Themes: Leadership; Ronald Reagan; Mikhail Gorbachev; the end of the Cold War.
Discussion Questions
A. In terms of foreign policy, what did President Reagan do, in his first year in office, to differentiate himself from President Carter?
Resources:
1) President Reagan’s April 24, 1981 letters to General Secretary Brezhnev
2) National Security Council meeting, July 6, 1981, on East-West Trade Controls
3) National Security Council meeting, July 9, 1981, on East-West Trade Controls
4) National Security Decision Directive 12: Strategic Forces Modernization Program
B. President Reagan won the 1984 presidential election by winning 49 states and 58.8 percent of the popular vote. In terms of foreign policy, between 1982 and 1984, what evidence could President Reagan present to the American public to prove that he was taking actions that would lead to the end of the Cold War?
Resources:
5) National Security Council Meeting # 50, May 24, 1982: Review of December 30, 1981 Sanctions
7) National Security Council Meeting # 61, Sept. 22, 1982: Pipeline Sanctions
8) National Security Council Meeting # 70, Dec. 16, 1982: U.S. Relations with the USSR.
9) National Security Decision Directive 54: United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe
10) National Security Decision Directive 137: U.S. Nuclear Arms Control Strategy for 1984
11) Letter from President Reagan to General Secretary Chernenko, March 6, 1984
C. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 and immediately tried to garner public opinion with sweeping arms control proposals. Was it best for President Reagan to reject Gorbachev’s proposals to reduce and then eliminate all nuclear weapons? Do you think Gorbachev was sincere when he called for internal reforms, like Glasnost and Perestroika?
Resources
14) Nov. 28, 1985 letter from President Reagan to General Secretary Gorbachev
D. President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Reductions Treaty in 1987. The INF Treaty significantly eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons (those with a range of 300-3,400 miles), and alleviated Cold War tensions by reducing the threat of nuclear war in Europe. Did this Treaty lead to the end of the Cold War? Should President Reagan have also signed the START Treaty, which called for the elimination of 50% of both U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons?
20) National Security Planning Group
Meeting 177, Feb. 26, 1988: “NATO Summit, March 2-3, 1988.”
22) “The Moscow Summit 20 Years Later.” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 251.