Reagan and the ‘Second Cold War’
History: Cambridge International GCSE The Twentieth Century (Option B), topic 6.5.2
Reagan and the ‘Second Cold War’
Reagan believed that God had given him a mission to win the Cold War. As detente ended, he waged the 'Second Cold War' to rid the world of communism.
Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) - ‘Star Wars’, 1983
- SDI or 'Star Wars' involved using mirrors, laser beams, satellites and other machinery orbiting the Earth in space.
- The aim was to be able to shoot down Soviet ICBMs from anywhere in the world.
- This seemed to violate the Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967.
The importance of SDI
- The SDI was extremely important because it gave the USA the advantage in the arms race.
- The Soviet economy was 80% smaller than the American economy.
- It could not find the money to invest in a 'Star Wars' rival.
USSR economic decline
- In the 1980s, the US economy was 5x wealthier and 5x more productive than the Soviet economy.
- It seemed that capitalism (with its competition and innovation) was a superior solution for people's living standards relative to communism (with central command where all innovations were ordered by 1 central government).
The Vietnam War
- The war in Vietnam had lasted 20 years. It is thought that over 50,000 Americans died in the war.
- In his early years as president, Reagan continued to fund anti-communist movements in Latin America, in places like Chile.
The shooting down of KALOO7, 1983
- On the 1st of September 1983, a Soviet Union military plane accidentally shot down a South Korean plane carrying 269 people.
- A member of the US House of Representatives, Larry McDonald was on the plane.
- The plane shot down was flight KAL007.
- This seems similar to Iran's shooting down of a Ukrainian plane in 2020 amid tensions with America and Ukrainian rebels shooting down the Malaysian flight MH17 in 2014 amid tensions with their own government.
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Chernobyl
- On the 26th of April 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
- 54 people died immediately, but nuclear radiation was spread all across Europe.
- Children in the region around the site were reported to have had a 90% cancer rate (nuclear radiation can cause cancer).
Reagan and Gorbachev
- In a 2009 interview, Gorbachev said 'If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union.'
Test yourself on Reagan and the ‘Second Cold War’
Which of the following about Reagan and the USA in the 1980s are correct?
When was SDI (Star Wars) introduced?