Reagan Foreign Policy – Flashcards

Was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. With the tension of the Cold War looming overhead, the Strategic Defense Initiative was the United States' response to the possibility of long range nuclear attack.

The weapons required included space- and ground-based nuclear X-ray lasers, subatomic particle beams, and computer-guided projectiles fired by electromagnetic rail guns—all under the central control of a supercomputer system. U.S. planned to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles while they were still above the Earth, minimizing their effects. However, there was a large power requirement for these types of weapons and so nuclear power was the method of choice.

So, as the reality of creating many nuclear plants diminished, so did the ambitious designs of the project. At the end of the Strategic Defense Initiative, thirty billion dollars had been invested in the program and no laser and mirror system was ever used, not on land, not in space. The Strategic Defense Initiative was eventually abandoned, and after a few years, it was nothing other than a short chapter in history books.

The Reagan Doctrine was implemented as an alternative to containment and isolation which Reagan regarded as a failure. The Reagan Administration's focus was to reverse the spreading of communism in the Third World, regardless of whether the communist regimes were controlled by the Soviet Union.

The Reagan doctrine said that the root cause of unrest in the Third World was the Soviet Union's communist influence rather than local factors such as poverty, overpopulation, or political corruption.

In 1983, the US invaded Grenada to "liberate" it from a so called "brutal gang of leftist thugs". This upset many heads of state, including Margaret Thatcher, who condemned the military action as an invasion of a sovereign state. In Afghanistan, a Soviet-backed regime had come to power in 1978 after a coup, and, to support this government, Soviet forces invaded and occupied the country. In Nicaragua, a widely popular revolution by the Sandinistas, overthrew a decades-old oligarchy in 1979, and moved gradually toward their own brand of communism. And Angola, an oil-rich Portuguese colony, won its independence and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which had waged a war of independence for 20 years with support from Cuba, came to power. All these regimes were condemned as tools of the USSR, and any group that rose up against them was supported by Reagan despite their complete disregard for human rights.

Captain Weinberger, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of Defense, said on many occasions: "A great paradox of our national security posture is that without military strength, we have little leverage to secure real arms reductions." As Sabrina said, Reagan didn't want a war, and so building up the army was his way of gaining enough strength to eventually make arms reductions in international relations.

Reagan believed that people under a communist rule were essentially slaves that had to be freed. He wanted to free them from the mental and moral attack he believed that they were under

Whilst the Reagan Doctrine pushed Soviet communism into retreat from the Third World, it did not result in those countries having a friendly attitude toward the US. The instabilities that plagued Third World nations before and during the Cold War continue unabated.

In Anglo, a rival rebel group vied with the ruling party for the leadership of Angola, but when several peace agreements failed the rebels, who were supported by the white apartheid supremacist regime in South Africa and also by Reagan, tried to take the country by force. While the leader of the movement was condemned as a tool of South Africa, Reagan welcomed him to the White House as "America's best friend in Africa." He provided the warlord with $30 million annually in weapons and other needs to sustain the insurgency. When the war finally ended, the ruling party stayed in power and Angola was crippled by 27 yrs of war.

In Nicaragua, U.S. hostility toward the new leftist government turned the new party toward the Soviets. When Reagan took office, the Sandinistas were high on the right-wing hit list. With covert support for a collection of mercenaries, drug runners, and anti-communist zealots—collectively called the contras—an immense amount of pressure was exerted on the Managua government. The Central American presidents consistently voiced their opposition to Reagan's lavish support for the contras, to no avail. By 1990, exhausted by the isolation and contra violence, and having mismanaged the economy, the Sandinistas lost an election to a moderate coalition. The Contra war left Nicaragua bitterly divided and heavily armed. An estimated 25,000 to 100,000 weapons remain in civilian hands.

To combat the Russian invasion, the mujaheddin, a significantly "fundamentalist" Muslim group began waging jihad against them. The CIA funded the mujaheddin, supplying training and weapons in the early 1980s. An estimated 3 million AK-47s were provided to them. After the Soviets pulled out of Russia, the Mujahadden, using the weapons and technology given to them by the U.S. became the beginning of the jihadists, including Osama bin Laden's, which have since grown to be such a significant threat worldwide.