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PRESIDENT REAGAN'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
Was Ronald Reagan a Good President?
President Reagan's International Human Rights Record
President Reagan's International Human Rights Record
The Cold War and Apartheid
On September 26, 1986, President Ronald Reagan (1986) sent a message to the House of Representatives that he would not sign into law H.R. 4868 because it imposed punitive economic sanctions against South Africa as a whole. His stated rationale was that the people most affected by the sanctions would be the Black workers, not the ruling White elite. Reagan agreed that apartheid needed to end, but not at the expense of those already suffering the most under White rule. On the surface this logic seems admirable, even honorable, but others have questioned Reagan's motives. Although Reagan did not use the exact phrase "constructive engagement," this term would come to represent his policy stance towards apartheid. Reagan's message to the House followed an earlier imposition of sanctions by his administration against the South African government, which Bishop Tutu called a "flea bite" (Bush, 1985, p. ii). H.R. 4868 eventually received enough votes to override Reagan's veto.
The then editor of The New Black Vote and staff member of the Institute for the Study of Labor and Economic Crisis (San Francisco), Rob Bush (1985), wrote that the underlying motivation for Reagan's position on apartheid in South Africa had more to do with conservative...
From Bush's perspective, Reagan's policy towards apartheid was simply one more manifestation of increasing militarism by the United States to ensure a Cold War advantage against communism; therefore, maintaining friendly ties with the South African government would help prevent the emergence of a Marxist regime in Southern Africa. Between 1981 and 1985 the Reagan administration, according to Bush (1985), spent over $2 billion dollars shoring up dictatorships the world over for the same reason
Bush (1985) draws a parallel between the New Right's agenda in the United States and that of the South African government, with the former's goal of restoring "… the U.S. To its "rightful" position as leader of the "free world" & #8230;" (1985, p. v) and the latter's goal of stripping South Africans of their civil rights and relocating them to land otherwise considered uninhabitable. Both Reagan and the President of South Africa, P.W. Botha, claimed that their policy positions were a direct result of the need to keep the Soviet threat at bay.
Although statistics revealing the level of violence committed by the South African security forces against South Africans are non-existent or notoriously inaccurate, best estimates suggest that 1985 and 1986 were the years when the largest numbers were killed by the police during the Apartheid Era (Bruce, 2005, p. 150-152). The shock and…
References
Bruce, D. (2005). Interpreting the body count: South African statistics on lethal police violence. South African Review of Sociology, 36(2), 141-59.
Bush, R. (1985). Reagan and state terrorism in Southern Africa. Crime and Social Justice, 0 (24), i-x.
Reagan, R.W. (1986, Sep. 26). Message to the House of Representatives returning without approval a Bill concerning apartheid in South Africa. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Accessed 6 Feb. 2014 at http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/search/speeches/speech_srch.html.
Reagan, R.W. (1987, Jun. 12). Remarks on East-West relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. Accessed 6 Feb. 2014 at http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/search/speeches/speech_srch.html.
Many young people voted for Reagan as he represented rebellion against the authority figures in society but was a rebellion characterized by valiance and effectuated through skillful communication. The approval rating of Reagan was approximately 42% when 1982 began but dropped to the record low 35% later that same year. The U.S. entered a recession. If one is to set their focus upon obtaining a chance at being the
It was a poor policy at best, and the President's Cabinet approved the plan, even if he did not. In fact, Congress specifically denied the request to send money to the Contras, so it was done in secret, and this violated the law and the trust of the nation. It was dishonest, it was covert, and it cast a dark cloud over the presidency and Reagan's own motives. In comparison,
Leadership of President Ronald "Dutch" Reagan Naturally gregarious and charismatic, even his critics admired Ronald Reagan's ability to cajole, persuade and otherwise convince others of the legitimacy of his ideas. While he frequently got his facts wrong, as the 40th U.S. president, Reagan was consistent in demonstrating the kind of leadership that the nation needed following the Iranian takeover of the U.S. Embassy and the taking of embassy staff as
Ronald Reagan Foreign Policy: Annotated Bibliography Tucker, Robert W. 1989. "REAGAN'S FOREIGN POLICY." Foreign Affairs 68, no. 1: 1-27. The author of this article maintains that Ronald Reagan assumed the Presidential role rebuking the 70s' arms control attempts. As a majority of Reagan's fellow politicians were highly suspicious of any arms control pacts with Russia, the general belief was that the newly sworn-in President shared the same view. The cold-war agreement with
Indeed, arguably he is playing a little loose with the terms here, for persuasion, while it may be based on logic, is rarely simply logic. Rather it is logic combined with at least a coating of emotion. In the following passage toward the end of his speech Obama uses language that I believe to be persuasive in a way in which Aristotle would approve, for Obama is using facts to
Peace Freedom is the Foundation of Peace. Without freedom, there is no peace. America, by nature, stands for freedom, and we must always remember, we benefit when it expands. So we must stand by those nations moving toward freedom. We must stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten our neighbors or our vital interests. We must assert emphatically that the future will belong to the free. Today's