SECTION 3: The End of the Cold War
▲ A soldier trains at Fort Dix in New Jersey in the 1980s.
WITNESS HISTORY 
AUDIO
A Strong Approach to Communism
During the first term of his presidency, Ronald Reagan challenged the Soviet Union by building up America’s military and casting the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil:
“But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly…. I urge you to speak against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority … beware the temptation … to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
—President Ronald Reagan, March 8, 1983
Objectives
- Analyze the ways that Ronald Reagan challenged communism and the Soviet Union.
- Explain why communism collapsed in Europe and in the Soviet Union.
- Describe other foreign policy challenges that faced the United States in the 1980s.
Terms and People
- Strategic Defense Initiative
- Contras
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- glasnost
- perestroika
- Iran-Contra affair
NoteTaking
Reading Skill: Sequence As you read this section, use a flowchart like the one below to sequence major events related to the fall of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union.
Why It Matters President Ronald Reagan believed that the United States had lost its way in the wake of the Vietnam War. Rather than détente, he felt the United States should seek to roll back Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Reagan believed that peace would come through strength. Although they initially increased tensions between the two superpowers, Reagan’s foreign policies contributed to the end of the Cold War. Section Focus Question: What were Reagan’s foreign policies, and how did they contribute to the fall of communism in Europe?
Reagan Challenges Communism
President Reagan believed that the United States needed to weaken communism by challenging it as much as possible without provoking war. To this end, he devised policies aimed at toppling communist nations, ranging from building new nuclear missile systems to funding covert operations against Soviet troops and allies around the globe.
Reagan Builds Up the U.S. Military
Under Reagan, the United States committed itself to the largest peacetime military buildup in its history. Reagan dedicated billions of dollars to the development and production of B-1 and B-2 bombers, MX missile systems, and other projects. In spite of massive protests by the nuclear freeze movement in the United States and abroad, the Reagan administration placed a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe.
Reagan supported this massive military buildup, in part, because he did not believe that the Soviet Union could afford to spend as much on defense as the United States could. Reagan felt this
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