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Essay On Ronald Reagan And Gorbachev

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After five decades of a bipolar world that was littered with proxy wars and the constant threat of a nuclear meltdown, the Cold War officially ended in 1991. At the time, the United States and the Soviet Union were under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev respectively. If it was not for the actions of both individuals, the cold war would most likely have continued. However, Gorbachev was by far the main driver of change through his proposals and policies as he acknowledged that in order to save his country, he needed United States support, which Ronald Reagan was all too happy to provide during his initially terrible second term. Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the communist party in 1985 two months after Reagan was elected for his second term in the oval office (Kaiser 1-2) (Talbott 9). Quickly, Gorbachev realized how dismal the Soviet Union’s …show more content…

Gorbachev even described Reagan as the preeminent-anticommunist during his first term and a “political dinosaur” after their first meeting together at Reykjavik during Reagan’s second term (Talbott 9). So what changed? First, Reagan was caught up in a huge controversy over trading arms to Iran for hostages that saw his poll ratings plummet by twenty-one percent in only a week (Blumenthal 4). This controversy made Reagan more willing to cooperate with Gorbachev to raise his tarnished perception from the American public. If Reagan could help end the Cold War, the Iran, in comparison, would be of little significance. Second, Reagan’s ludicrous proposals at Reykjavik made Gorbachev truly believe that Reagan had no intention of continuing a nuclear arms race. At Reykjavik, Regan seriously suggested that both sides should destroy all of their nuclear weapons and that they could share Regan’s SDI system, a system that was not even psychically possible to construct nor practical (Kaplan

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