Question

How did President Reagan's foreign policy views toward the USSR and Cold War evolve from 1981-1989?

Answer 1

The Ronald Reagan administration's foreign policy was the United States' foreign policy from 1981 to 1989. The main goal was to win the Cold War and Communism's rollback which was completed in Eastern Europe in 1989 and at the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Historians are debating who to lend, and how much. They accept that victory in the Cold War made the US the only superpower in the world, one with strong relations in Russia and Eastern Europe with the former Communist regimes.

President Reagan has tried to demonstrate American influence in the world of foreign policy. He criticized the Soviet Union as a "evil empire," approving the largest military expansion in American history.
In Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, Reagan's administration sponsored anti-communist "freedom fighters" to effect a rollback of communist influence around the world.

Despite Reagan's firm anti-communist stance, US-Soviet relations warmed up during Reagan's second term. The first ever nuclear-arms reduction treaty was signed by Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. The Cold War was drawing to a close by the end of Reagan's second term.
The second term of President Reagan was roiled by the Iran-Contra affair, where the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran and used money from the sale to covertly finance the Contras, a party opposed to the Nicaraguan government.