Through the remaining summer and into the fall of 1982, he traveled to American towns that could have gained badly needed
