The Cold War's last American president, who genuinely believed in nuclear abolition but would not yield on SDI
On the afternoon of October 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate every nuclear weapon on earth by the year 2000. Forty minutes later, the talks collapsed when Reagan refused Gorbachev's condition that SDI research be confined to the laboratory.
Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to governor of California to the 40th president of the United States, inaugurating the 1980s with Reaganomics and the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Early in his first term he denounced the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' yet he also held a genuine, long-standing conviction that nuclear weapons should be abolished, a conviction he brought to four summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in October 1986 the two leaders came within reach of eliminating all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse when Reagan refused to confine his Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory. A year later they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War ended months after he left office.
Career Timeline
- 1911Born into an Irish-American family in Tampico, Illinois
- 1937–1964Hollywood actor in 53 films; served twice as Screen Actors Guild president
- 1967–1975Governor of California; crackdown on campus protests, welfare reform
- 1981–198940th president: Reaganomics, military buildup, 'evil empire' speech
- 1986.10Reykjavik summit: near-total nuclear abolition collapsed over SDI
- 1987.06'Tear down this wall' speech at the Brandenburg Gate
- 1987.12Signed the INF Treaty abolishing all intermediate-range nuclear missiles
- 1994–2004Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; died in Los Angeles, 2004
Related historical events
- 1983The War Scare of 1983US president who launched the psychological operations and military buildupSoon after taking office he authorized covert naval and air probes of Soviet territory and pursued the largest peacetime military buildup and SDI.
- 1985–1989The New Thinking and the End of the Cold WarUS president, Gorbachev's negotiating counterpartThrough the Geneva, Reykjavik, and Washington summits with Gorbachev, he signed the INF Treaty and opened the path to the Cold War's end.
- 1989The Revolutions of 1989Did he win the Cold War? A historians' debateIn US popular memory the man who 'beat communism,' yet he himself said in Moscow 1988 that Gorbachev deserved most of the credit. Who ended the Cold War remains a core dispute in the historiography of 1989.