Political climate of the 1980s

Political Climate of 1980's

The 1980's ushered in a new era of politics, with President Ronald Reagan at the reins. The previous decade had, for the most part, been consumed with ending the Vietnam War and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon and its aftermath. With that behind, attention, once again focused on the Soviet Union, and its presumed threat to democracy.

Reagan is credited with helping to speed the end of the Cold War, which had preoccupied both nations for over forty years, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, and had resulted in the building of some of the most destructive weapons in history (Hoffman 2004). During the late 1970's and early 1980's, the United States underwent a revolution in technology that left the Soviets behind in the arms race. David E. Hoffman wrote in the June 06, 2004 issue of The Washington Post that the Soviet system was under pressure from "Reagan's defense buildup and deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe, the CIA-backed mujaheddin fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan and Reagan's proposed missile defense system, the Strategic Defense Initiative" (Hoffman 2004). Moreover, Reagan challenged the Soviets on several other fronts, from Nicaragua to Angola, and sided with the dissident movement in Poland (Hoffman 2004). When Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the "focus of evil in the modern world," Soviet leaders became suspicious and concerned, particularly with the U.S. military buildup (Hoffman 2004). Robert M. Gates, former CIA director, has remarked that 1983 was the most "dangerous year of the last half of the Cold War," marked by the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviets, and the misinterpretation by the Soviets of a NATO exercise that they viewed as a preparation for war (Hoffman 2004). 1983 was also marked by Reagan's announcement of a defensive shield against ballistic missiles, or Star Wars (Hoffman 2004).

The Soviet economy was stagnant, and as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev recalled in his memoir, Soviet agriculture was a "disastrous picture...with millions of acres wasted, villages abandoned, and soils ruined by pollution" (Hoffman 2004).

Because the Soviets had basically poured all their resources into weapons, they were now a nation who could not feed her own people, nor keep up with the U.S. military technology (Hoffman 2004). In fact, according to CIA analysis, Soviet technology was approximately ten years behind the U.S., and their best scientific computers were twenty times slower than U.S. counterparts (Hoffman 2004). Nevertheless, the Soviet Union was a nuclear-armed superpower, and Reagan understood that an arms reduction between the two powers was imperative. The 1987 treaty on intermediate-range nuclear missiles was the first to eliminate a class of nuclear weapons, followed by a later pact that limited strategic arms (Hoffman 2004). Less than a year after Reagan left office after the end of his second term, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War essentially ended in 1991 after the Soviets experienced the Chernobyl disaster, the Baltic rebellions, and consumer demands for better quality products (Hoffman 2004).

According to David Williamson in the December 2003 issue of History Review, Berlin had become a symbol of the Cold War. The construction of the wall had divided East and West Germany for several decades however this long period of detente in Europe was based on the status quo in German and Berlin, "which was underwritten by what was perceived to be nuclear parity between the superpowers" (Williamson 2003). Yet when it became clear that Russia was no longer strong enough to maintain this status quo, the East German state crumbled and Berlin once again became the capital of a united Germany (Williamson 2003).

While the reasons for the swift collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are still debated among scholars, most Cold War specialists believe that the economic decline in the Soviet Union combined with the growing costs of maintaining an international military presence were simply too burdensome for the system (Somin 1994). However, some experts believe that the rapid collapse was due in large part to declining morale among the Soviets, coupled with the ongoing United States military pressure and support of dissident groups within the Bloc, which served to drain resources and foment social awareness (Somin 1994).