The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

although he rarely referred to it by name. In 1980,

however, he proclaimed it to be over, announcing

that the United States would boycott the upcoming

Olympic games in Moscow in response to the Soviet

occupation of Afghanistan and calling upon other

nations to join a U.S. grain embargo of the Soviets

until they withdrew their forces. Nor did the U.S. re-

sponse end there. At a time when Ronald Reagan

was promising to increase military spending by 7

percent per year during his 1980 presidential cam-

paign against Carter, Congress reacted to Moscow’s

action by substantially increasing the military bud-

get. The Cold War was thus already getting warmer

when Reagan became president in January, 1981.

Reagan’s First Term As President Reagan’s first

term began, the Soviet Union was juggling three ma-

jor problems: A discontented population at home

was growing tired of waiting for long-promised im-

provements in availability of consumer goods; the

war in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly open-

ended; and the Soviet economy, already strained by

domestic woes, was increasingly burdened by the

need to subsidize Moscow’s client states in Eastern

Europe. Reagan, a hawk by instinct, sought to ex-

ploit these weaknesses by ratcheting up the costs of

Cold War competition on three fronts.

First, Reagan continued the arms buildup in re-

sponse to renewed Soviet aggressiveness that had be-

gun during Carter’s last year, annually augmenting a

military budget that had been substantially enlarged

before he entered office. His strategy, designed to

ensure U.S. military superiority over the Soviet

Union, included two particularly provocative ele-

ments. On the offensive side, U.S. nuclear missiles

were deployed in European sites so near the Soviet

224 
 Cold War The Eighties in America

U.S. president Ronald Reagan talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during formal arrival ceremonies to welcome Gorbachev to the
White House in December, 1987. The developing relationship between the two leaders helped bring about the end of the Cold War.(AP/
Wide World Photos)