We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth…. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.
--President Reagan, in his State of the Union address February 1985
For 30 years, from 1945 to 1975, guerrilla wars in the Third World pitted Soviet-backed communist guerrillas against authoritarian pro-Western governments. In Cuba, China, Guatemala, Greece, Turkey, the Philippines, the Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia--among others--communist insurgents challenged the governments, each of which was portrayed as a "puppet" of "western imperialism." In many cases, notably Cuba, China, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, and Rhodesia, the guerrillas eventually were successful and came to power. But the independence from colonial power that was won in these "liberation struggles" often was fleeting; in several of these nations, the new ruling clique simply switched the country's status from one of alliance with the West to one of alliance with the East.
This expansion of the Soviet empire came about as a direct result of the shrinking of the empires of the West. As each of the European colonial powers liquidated its colonial holdings, the Soviets and their surrogates made a bid for power in the vacuum. As noted, in many cases they were successful. Even as the West finished its decolonization process in the mid-1970s, however, the Soviets were beginning to run into problems of their own.
In 1975, a new phenomenon appeared: the anti-Soviet insurgency. First in Angola, then in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, resistance fighters organized themselves to fight against the incorporation of their nations into the Soviet empire. Some groups were merely continuing a struggle they previously had been waging against the Western colonial power; UNITA in Angola is the prime example here. Others were started a new fight against Soviet intervention in their affairs; the mujahideen in Afghanistan are an example of this type of insurgency. Some had their democratic credentials firmly established, while others were Muslim fundamentalists, and others were Marxists themselves. What they all shared was a rejection of Soviet control over their nations and a determination to rid their nations of all foreign influence.
Ronald Reagan's accession to the presidency was a boon to these resistance fighters. He had campaigned in 1980 on a promise to help them and made efforts soon after coming to office to provide direct U.S. military assistance to them. He inherited from the Carter administration a covert military assistance relationship with the mujahideen and quickly increased the size of the program; by 1982, the administration had also begun a covert assistance program to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters. Through the early 1980s, these two groups were the only ones to receive U.S. military assistance.
By late 1985, however, the situation had changed radically. Beginning with the president's declaration in his 1985 State of the Union address, supporters of U.S. assistance to the freedom fighters had won a string of victories in Congress--sometimes with the help of the administration, sometimes with its opposition. U.S. assistance was flowing
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