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

71. Memorandum From Secretary of State Haig to President Reagan¹

Washington, undated

SUBJECT

• Preempting Brezhnev—A strategy for Sustaining our Momentum and Balance in Europe

Your November 18th speech clearly took the initiative away from the Soviets in Europe.² Now the challenge is to sustain our momentum and our balance. We need to focus attention both on real threats to peace and on US policy initiatives. This will preclude the extremes of detente atmospherics or undiluted confrontation.

To keep the initiative, we need to combine policy and public drama—as you did so effectively on November 18th. With that in mind, we propose four Presidential initiatives over the next six months.

1. Global Program for Peace. To avoid imbalance, we need to present the broader part of the threat picture and our policy agenda. Beyond arms control, there are the critical issues of southern Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan, Kampuchea, the Caribbean and Central America. This is important for Europe (which is involved in all of them, but tends to consider them less important than arms control) and for a broader audience as well. You could present this Global Program for Peace in a State of the World-type address in February, following the State of the Union.

2. Afghanistan Day. Of all these geopolitical issues, Afghanistan offers the best single opportunity for building European and global opposition to Soviet expansionism. As the demonstrations in Bonn during Brezhnev’s visit proved, Afghanistan is our best issue among younger Europeans.³ And the vote in the UN for this year’s Afghanistan resolution was even larger than last year’s (116 vs. 111). With our encouragement, both the European Parliament and U.S. Congress are moving forward resolutions to establish a world-wide “Afghanistan Day” for March 21st. Your personal involvement can make a critical difference in building American and international support as the “Day” approaches. We will be sending you a strategy paper.

3. Dramatizing the Start of START. Setting a date to begin START and, more importantly, coming up with a serious and attractive approach can also be used to our advantage.⁴ While we need to avoid placing START back as the centerpiece of US-Soviet relations, and while the soundness of our approach is far more important than the drama with which we field it, we should seek to ensure—e.g., with another speech (hopefully by the end of March)—that we get credit for breathing new life into hopes for meaningful strategic arms control.

4. Trip to Europe. A presidential visit acts traditionally to focus public attention in both Europe and the United States on the deeper foundations of the Atlantic relationship. There will be a number of things to celebrate—Spain’s entry into NATO, the 25th anniversary of the European Community, the 35th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. We could combine a NATO Summit for late May with an Economic Summit early in June—which President Mitterrand has written asking you to confirm. Chancellor Schmidt has been pressing you to visit the Federal Republic and there are other bilateral stops of importance. This might be the right time and setting for a major speech on freedom as the dominant force of the future.

Conclusion. I will be sending you memoranda on each of these four initiatives in coming weeks.⁵ We wanted you to see them now in the context of an overall program to sustain our momentum in Europe, and to keep the balance between threat and solution, and between arms control and geopolitical issues.

I would like to discuss your trip privately and in a preliminary fashion with the French, Germans, and British during the NATO Ministerial next week.⁶ This is important if we are to control planning already underway for the spring NATO meeting and the Economic Summit.

Recommendation:

That I be authorized to discuss, in principle, a trip to Europe when I meet with key Allied leaders next week.⁷

1. Source: Department of State, P Files, Subject File—Lawrence Eagleburger Files: Lot 84D204, Chron—December 1981. Secret; Sensitive. Drafted by Palmer; cleared by Holmes, Niles, Gompert, and Scanlan. Palmer initialed for all clearing officials. Printed from a copy not initialed by Haig. Eagleburger sent the memorandum to Haig under a December 1 typewritten note, writing: “The attached memo for the President outlines a strategy to sustain the momentum in Europe which his speech helped to generate. It is clear the President can provide a special dimension, particularly in the area of political drama. We have designed the strategy to space four initiatives over a six month period not to overload his schedule.” (Ibid.) Also scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. VII, Western Europe, 1981–1984.
2. See Document 69.
3. November 22–24.
4. On May 31, 1982, the administration announced that the United States and the Soviet Union would begin formal negotiations on the limitation and reduction of strategic arms in Geneva on June 29. (Public Papers: Reagan, 1982, Book I, p. 710) See footnote 14, Document 99.
5. None found.
6. Scheduled to take place in Brussels, December 9–13.
7. The President did not approve or disapprove the recommendation.