Reagan’s Foreign Policy Record

I am deeply disturbed at the political sniping at the present Administration’s record in foreign policy. We should look at the facts, not political rhetoric, in examining that record.

The Reagan foreign policy has in fact been prudent and cautious. There has been no intervention in the Persian Gulf and only an indirect one in Central America, even though America’s vital interests are at stake in both areas.

The President has also been ideologically undogmatic; witness the continued improving relations with Communist China.

Where policies have gone wrong, as in Lebanon, the Administration has been capable of recognizing a mistake, and correcting it.

The reality of this cautious foreign policy has been obscured by the Administration’s sharper anti-Soviet rhetoric. This rhetoric has also served a purpose, however. It was necessary to mark a break from the false “detente” of the 1970s, which Russia used as a cover for a vast militarization and shift in the worldwide balance of power as it gobbled up country after country--Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua--while the West stood idly by.

Ronald Reagan has well served the entire free world in reminding us that the Soviet government, by its own dogma, is dedicated to the ultimate destruction of freedom and the Western way of life. Russia is an “evil empire,” and the President was right to remind us of it.

Marked by prudence, the Reagan foreign policy record has also been successful. Democracy is re-emerging throughout Latin America. The Sandinista miitary machine in Nicaragua has been blunted. Representative government has been restored in El Salvador, where the military and political situations are finally beginning to improve. Negotiations have begun. Meanwhile, the Cubans have been turned back throughout the entire Caribbean Basin, which was reassured by the American operation on Grenada.

In Europe more realistic, moderate governments have been swept into power everywhere. NATO has successfully weathered the Soviet-assisted “peace” protests in Western Europe, and begun to install the cruise missiles, which are only a partial counter to the Russian SS-20s already there. The Western Alliance is more solid than before, while there are new cracks in Russia’s empire.

Nor has China been tempted away from its new friendship with the United States, while Japan moves ever closer to a more active role in the Far East.

The Reagan rearmament has repaired some of the damage done under earlier administrations, and for the first time since John Kennedy, the Soviet Union knows it faces a strong United States determined to maintain a just peace.

It is in fact the Soviet Union that has met with foreign policy failures as a result of America’s change of direction under Reagan. Despite the military coup in Poland, the Eastern European satellites are showing greater and greater independence. Despite intensive Soviet propaganda efforts, cruise missiles are being installed and NATO defenses being upgraded in Europe. Russia remains bogged down in Afghanistan, with no end in sight.

Why, then, is the public perception that there have been no notable foreign policy successes under Ronald Reagan? I don’t know. Certainly the Democratic Party, which in a single administration managed to lose Iran, Afghanistan and Nicaragua, is in no position to give anyone lessons in foreign policy. Although they may say now that they are in favor of a strong defense, they cannot wash their hands of bankrupt policies of weak defense and isolationism in the past.

President Regan has done a sound job in rebuilding American defenses and in projecting an assurance of steady, strong leaership of the Western Alliance. America is back, and it’s about time. The beneficial results are plain for those who would see.

RICHARD P. SYBERT Los Angeles