President Trump channels his inner Reagan
Yesterday, President Donald Trump struck what is arguably the single most important blow for freedom since Ronald Reagan took down the Soviet Union. Interestingly, one of the architects of the latter victory played an indispensable role in informing and encouraging the former.
Originally published by RealClear Policy
Yesterday, President Donald Trump struck what is arguably the single most important blow for freedom since Ronald Reagan took down the Soviet Union. Interestingly, one of the architects of the latter victory played an indispensable role in informing and encouraging the former.
Roger Robinson served as the Senior Director for International Economic Affairs on the Reagan National Security Council during four critically important years, from 1981-1985. In that role, Robinson drew upon his previous career as an international banker with Chase Manhattan Bank, which included serving for several years as a special assistant to its chairman, David Rockefeller, and as the vice president responsible for lending to the Soviet bloc. In short, he knew where the proverbial “bodies were buried” in the USSR and deftly exploited his understanding of the Kremlin’s limited sources of cash-flow to help President Reagan knock the pegs out from under its Communist regime.
For the past two decades, Roger Robinson has applied those same skills to countering our time’s existential threat to freedom: another totalitarian enemy, this one doing business as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the early 2000s, Robinson organized and led the PetroChina Coalition, a pick-up team of national security professionals, environmentalists, trade union leaders and human rights activists determined to block the CCP’s first effort to raise unrestricted funds in the U.S. capital markets. It took the form of an initial public offering for the Chinese National Petroleum Company’s subsidiary known as PetroChina. In the face of the Coalition’s effective opposition, the IPO ultimately was issued in Hong Kong instead and pulled in a small fraction of what it had expected to command in a Wall Street debut.
For the following decade, Roger Robinson served as a member of the congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, for much of that time as its Chairman or Vice-Chairman. He ably led the Commission in providing Congress and the public with an invaluable second-opinion on Communist China, sanity-checking official thinking and intelligence assessments of the CCP’s capabilities and ambitions.
Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. He is an associate author of highly acclaimed Shariah: The Threat to America and the publisher of over a dozen other books and monographs from the Center for Security Policy Press.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving U.S.-USSR relations, nuclear forces, arms control, missile defense policy and U.S.-European defense ties. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by the late Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003), the Western Conservative Summit’s Stephen H. Long Award (2015), the Council for National Policy’s George Washington Military Leadership Award (2016) and the IMPACT Award from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose (2017).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
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