Reagan Foreign Policy Case Study

1. I believe that Reagan’s first term as the president is a result of the work administrations prior to his did the opening of China by Nixon and other administrations keeping those doors opened allowed Reagan to focus on the Soviet Union. I do not believe that his presidency was a watershed, his administration focused on the domestic and foreign equally. Trickle-down economics allowed for corporations and CEOs to pay less in taxes and did work for a short time, unfortunately greed took over, and moves to cut cost and increase shareholder profit led to the outsourcing of jobs which plagues the US work force today. Large increases in the military spending left the US better prepared to fight conventional battles on the eastern front; however,

Reagan foreign policies moved away from Détente to bargain from a position of power, this led to the buildup of the military and the technological advances in weaponry. Programs like Strategic Defense Initiative rendered the use of IBCM ineffective (in theory), the advances in battlefield weaponry, M1 Abrahams, and Tomahawk cruise missiles, evened the odds against the larger Soviets forces and in some cases gave the United States the advantage. Many people give Reagan credit for bringing about the collapse of the Iron Curtain, however the Soviet Union’s economic policies restricted growth and led to a huge amount of discord among the population. The advantage that Reagan had was the Soviets were struggling in Afghanistan and in 1986 the Chernobyl incident which spread radioactive particles over the Western portions of Russia and Eastern Europe. The estimated cost of Chernobyl is 18 Billion rubles (1986) over 200 million in today’s dollars, and led to the evacuation of over 300,000 people in what history will determine the worst nonmilitary nuclear event to date. These three factors directly attributed to collapse of the Soviet Union. I believe that we managed it well, however we could have been more diligent in how we approached the asymmetric fight, our leaders largely ignored what the Israeli and British militaries lessons learned during their struggles against the Hamas and the IRA and led to the events of 911. The US missed opportunities, by a lack of involvement in the former Soviet Republics like Bosnia, Chechnya, and Georgia. The diplomatic lessons learned from those events have a direct impact on the current US