 Additionally, he worked to promote Minnesota on the international stage by traveling to 17 countries in 1984, and bringing the foreign leaders Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union and Dr. Franjo Tuđman of Croatia to the state in 1990.Perpich opposed the Reagan proxy war against Nicaragua in the 1980s and was one of several governors who objected to sending their National Guard units to train in U.S. bases in Honduras, where the U.S.-backed Contras were based.The Contras carried out atrocities in Nicaragua to topple the leftist government there.