Page "Michael Johns (executive)" Paragraph 9

In the final years of the Cold War, Johns and other conservatives helped develop, implement and sustain a vastly more aggressive U. S. foreign policy, in which the U. S. consciously and pro-actively challenged the Soviet Union's global military engagements and alliances in Africa, Asia and Latin America in what columnist Charles Krauthammer, in a Time magazine column, first labeled the " Reagan Doctrine.

" The doctrine, espoused by Johns and other conservative foreign policy experts, was rooted in a belief that Soviet nuclear capabilities, combined with Soviet global aggression, represented a serious, growing threat to U. S. security that needed to be confronted.

Unlike earlier proponents of containment, however, the doctrine's advocates also held that the Soviet Union was overextended globally, beginning to face major opposition at home and abroad and that even one high-profile victory for these anti-communist forces was likely to expose these vulnerabilities, inspiring democratic rebellion against Soviet-supported governments around the world and within the Soviet Union itself.

Reagan Doctrine advocates argued that this offered the best opportunity to inspire the emergence of global democracies, or at least non-hostile governments, and end the Cold War without a need for direct U. S. engagement.