LETTER TO JOHN POINDEXTER FROM NEWT GINGRICH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000300420038-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: February 21, 1986
• Content Type: LETTER

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Office of Legislative Liaison
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SUSPENSE
Remarks:
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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
SUSPENSE 18 Mar 86
Dote
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g wT a brief draft response
Althou^n Gingrich only asked Poindexter for his
comments, please provide your thoughts to WIT
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Remarks
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SIXTH DISTRICT. GEORGIA
(OMMITTEES
PURL IC WORKS AND
TRANSPORTATION
WASHINGTON OI TICE
1005 LONGWORTH HOUSE OFFICE ?LOG.
WASHINGTON, DC 205 15
[phone]
Executive Registry
(ongregg of the initeb *tateg
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February 21, 1986
Admiral John Poindexter
National Security Advisor
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
1 6351 JoNESRo^o ROAD
SUITE E
MONPOw, GA 30260
[phone]
POST OFFICE Box 848
GRIFFIN FEUE RAL BUILDING
GRIFFIN. GA 30224
[phone]
CARROLL COUNTY COURTNOUS
CARROLLTON, GA 30117
[phone]
COUNTY OFFICE BUILDING
22 EAST BROAD STREET
NEWNAN, GA 30263
[phone]
We face one decisive hurdle in our efforts to implement the Reagan
Doctrine of supporting Freedom Fighters against the Soviet Empire. Our
central problem is the question of whether we are dealing with a series
of specific isolated nation-state problems or whether there is a
transnational Soviet Empire which poses a transnational problem. This
essentially intellectual, analytical question lies at'the heart of all
our problems legally, diplomatically, militarily, and politically. If
we resolve this central issue of transnational versus nation-state
analysis, our core problems will be solvable.
I encountered the difference during my research on the Logan Act
several years ago. It was clear from the debates in the U.S. Congress
in the 1790s that the French revolution had begun the development of a
new approach to international movements within nation-state frameworks.
Congressmen were develpoing new opportunities to meet a new
transnational threat to American survival. Many of the 1790's debates
about revolutionary movements, Jacobin clubs, revolutionary idealogy,
and threats to our freedom,, read as though- they could be used today to
describe the Soviet Empire, Leninism, and the Communist threat in our
own backyard.
While we were beginning to develop an answer to a transnational
threat in the the 1790's, those efforts ceased when the French
Revolution was replaced with a more traditional Napoleonic Empire. The
19th Century became a time of nation-state diplomacy with clear lines
of sovereignty, legality, and a sharp distinction between war and
peace. With the end of the French revolution, that ceased to exist.
Modern American diplomatic and legal theory, political language, and
military strategy grew up in that era.
Today we face again the challenge of a transnational
movement(Leninism) which builds a global threat to our freedom(the
Soviet Empire) by using violence short of overt war to impose its will
on people. If we are to meet this Soviet-Leninist transnational threat
to our freedom, we must change our approach in five fundamental areas.
Only with these major efforts will be successful in helping freedom
fighters win the struggle against the Soviet Empire.
First, we need a legal, diplomatic, and cultural framework for
victory which explains to ourselves and our allies why it is legitimate
for a free society to undermine(and actively assist those undermining)
a sovereign government with which we have diplomatic relations.
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Our entire current tradition is based on the 19th century
nation-state model which provides no theoretical-or legal framework for
explaining a revolutionary, transnational movement of democracies
supporting freedom against the revolutionary, transnational movement of
totalitarianisms supporting tyranny.
The Wilsonian tradition of war or peace between sovereign nations
is an inadequate diplomatic framework for the reality of the late 20th
Century. Until we create the legal, cultural, and diplomatic framework
that explains our behavior, we will not be able to sustain American
Public opinion or allied support for a strategy of helping freedom
fighters.
Second, we must have a strategy for victory rather than a strategy
for supporting the struggle. Similarly, in the long run, totalitarian
governments will outlast charismatic freedom fighters, precisely as Max
Weber argued. The bureacratic politician always defeats the
charismatic leader. Under current rules there is no battlefield on the
planet in which freedom fighters will defeat totalitarians. Our
Intelligence and Defense agencies are currently not structured to
sustain a movement capable of winning-on the battlefield. We must have
the doctrine and strategy for victory, the equipment for victory, and
the capacity to train and arm our allies to win victories, not simply
bleed them more slowly. This will not occur without fundamental reform
of the institutions of Intelligehce and Defense.
Third, our goal with the public at large must be for the absence
of disapproval, rather than for approval. In the last fifty years the
American people have expressed a willingness to fight for Canada and
Mexico, but virtually nowhere else. The American people are by nature
not inclined to seek out conflict, and not inclined to meddle in other
peoples' affairs. If we ask for their positive approval, we will never
get it. We must simply ask for the benefit of the doubt. We must
keep the risks low enough and the investments small enough so that
people will tolerate it. We must say in effect "in this area in which
you know little and we have studied greatly, we are going to folow an
anit-Communist, pro-freedom policy unless you actively disapprove it.
Within this strategy the odds are overwhelming that the American people
will be inclined to trust their better informed public officials.
There is a fundamental difference between gaining public approval for
our efforts, which is very difficult, and avoiding public disapproval,
which is much easier.
Fourth, the United States and its allies must develop a strategy
which either slows down the rate at which the Soviet Union and its
Cuban colonial police introduce new weapons, manpower, and resources
into conflict, or it must accelerate the rate at which the U.S. and
its allies introduce new weapons, resources, and manpower into
conflict. In the current system, the Soviet Empire is consistently
able to escalate faster and in a more sophisticated manner than is the
West. If we provide rifles, they provide machine guns; if we provide
machine guns, they provide armored cars; if we provide small unit
training and anti-armored car equipment, they provide Hind helicopters.
At each level they dominate the escalation ladder.
One possibility is to deter Soviet and Cuban actions through
direct diplomatic confrontation, or by raising the costs of such
activities through freedom fighter groups indicating their willingness
to interdict supplies by whatever means are necessary. The alternative
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would be to find systems of approval within the American Constitutional
framework, such as an open ended authorization for the President, which
would enable us to provide our allies with more sophisticated weapons
and more resources than the Soviet Empire introduces them into a
specific conflict. If we cannot solve this problem, we will inevitably
lose because our system of government and its slow, protracted, and
argumantative decision making style guarantees that the Soviets will
know in advance what we are going to do, and therefore they will be
able to counter it with more than enough margin of time and resources
to insure a victory for the Communist side.
Fifth, Cuba is the colonial police force and linchpin for
implementing the Soviet Empire's strategy in the Third World. There
should be a specific strategy on our part designed to raise
dramatically the cost of Cuban policing efforts on behalf of the Soviet
Empire. That strategy should include an intense propaganda campaign
against Cuban willingness to use its forces in imposing the new
colonialism on other nations. It should include attacks in the U.N.
which condemn Cuba. It should also include direct efforts to increase
the economic costs of Cuban behavior.
An effort must be made to increase the attrition rate of Cuban
personnel through deliberate efforts by freedom fighters. This might
be done by setting up Radio Marti branches in Africa and Nicaragua
which specifically offers a cash bonus and political asylum for every
soldier who deserts. The bonus could rise with rank and value of
equipment brought over. This would ensure a constant stream of Cuban
troops deserting their dictatorship and appearing on U.S., European,
and Latin American broadcasts explaining the nature of tyrannny and the
role of Soviets, East Germans, and Bulgarians.
The freedom fighters in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and
Nicaragua should announce that as long as the Cubans are willing to
fight on their soil, they will recruit free Cubans to fight on Cuban
soil and collectively begin to sponsor a Cuban brigade willing to
infiltrate and cause economic sabotage in Cuba including the mining of
Cuban harbors. Even if they don't do these things, these very
proposals point out the unfairness of suggesting that Cuban troops can
kill Angolans in Angola while Angolans can't strike back in Cuba. This
will also raise the security costs to Castro, and psychologically cause
his secret police and army greater difficulty.
Unless we adopt specific and systematic efforts to achieve these
five fundamental changes in our current activities, there is no
likelihood in the next decade of our succeeding in developing freedom
fighter efforts. Each of these is a specific project line requiring
its own strategy, operations, and tactics in order to be successful.
Each of them should have somebody at a fairly high level assigned the
task of achieving measurable change in the institutions, and
cultivating public behaviour.
We must begin now to ensure success eventually. Please let me
know what you think of this analysis.
Newt Gingrich
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