Political positions of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975).

Ronald Reagan served as president during the later part of the Cold War, an era of political and ideological disagreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Reagan labeled the U.S.S.R. an "Evil Empire" that would be consigned to the "ash heap of history"; he later predicted that communism would collapse. He reversed the policy of détente and massively built up the United States military. Through it, he ordered production of the MX missile, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, and implemented the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration. He also monitored the deployment of the Pershing II missile in West Germany.

He proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a defense project that planned to use ground and space-based missile defense systems to protect the United States from attack. Reagan believed that this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible. Reagan was convinced that the Soviet Union could be defeated rather than simply negotiated with.

According to several scholars and Reagan biographers, including Paul Lettow, John Lewis Gaddis, Richard Reeves, Lou Cannon, and Reagan himself in his autobiography, Ronald Reagan earnestly desired the abolition of all nuclear weapons. He proposed to Gorbachev that if a missile shield could be built, all nuclear weapons be eliminated and the missile shield technology shared, the world would be much better off.

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