Western Europe and the Reagan Doctrine

Abstract

The Reagan Doctrine has become a major source of controversy in American politics. That it is also the cause of considerable disagreement within the Western alliance as a whole has been less widely noted. No West European state has joined the US administration in its policy of providing military assistance to rebels in Nicaragua, Cambodia and Angola; and only Britain has (apparently) joined in providing assistance to the rebel forces in Afghanistan. Some European governments have been openly critical. Even the British government, the European administration which has been most supportive of President Reagan's policies, expressed public dissent from the decision of Congress in the summer of 1986 to increase support for the Contras against the Nicaraguan government; and Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary, has recently more pointedly declared his belief in the need for a 'peaceful solution' to the Nicaraguan problem. These differences, though not yet highly publicized, could become a source of considerable embarrassment to the Western alliance in the Reagan administration's remaining term of office. This article attempts to set out the prevailing view among West European governments on this issue, one that is held by many conservative as well as more left-wing administrations. This outlook is based partly on a point of principle: the conviction that military assistance to rebel groups in other countries is contrary to the currently accepted rules of the international community. But it is based far more on pure pragmatism: the belief that those policies are unlikely to succeed. Let us examine the issue of principle first. Few questions in international politics have been so bitterly disputed as the propriety of intervention in civil wars elsewhere. Under traditional international law governments were held to be under a 'duty', when rebels acquired control of a substantial part of a national territory, to recognize the 'belligerency' of the insurgents. Once this recognition was granted, they were under a obligation to provide no assistance to either side. Recognition of that kind was usually highly unwelcome to a government fighting a rebellion. Not only did it deprive it of the possibility of receiving active assistance; it accorded a recognized status to the rebellious faction. For this reason the British government caused great offence to the US Federal government by recognizing the belligerency of both parties in the American Civil War and thereafter adopting a position of neutrality. A later British government caused equal offence to the Republican government in Spain in the 1930s by adopting a position of 'non-intervention' and hence neutrality at a time when Hitler and Mussolini were actively assisting Franco's rebel forces. Since 1945 these old rules have been largely abandoned. No government now ever formally recognizes the 'belligerency' of a rebel force, so committing itself to strict