When Reagan became President he had only one well-defined foreign policy goal: containing the Soviet Union or the "evil empire" as he once referred to it (Reagan 1983). He primarily wanted to stop the USSR from growing larger and to keep other non-Communist countries from becoming Communist. He disliked the decade-long Détente begun by President Nixon and continued by President Ford. Détente is defined as a relaxation of strained relations or tensions between nations, in this case the two nations being the United States and the Soviet Union. Reagan firmly believed that the USSR was using Détente and the SALT talks to take advantage of the United States.
A quote from Ronald Reagan with a conversation with Richard V. Allen says “My idea of the American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic.” “It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?” In his first term as president, both he and Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, put down the Soviet Unions ideas and political thoughts. Other bold statements he has made of the Soviet Union is, “The Soviet Union is an evil empire and communism will soon be but an ash heap of history.” These
What role did Ronald Reagan play in the ending of the Cold War? Former president Ronald Reagan left as his greatest legacy to the world a role in helping accelerate the end of the Cold War. The global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, which consumed both nations for 46 years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and led to building of the most destructive weapons ever known, reached a peak during Reagan's White House days and then expired only a few years after he left office. The reasons for this extraordinary turn of events are larger than Reagan and span events far beyond his presidency. The roots can be found in the stagnation of the Soviet system in the late 1970s and early 1980s and perhaps most importantly in the ascension of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who opened the floodgates of change.Yet the ending might not have happened but for outside pressures, and this is where Reagan's legacy lies.The United States, in the years before and during the Reagan presidency, underwent a revolution in high technology that the Soviets could not match.
While Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all had the same same Cold War intention of ending communism, their ways of achieving their goal were different.The Cold War was an angry dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union about whether we should spread or contain communism (Ayres 817). According to Edward Ayres in American Anthem: Reconstruction to the Present all three Presidents used some form of Economic Aid, how we help other countries financially; Military Aid, how we help other countries’ militaries; and finally, Military Use, how we utilise our military (Ayres 817). Their end goal was to completely contain, or confine communism(Truman).
Also an unforgettable achievement of Reagans was ending the cold war which had been raging all the way back since World War 2 and America’s fear of communisms quest for world domination. He accomplished this by reversing the policy of détente and stood firm against the Soviet Union and giving aid to the rebels battling soviet-backed Marxists from Nicaragua to Angola which was critical in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet empire and ended the cold war. Despite the fact Reagan was excellent at speeches his belief in peace through strength became a realization and in the long run an important achievement. Basically since the military was diminished during the Carter years Reagan had to think of a way to rebuild and strengthen our military. He accomplished this by reviving the B-1 bomber that carter canceled, starting production of the MX missile, and pushing NATO to push Pershing missiles in West Germany.
1949 was probably the worst year. After the Soviet atomic test in August 1949 and Mao Zedong’s victory in China, communism became an even greater threat. The Truman administration orchestrated NSC 68′s famous call to arms. To move the public to spend more on the Cold War strategy, NSC 68 portrayed the Soviet challenge as a contest pitting good against evil. American strategy remained torn between simply containing Communism or rolling it back by actively supporting the Soviet Union’s opponents.
Eisenhower’s administration was to a somewhat large extent successful in addressing Cold War fears after World War II through attempts at promoting capitalism and preventing the spread of communism. The end of the Second World War put many American citizens in fear. Some of the fears addressed by Eisenhower were mass hysteria, the Kremlins affect on our people, depression and keeping the economy up. (doc a) Communism was a huge fear at this time, and the secretary of state, John Dulles was able to help with this problem during Eisenhower’s presidency. His major concern was the spread of communism in America.
To what extent did Gorbachev contribute to the break-up of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact? Under the control of Stalin, communist states in Eastern Europe were forced to join the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which was a military alliance against the US NATO. Besides, earlier in 1947, he also launched the Molotov Plan which was an economic assistance to the Soviet satellites, had brought a great economic burden on itself. Luckily, there’s an upturn of Soviet after 1984. Gorbachev, who was the new General Secretary in 1985, was to a large extent contributed to the break-up of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.
The arms race began in 1945 when the US dropped their atomic bomb on Japan. Not only did this demonstrate the power of the USA but was the catalyst for an age of rapid weapon development, the arms race. This ended with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, an event that bought the superpowers dangerously close nuclear war. A number of factors other than the accumulating advancements in weaponry lead to the Cuban missile crisis, the personalities of the leaders and the national interests of each country all effected how the arms race developed, leading to the inevitable situation where the USA and USSR were left hovering over the trigger. The main aspect that lead to the Cuban missile crisis was the arms development between 1945-1963.
Because of the disagreement with the foundation of a countries’ structure, the USA and the USSR were strange bedfellows during the Second World War. Their alliance was purely strategic. The underlying differences between the supreme capitalist nation (the USA) and the original communist state (the USSR) were bound to re-emerge once Germany and Japan had been defeated. Both of the Superpowers saw each other as a threat to its continued survival and adopted strategies to preserve their positions, which brought a high level of tension after World War 2. At the final stage of World War Two, it was quite clear that the Allies would get the final victory, so in February 1945, Stalin (USSR), Churchill (UK) and Roosevelt (USA) met at Yalta to discuss