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Ronald Reagan Influence

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Ronald Reagan was able to reduce tension between America and the Soviet Union but he is not the best leader because of the Iran Contra Affair in which it showed that he is easily influenced by other people.One of the foreign policies was military build up.Because the Soviet Union decided not to abide by the SALT II treaty which was to maintain nuclear equalness between two main superpowers, it was no surprise when Reagan also bagn defense building. The main objectives of the buildup were to strengthen military, encourage and gain trust from the European allies that US will not abandon them. The defense budget in 1981 was $171 million to $300 billion in 1985. The increase in budget has many positive results such as a military upgrade and modern …show more content…

Soon, terrorists with connections to Libya also began to attack Americans which caused relationship between Americans and Libya to deteriorate. As a result, America decided to down 2 Libyan warplanes in a military encounter with the US Navy. 200 US aircrafts dropped 60 tons of bombs on Libyan targets which caused 37 deaths and this caused the Palestinian group in Libya to kill 3 American hostages. Iran Contra Affair was another foreign policy under Reagan’s leadership. When Iran and Iraq were involved in a war, Reagan decided to sell US antitank and antiaircraft to Iran’s government since they helped released Americans captured by another terrorist group. However, another Reagan staff member decided to use the profits made from selling the weapons to Iran to fund the contras in Nicaragua. This was an illegal diversion of funding since it violated the Boland Amendment and congressional budget authority. This event caused the president to have an image of someone who 's easily manipulated. He also helped improve US Soviet relation. In 1985 Gorbachev became the new Soviet Union leader and he wanted to make reforms so that Soviet Union moved toward political freedom and by introducing free market

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