Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

252. Action Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs (Ridgway), the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Murphy), and the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Rodman) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, October 4, 1985

SUBJECT

• Proposal on Regional Conflicts in Presidential UN Address

ISSUE FOR DECISION

Whether to approve the attached outline for the President’s October 24 address to the UN.² The centerpiece is the initiative on peaceful resolution of regional conflicts.

ESSENTIAL FACTORS

The President’s UN speech will be a major element in our public diplomacy efforts leading up to Geneva. The speech will follow immediately after the Warsaw Pact summit in Sofia on October 22–23 where Gorbachev is expected to give a major foreign policy speech to the Pact summit.

The NSC has drafted an outline for the speech (Tab 1) and McFarlane plans to present it to the President on Saturday.³ The outline’s centerpiece is a Presidential initiative on the peaceful settlement of conflicts in key countries where Soviet (or proxy) involvement has created the greatest concern: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Angola and Ethiopia. The President would propose negotiations and ceasefires among warring parties, and formation of genuinely representative governments. This would be followed by Soviet-American negotiations on elimination of external military presence in the country and cut offs of external arms. Finally, the country would be reintegrated into the world economy, with U.S. participation in the effort.

The draft outline does not offer any initiatives on arms control. After we have assessed the implications of the Soviet counter-proposals presented in Geneva and Paris this week, we will be in a better position to determine whether the UN speech or another context would be the best forum for any initiatives of our own.

ANALYSIS OF OPTIONS

The NSC has asked for our comments on the outline of the President’s 1985 address to the U.N. General Assembly. The theme strikes us as right, and the initiative on regional conflicts is well-designed both to put the blame for these problems where it belongs and to highlight the point that, throughout the world, there is popular resistance to regimes either installed or backed by the Soviet Union. Whether or not Moscow chooses to respond to it in a practical way, the proposal is an appropriate public diplomatic step.

There is one major U.S. public diplomatic theme which would not be well served by the address as presently outlined. This is the crucial point that the regional conflicts and tensions produced by Soviet imperialism are East-South, (East-East in the case of Eastern Europe), not East-West issues. This is particularly important in Afghanistan where we seek to disabuse the Muslim and Third Worlds of the notion that the conflict is primarily a superpower concern and that their own stake in it is minimal. For the President to say that we and the Soviets should, in any way, be involved in negotiations to end the conflict by halting the external flow of arms would blur the East-South nature of the war and support a major Soviet propaganda theme that fighting in Afghanistan would end if the West stopped arming the “counter-revolutionary bandits.”

A second, more parochial concern is the effect that a proposal to halt the flow of arms to those fighting unpopular regimes would have on our allies. Again, the Afghanistan case is illustrative. The Pakistanis are resolutely standing up to the Soviets and have made it plain that they count on us to stand behind them. The bedrock of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is that we will continue to back by all appropriate means Pakistani efforts to aid the Afghan resistance and to counter Soviet attempts to intimidate them. Specific mention of U.S.-Soviet negotiations aimed at halting the external flow of arms would lead the Pakistanis to question our motives and perhaps to rethink their policy, which has many opponents in Pakistan, of unstinting support to the Afghans.

These concerns can be easily met by a slight recasting of the second of the three elements of the initiative. This part of the proposal should indicate that, as the Soviets and their surrogates begin to make progress in their negotiations with the various popular resistance movements, the U.S. and the Soviet Union would open discussions aimed at supporting the process of negotiation with the resistance movements. In some cases, such as Afghanistan, this could primarily involve guaranteeing the arrangements being worked out between the warring parties. This alteration of the language would fit well in that it would, in effect, reemphasize both our support for the U.N.-sponsored negotiations and our view of how these discussions could be made to produce results.

The main Soviet interest in the proposal, of course, is to find a way of stopping the flow of western arms. We could continue to pique this fancy by speaking of guaranteeing arrangements already worked out for stopping such flows from both directions. In all instances, however, it would be clear that a U.S.-Soviet understanding on halting the flow of external arms would be an affirmation of an understanding reached in the negotiations with the resistance movements, not a direct superpower agreement.

In addition to this concern, the attached, amended version of the NSC draft contains two other changes. First, we have modified the first point of the initiative so as blur slightly the question of who is talking to whom. In Afghanistan, we think the Soviets, and not necessarily the Kabul regime, should eventually talk to the resistance, while in Nicaragua we would not want to see Moscow involved in the reconciliation process. The central point that the national liberation movement should be consulted in each case remains undiluted. We have also modified the third point to make it clear that we do not seek to replace Soviet domination with our own but are interested only in reconstruction.

Overall, we believe the regional proposal addresses a fundamental cause of U.S.-Soviet tensions in the past decade: aggressive behavior by Moscow and its proxies in third areas. We will, of course, need to prepare the way carefully with our allies in order to ensure that they understand what we are about. In particular, we will need specific concurrence from the Pakistanis in order not to place our basic regional policy objectives at risk. Once our allies’ understanding of the initiative is assured, the proposal offers a means for resolving local issues without providing unmanageable opportunities for the Soviet side.

RECOMMENDATION

That you approve the attached outline, reflecting State Department changes, for the President’s October 24 address to the UN.⁴

Alternatively, if you disagree with the approach contained in the revised NSC outline, that you call Bud McFarlane to register your concerns.⁵

1. Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/P Files, Memoranda and Correspondence from the Director of the Policy Planning Staff to the Secretary and Other Seventh Floor Principals: Lot 89D149, S/P Chrons 10/1–31/85. Secret; Sensitive. Sent through Armacost. Drafted by Dunbar and Fried; cleared by Palmer, Parris, Burton, and Raphel. Eleanor Endersbee (NEA/EX) initialed for all drafting and clearing officials. Wendy Chamberlin (NEA/RA) also initialed for Raphel. Quinn initialed the memorandum and wrote “10/4.” Bova also initialed the memorandum and wrote “12 Oct.” Next to his initials, Armacost wrote: “I’m not keen about the regional proposal.” Shultz’s stamped initials appear on the memorandum. A notation in an unknown hand, presumably Quinn’s, next to Shultz’s initials reads: “Approved as amended to include mention of Iran-Iraq war—per SECTO 21001.” Reference is to Secto 21001 from the Secretary’s Delegation in Palo Alto, October 12. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, N850010–0573)
2. Attached but not printed at Tab 1 is an October 4 paper entitled “President’s UNGA Address, 1985, Basic Outline.” Welty, Bishop, and Einaudi cleared the outline. The speech is printed as Document 253.
3. October 5. There is no indication that McFarlane met or spoke with the President that day. (Reagan Library, President’s Daily Diary)
4. An unknown hand, presumably Quinn’s, placed a diagonal line on the “Approve” line and wrote above it: “But there needs to be something on Iran-Iraq conflict.” See footnote 1 above for approval notation.
5. There is no indication Shultz approved or disapproved the recommendation.