Ronald Reagan Foreign Policies Essay

When evaluating the extent to which Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies lead to the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) it is important to look at many aspects: Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies that pushed the Soviet Union into an arms race, the U.S relations with the USSR to have a better understanding of the conflict between them. It is important to know which leader was in power in the Soviet Union during the time that Reagan was enforcing its foreign policies and also other economic crisis within the country that contributed into its collapse.
The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 1922 and 1991 where it officially collapsed on December 31, 1991. Dramatic economic

foreign policy after World War II. It could be said that, to a greater extend that Ronal Reagans foreign policies and the Soviet Union’s arms race had led to the decline of the Soviet Union. During the 1980 campaign, Reagan stated that the Soviets lacked the economic wherewithal to compete in an all-out arms race with the West . Reagan took advantage of the strength of the U.S compared to the Soviet Union in by starting the arms race. In June 1987, Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin Wall. Two years later after Reagan presented his challenged, the Berlin Wall came down, and the enslaved nations of the Soviet Empire gradually broke free, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Ronald Reagan seized the moment and instituted the right policies at the right time to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union’s system and empire. The USSR was overly-focused on military build-up, neglecting domestic troubles that would play a major role in bringing down the USSR . This was largely due to the perceived need to keep pace with the massive U.S. military buildup. While trying to keep up the arms race, the Soviet Union’s economy initially weakened and the empire was on a decline in its