Preface

Structure and Scope of the Foreign Relations Series

This volume is part of a subseries of volumes of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administration of Ronald Reagan. This volume documents U.S. foreign economic policies toward and relations with the developing world from 1981 through 1988. It covers the formulation of U.S. foreign economic assistance and development policies, policies toward developing countries in the United Nations and other multilateral fora and international meetings, the U.S. response to international debt problems, international commodity policy, and policies toward international financial institutions. For documentation and context on related issues and topics during the preceding years of the Carter administration, see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, Volume III, Foreign Economic Policy. For key companion volumes covering foreign economic relations with industrialized countries during the Reagan administration, see Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVI, Trade; Monetary Policy; Industrialized Country Cooperation, 1981–1984 and Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVII, Trade; Monetary Policy; Industrialized Country Cooperation, 1985–1988. For documentation on the African famine and related food aid policy during the Reagan administration, see Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, Volume XLI, Global Issues II. As this volume takes a global and thematic approach, foreign economic policy issues related to a specific country or region are generally not documented in it, but instead are covered in regional and country-specific volumes within the subseries.

Focus of Research and Principles of Selection for Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVIII

This volume focuses on the Reagan administration’s foreign economic policies toward the developing world. Documents selected for this volume highlight the high-level decision-making within the White House, the Department of State, and the Department of the Treasury on a wide range of economic issues. The issues the Reagan administration faced included: responding to specific initiatives, such as the attempt by developing nations within the United Nations to formally launch Global Negotiations, a forum for countries of the “North” and the “South” to negotiate international economic relations; the need to formulate policies and strategies to address an unfolding international debt crisis, which lasted until the end of the Reagan administration and continued into the George H.W. Bush administration; and approaches [Page X] to foreign assistance, funding international financial institutions, and the U.S. role in international commodity policy.

The Reagan administration began work on an overall strategy for economic relations with developing countries immediately upon taking office in January 1981. Its approach included placing a greater emphasis on bilateralism and moving away from multilateralism because officials believed the bilateral approach to be more efficient and direct; a greater stress on private sector solutions to development and aid challenges; recognition of the “heterogeneous nature” of the developing world; and a focus on the responsibility of individual countries to make sound economic decisions and pursue sound domestic policies. President Reagan’s attendance at the 1981 International Meeting on Cooperation and Development held in Cancun, Mexico, also known as the Cancun Summit, provided an opportunity to communicate his administration’s approach to relations with the developing world. Administration officials saw the summit, the first of its kind, as a way to shape the global dialogue on economic development and cooperation according to U.S. priorities and principles. The formulation of the U.S. position for the Cancun Summit, and for Global Negotiations generally, is a central focus of this volume. At the summit, Reagan communicated the high-level administration interest in developing countries and affirmed the need for meaningful international cooperation and dialogue on economic development within pre-existing frameworks and institutions according to principles that he outlined. Ultimately, the Reagan administration determined that participation in multilateral negotiations on international economic issues within the United Nations framework, as advocated for and defined by the G–77, was not in the interest of the United States and so did not support the launching of formal Global Negotiations, a position with which the United States’ G–7 partners did not always agree for reasons documented in the volume.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meetings, also documented in the volume, provided another venue for U.S. officials to discuss and promote strategies and policies toward the developing world. Documents that reflect this high-level interest in this volume include minutes of U.S. Cabinet-level meetings, minutes and summaries of multilateral summits and meetings, interagency memoranda, memoranda to the President, and memoranda to and from other high-level government officials. Because the focus of this volume is on policy formulation within Washington, cables reporting from the field comprise only a small percentage of the documents included.

As the Reagan administration formulated its overall strategy and policies toward developing countries, a series of international debt problems unfolded that required significant attention from policymakers. By 1982, high-level meetings regularly took place to monitor the [Page XI] financial situations of key debtor countries and assess their implications for U.S. and global financial systems. On June 9, 1983, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 96, which outlined the U.S. Government approach to the international debt problem. In 1985, Secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker, III presented the next phase of the U.S. Government debt strategy at the joint International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meeting in Seoul, Korea, entitled the “Program for Sustained Growth,” known thereafter as the “Baker Plan.” This volume documents the formulation of and discussions around these and other U.S. Government responses to the unfolding international debt crisis, which many officials feared could cause a global financial collapse. How best to respond to the problem as it evolved was a topic of debate, and at times conflict, among interagency officials throughout Reagan’s two terms, particularly among the National Security Council, the Department of State, and the Department of the Treasury. This volume documents these various points of view and discussions through agency memoranda, minutes of meetings of senior officials, government papers, and letters.

Questions of how to approach foreign economic assistance and relations with international financial institutions more generally, as well as how to approach international commodity policy, were fundamentally intertwined with the U.S. responses to the international debt situation and to shaping economic relations with the developing world. This volume also examines how Reagan administration officials formulated policies and strategies on these issues. The volume documents debates and differing opinions among interagency officials on the role that foreign economic assistance could or should play in U.S. foreign policy and domestic economic policy, and over the amount and nature of U.S. contributions to and engagement with international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the multilateral development banks, as reflected in correspondence among senior officials and with members of Congress, agency memoranda, meeting minutes, papers, telegrams, and reports.

Regarding commodities, key Reagan administration officials generally opposed U.S. participation in international commodity agreements on philosophical and economic grounds, but recognized such agreements could serve other foreign policy objectives. The volume documents discussions and debates over the purpose of international commodity agreements and whether or not the United States should participate in them. The commodities covered most extensively within the volume were those with which officials during the Reagan administration most engaged: sugar and coffee. In its coverage of sugar policy in particular, the volume documents the interplay, and at times tensions, between foreign and domestic policy priorities and agendas, as seen in [Page XII] the minutes of interagency meetings, letters (including congressional correspondence), and memoranda.

Acknowledgments

The Office of the Historian wishes to thank the interagency declassification personnel who conducted the review of this volume, including those at the Department of State, Office of Information Programs and Services (IPS); the FRUS Coordination Team at the Central Intelligence Agency; the OSD, Records and Declassification Division (RDD) at the Department of Defense; and the Directorate of Records, Access and Information Security Management at the National Security Council.

The editor wishes to acknowledge the assistance of officials at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, especially Lisa Magana, Ira Pemstein, and Cate Sewell. Thanks are also due to the Central Intelligence Agency for arranging access to the Reagan Library materials scanned for the Remote Archive Capture declassification project. The History Staff at the Center for the Study of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency was accommodating in arranging full access to the files of the Central Intelligence Agency. The editor wishes to recognize the staff at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Maryland, for their valuable assistance. The editor also thanks Paul Pitman and Kathleen Rasmussen for their assistance with research in Department of the Treasury records, and Kristin Ahlberg for her assistance with research at the Reagan Library.

Laura Kolar conducted the research and selected and annotated the documentation for this volume under the supervision of Myra Burton, then Chief of the Africa and the Americas Division, and Adam Howard, then General Editor of the Foreign Relations series. The volume was reviewed by Myra Burton and Kristin Ahlberg, Assistant General Editor of the Foreign Relations series. Dean Weatherhead coordinated the declassification review under the supervision of Carl Ashley, Team Lead of the Declassification Coordination Team. Kerry Hite did the copy and technical editing under the supervision of Mandy Chalou, Team Lead of the Editing and Publishing Team. Both declassification review and technical editing were coordinated by John Powers, Director of the Declassification Coordination, Publishing, and Digital Initiatives Division.