Reagan Administration Issues

The Reagan administration believed that the Soviet Union's military strength was the greatest threat to the security of the United States (Fischer, 1997). Reagan refused to believe the Soviets would cut back on certain missiles if the U.S. would refrain from deploying immediate range missiles in Europe. Reagan would increase the number of weapons and revive military programs that had been previously cut. He would also propose to build better weapons that could disable nuclear weapons from space. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, violated the 1972 ABM Treaty forbidding defensive systems capable of covering the entire U.S. or Soviet Union. Reagan was fully aware that the Soviet Union could not financially keep up with his aggressive increase in weapons. The Soviet Union seemed to be having further internal problems that made it difficult to maintain its empire, as the first independent labor

Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania would all overthrow their communist regimes after their exposure to capitalism, Western popular culture, and less control by the Soviet Union. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down. And in 1990, more countries like, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, would proclaim their independence as well. The USSR no longer existed as the collapsed into a number of independent states. There were also other pro-democracy rallies in places like China in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government killed several hundred student activists, which damaged relations between the U.S. and China. In 1991, the Persian Gulf War began and ended becoming the first war to be televised