The Cold War era was an extremely frightening reality check to the world that the threat of nuclear destruction was dangerously present. Two significant figures during the later years of the Cold war were Mikhail Gorbachev and former president Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev’s goal was to ultimately rid the world of nuclear threat, and most of all, the weapons themselves. Reagan, on the other hand, was attempting to abolish the nuclear threat coming from Russia while keeping the weapons possessed by the U.S. operational. Out of these two men, Gorbachev had the most impact in the ending of the Cold War, handling everything as peaceful as possible.
After two previous General Secretaries, Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. Following previous instances where Gorbachev proved he could handle the job, such as leading a crisis-management team and handling meetings with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he was determined to improve the Soviet economy.
He appointed the best-suited government candidate to each of their positions once he took over and made a few moves to begin his reconstruction of the economy, like raising the drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one due to its negative affects in the economy and culture as a whole. This was also when he began making proposals to eliminate all nuclear weapons. He met in 1985 with President Reagan at Geneva to discuss what should be done about the arms race. In order to emphasize his desire for peace, he removed several thousand troops from Afghanistan in 1986.
The Essay on Why North Korea Should Stop It Nuclear Weapons Program
Decision The U.S. should take a diplomatic approach to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. If the U.S. uses the hard-line approach, there is a bigger risk of North Korea attacking the U.S. in revenge and killing thousands of people. The diplomatic approach on the other hand would allow both countries to agree on a solution that can make everyone happy within reason. The U.S. and North ...
In June of 1987, the Supreme Soviet enacted into law Gorbachev’s reform program. This allowed for experimentation with free markets. That summer Gorbachev went into seclusion and wrote Perestroika, which dealt with the ways that other countries handled their economies. With this attempt at new ideas, Gorbachev made new rivals, Yeltsin and Ligachev. He visited Washington in December of 1987 to further discuss the removal of nuclear weapons, and agreed with Reagan on the INF treaty that would eliminate two categories of nuclear weapons. Reagan spoke to Gorbachev about opening up his society to free ideas and travel, and this fueled the human rights reform is the Soviet Union. After all of Gorbachev’s attempts to peace, some felt uneasy with his ways, and in 1988, conservative Communists led by Ligachev tried to overthrow him but failed. Gorbachev made a speech to the U.N. December of 1988 to express his ideas and beliefs about a time ahead of them when the Cold War was no longer happening. He also stated that he would cut his military forces by five-hundred thousand men by 1990 and remove six tank divisions from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany.
In conclusion, Gorbachev did much more for the peaceful attempt to remove nuclear weapons in the world, therefore, influenced the end of the Cold War. Reagan, in contrast, kept the SDI threat alive throughout most of the period in which Gorbachev was attempting to come to an agreement about the removal of nuclear weapons, and as a result, it made Reagan seem less reasonable than Gorbachev during this time of hostility and tension.
