Rollback
Encyclopedia
In political science
, rollback is the strategy of forcing change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment
, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente
, which means a working relationship with that state. Most of the discussions of rollback in the scholarly literature deal with United States foreign policy toward Communist countries during the Cold War
. The rollback strategy was tried, and failed, in Korea in 1950
, and in Cuba in 1961
.
The political leadership of the United States discussed the use of rollback during the uprising of 1953 in East Germany
and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but decided against it to avoid the risk of Soviet intervention and a major war. When Republican Senator Barry Goldwater
demanded Why Not Victory?, the title of his 1962 book, he was defeated in a landslide in 1964
because of the risk of nuclear war with the Soviets.
The rollback strategy succeeded in Grenada in 1983
. Ronald Reagan
promoted a rollback strategy against what he called the "evil empire
" (the Soviet Union
) in the 1980s. NATO has deployed a rollback strategy in Afghanistan since 2001 to end the power of the Taliban
. Rollback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place in the American Civil War
(1861–65), World War I
(against Germany 1918), World War II
(against Italy 1943, Germany 1945 and Japan 1945), 1953 Iranian coup d'état, (against Mohammad Mosaddegh), Chile (against Salvador Allende
in 1973), Panama
(against Noriega, 1989), and Iraq
(against Saddam Hussein
2003). Today rollback is sometimes called "regime change".
to the Confederacy, and in World War II
to Germany and Japan.
The notion of military rollback against the Soviet Union was proposed by James Burnham
and other strategists in the late 1940s, and by the Truman Administration against North Korea in the Korean War
. Much debated was the question whether the U.S. should pursue a rollback strategy against Communism in Eastern Europe in 1953-56; the decision was not to.
Instead of military rollback the U.S. began a program of long-term psychological warfare to delegitimize Communist and pro-Communist regimes and help insurgents. These attempts began as early as 1945 in Eastern Europe, including efforts to provide weapons to independence fighters in the Baltic States
and Ukraine
. Another early effort was against Albania
in 1949, following the defeat of Communist forces in the Greek Civil War
that year. In this case, a force of agents was landed by the British and Americans to try to provoke a guerrilla war, but it failed. The operation had already been betrayed to the Soviets by the British double-agent, Kim Philby
and led to the immediate capture or killing of the agents. The process proved most successful in undermining the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
, the United States and the United Nations
officially endorsed a policy of rollback - the destruction
of the North Korean government - and sent UN forces across the 38th parallel
to take over North Korea
. The rollback strategy, however, caused the Chinese to intervene, and they pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. The failure of the rollback policy, despite its advocacy by Gen. Douglas MacArthur
, moved the US to a commitment to the containment
policy, without rollback.
, to invade the southern Chinese province of Yunnan
. All of Li Mi's brief forays into China were swiftly repulsed, and after another failure in August 1952, the United States began to scale back its support.
took the lead in promoting a rollback policy. He wrote in 1949:
The 1952 Republican national platform reaffirmed this position; when Dwight D. Eisenhower
was elected, he appointed Dulles as secretary of state. Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson
to coordinate psychological warfare against Communism. Radio Free Europe
, a private agency funded by Congress, broadcast attacks on Communism directed to Eastern Europe
. A strategic alternative to rollback was containment
, and the Eisenhower Administration adopted containment through National Security Council document NSC 162/2 in October 1953; this effectively abandoned the rollback efforts in Europe.
Eisenhower relied on clandestine CIA actions to undermine hostile small governments and used economic and military foreign aid to strengthened governments supporting the American position in the Cold War. A successful rollback was the CIA's Operation Ajax in August 1953, in collaboration with the British, which assisted the Iranian military in their restoration of the Shah.
of 1956 made containment a safer strategy than rollback, which risked a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Critics argue that an important opportunity for rollback was forfeited in October–November 1956, when Hungarian reformist leader Imre Nagy announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and when he and Hungarian insurgents called on the West for help against invading Soviet troops. Eisenhower thought it too risky to intervene in a landlocked country such as Hungary and feared it might trigger a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. His Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
mistakenly believed that Imre Nagy sided with the Soviet Union.
On October 25, 1956, he sent a telegram to the US embassy in Belgrade expressing his fears that the Imre Nagy-János Kádár government might take “reprisals” against the Hungarian “freedom fighters.” By the next day, October 26, State Department officials in Washington assumed the worst about Nagy, asserting in a top secret memorandum: “Nagy's appeal for Soviet troops indicates, at least superficially, that there are not any open differences between the Soviet and Hungarian governments.”
Both Eisenhower and Dulles focused more attention on the Suez Crisis
, which due to the Protocol of Sèvres
, unfolded simultaneously. The Suez Crisis played an extremely important role in hampering the US response to the crisis in Hungary. The problem was not, contrary to widespread belief, that Suez distracted US attention from Hungary, but that it made the condemnation of Soviet actions very difficult. As Vice President Richard Nixon
later explained: "We couldn't on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against Gamal Abdel Nasser
."
, urged on by the Heritage Foundation
and other influential conservatives, began to channel weapons to anti-communist armed movements in Afghanistan
, Angola
, Cambodia
, Nicaragua
and other nations, and launched a successful invasion of Grenada in 1983
to reinstate constitutional government following a Marxist coup — this invasion was a dramatic example of rolling back a Communist government in power. It led Moscow to worry that it might be next.
Reagan's interventions in the Third World came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine
. Critics argued that the Reagan Doctrine led to so-called blowback
and an unnecessary intensification of Third World conflict, but in the various rollback battlefields, the Soviet Union made major concessions, and eventually had to abandon the Soviet-Afghan war.
Nationalistic unrest in the Soviet Empire exploded in 1989, as the eastern European satellites all broke free. East Germany merged with West Germany. In 1991 the fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics declared their laws superior to those of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union cease to exist on December 25, 1991, as Communism was rolled back across Europe.
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, rollback is the strategy of forcing change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
, which means a working relationship with that state. Most of the discussions of rollback in the scholarly literature deal with United States foreign policy toward Communist countries during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. The rollback strategy was tried, and failed, in Korea in 1950
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, and in Cuba in 1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
.
The political leadership of the United States discussed the use of rollback during the uprising of 1953 in East Germany
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany
The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....
and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but decided against it to avoid the risk of Soviet intervention and a major war. When Republican Senator Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
demanded Why Not Victory?, the title of his 1962 book, he was defeated in a landslide in 1964
United States presidential election, 1964
The United States presidential election of 1964 was held on November 3, 1964. Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Johnson, who had successfully associated himself with Kennedy's...
because of the risk of nuclear war with the Soviets.
The rollback strategy succeeded in Grenada in 1983
Invasion of Grenada
The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was a 1983 United States-led invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island nation with a population of about 100,000 located north of Venezuela. Triggered by a military coup which had ousted a four-year revolutionary government, the invasion...
. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
promoted a rollback strategy against what he called the "evil empire
Evil empire
The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words,...
" (the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
) in the 1980s. NATO has deployed a rollback strategy in Afghanistan since 2001 to end the power of the Taliban
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
. Rollback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
(1861–65), World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(against Germany 1918), World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(against Italy 1943, Germany 1945 and Japan 1945), 1953 Iranian coup d'état, (against Mohammad Mosaddegh), Chile (against Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
in 1973), Panama
United States invasion of Panama
The United States Invasion of Panama, code-named Operation Just Cause, was the invasion of Panama by the United States in December 1989. It occurred during the administration of U.S. President George H. W...
(against Noriega, 1989), and Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
(against Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
2003). Today rollback is sometimes called "regime change".
Early years
In American strategic language, rollback is the policy of totally annihilating an enemy army and occupying the country, as was done in the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
to the Confederacy, and in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to Germany and Japan.
The notion of military rollback against the Soviet Union was proposed by James Burnham
James Burnham
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years he left Marxism and produced...
and other strategists in the late 1940s, and by the Truman Administration against North Korea in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. Much debated was the question whether the U.S. should pursue a rollback strategy against Communism in Eastern Europe in 1953-56; the decision was not to.
Instead of military rollback the U.S. began a program of long-term psychological warfare to delegitimize Communist and pro-Communist regimes and help insurgents. These attempts began as early as 1945 in Eastern Europe, including efforts to provide weapons to independence fighters in the Baltic States
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. Another early effort was against Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
in 1949, following the defeat of Communist forces in the Greek Civil War
Greek Civil War
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...
that year. In this case, a force of agents was landed by the British and Americans to try to provoke a guerrilla war, but it failed. The operation had already been betrayed to the Soviets by the British double-agent, Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
and led to the immediate capture or killing of the agents. The process proved most successful in undermining the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Korea
In the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, the United States and the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
officially endorsed a policy of rollback - the destruction
Destruction
Destruction may refer to:* Destruction Bay, Yukon, Canada* Destruction , a German thrash metal band* Destruction , one of the Endless in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman...
of the North Korean government - and sent UN forces across the 38th parallel
38th parallel north
The 38th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 38 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean...
to take over North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
. The rollback strategy, however, caused the Chinese to intervene, and they pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. The failure of the rollback policy, despite its advocacy by Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
, moved the US to a commitment to the containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
policy, without rollback.
China
A more ambitious effort was Operation Paper in November 1950; this included the arming and supplying of remnant Nationalist Chinese troops in eastern Burma, the 93rd Division under General Li MiLi Mi (ROC general)
Li Mi , was a high-ranking Nationalist general who participated in the anti-Communist Encirclement Campaigns, Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War. He was one of the few Kuomintang commanders to achieve notable victories against both Chinese Communist forces and the Imperial Japanese Army...
, to invade the southern Chinese province of Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
. All of Li Mi's brief forays into China were swiftly repulsed, and after another failure in August 1952, the United States began to scale back its support.
Eisenhower and Dulles
Republican spokesman John Foster DullesJohn Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
took the lead in promoting a rollback policy. He wrote in 1949:
- We should make it clear to the tens of millions of restive subject people in Eastern Europe and AsiaAsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, that we do not accept the status quo of servitude and aggressive Soviet Communism has imposed on them, and eventual liberation is an essential and enduring part of our foreign policy.
The 1952 Republican national platform reaffirmed this position; when Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
was elected, he appointed Dulles as secretary of state. Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson
Charles Douglas Jackson
General Charles Douglas Jackson was an expert on psychological warfare who served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later as Special Assistant to the President in the Eisenhower administration....
to coordinate psychological warfare against Communism. Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
, a private agency funded by Congress, broadcast attacks on Communism directed to Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. A strategic alternative to rollback was containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
, and the Eisenhower Administration adopted containment through National Security Council document NSC 162/2 in October 1953; this effectively abandoned the rollback efforts in Europe.
Eisenhower relied on clandestine CIA actions to undermine hostile small governments and used economic and military foreign aid to strengthened governments supporting the American position in the Cold War. A successful rollback was the CIA's Operation Ajax in August 1953, in collaboration with the British, which assisted the Iranian military in their restoration of the Shah.
Hungary
Eisenhower's decision not to intervene during the Hungarian UprisingHungarian Uprising
Hungarian Uprising can refer to:*Hungarian Revolution of 1848 *Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
of 1956 made containment a safer strategy than rollback, which risked a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Critics argue that an important opportunity for rollback was forfeited in October–November 1956, when Hungarian reformist leader Imre Nagy announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and when he and Hungarian insurgents called on the West for help against invading Soviet troops. Eisenhower thought it too risky to intervene in a landlocked country such as Hungary and feared it might trigger a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. His Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
mistakenly believed that Imre Nagy sided with the Soviet Union.
On October 25, 1956, he sent a telegram to the US embassy in Belgrade expressing his fears that the Imre Nagy-János Kádár government might take “reprisals” against the Hungarian “freedom fighters.” By the next day, October 26, State Department officials in Washington assumed the worst about Nagy, asserting in a top secret memorandum: “Nagy's appeal for Soviet troops indicates, at least superficially, that there are not any open differences between the Soviet and Hungarian governments.”
Both Eisenhower and Dulles focused more attention on the Suez Crisis
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
, which due to the Protocol of Sèvres
Protocol of Sèvres
The Protocol of Sèvres was a secret agreement reached between the governments of Israel, France and the United Kingdom during discussions held between 22 and 24 October 1956 at Sèvres, France...
, unfolded simultaneously. The Suez Crisis played an extremely important role in hampering the US response to the crisis in Hungary. The problem was not, contrary to widespread belief, that Suez distracted US attention from Hungary, but that it made the condemnation of Soviet actions very difficult. As Vice President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
later explained: "We couldn't on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
."
Reagan Administration
The "rollback" movement gained significant ground, however, in the 1980s, as the Reagan administrationReagan Administration
The United States presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989....
, urged on by the Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
and other influential conservatives, began to channel weapons to anti-communist armed movements in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
and other nations, and launched a successful invasion of Grenada in 1983
Invasion of Grenada
The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was a 1983 United States-led invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island nation with a population of about 100,000 located north of Venezuela. Triggered by a military coup which had ousted a four-year revolutionary government, the invasion...
to reinstate constitutional government following a Marxist coup — this invasion was a dramatic example of rolling back a Communist government in power. It led Moscow to worry that it might be next.
Reagan's interventions in the Third World came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
. Critics argued that the Reagan Doctrine led to so-called blowback
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback is the espionage term for the violent, unintended consequences of a covert operation that are suffered by the civil population of the aggressor government...
and an unnecessary intensification of Third World conflict, but in the various rollback battlefields, the Soviet Union made major concessions, and eventually had to abandon the Soviet-Afghan war.
Nationalistic unrest in the Soviet Empire exploded in 1989, as the eastern European satellites all broke free. East Germany merged with West Germany. In 1991 the fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics declared their laws superior to those of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union cease to exist on December 25, 1991, as Communism was rolled back across Europe.
Further reading
- Bodenheimer, Thomas, and Robert Gould. Rollback!: Right-wing Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (1999), hostile to the strategy
- Bowie, Robert R., and Richard H. Immerman. Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (1998).
- Borhi, László. "Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction?: U.S. Policy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s," Journal of Cold War Studies, Fall 1999, Vol. 1 Issue 3, pp 67–110
- Grose, Peter. Operation Roll Back: America's Secret War behind the Iron Curtain (2000) online review
- Lesh, Bruce. "Limited War or a Rollback of Communism?: Truman, MacArthur, and the Korean Conflict," OAH Magazine of History, Oct 2008, Vol. 22 Issue 4, pp 47–53
- Meese III, Edwin. "Rollback: Intelligence and the Reagan strategy in the developing world," in Peter Schweizer, ed., The fall of the Berlin wall (2000), pp 77–86
- Mitrovich. Gregory. Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc 1947-1956 (2000)
- Stöver, Bernd. "Rollback: an offensive strategy for the Cold War," in Detlef Junker, ed. United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1945 to 1990, A handbook: volume 1: 1945--1968 (2004) pp. 97–102.