How did Reagan reduce the size of the government quizlet?
Reagan’s policies attempted to limit government size by reducing the number of controls and regulations on business and industry.
What was the goal of the extremely costly Strategic Defense Initiative?
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed the “Star Wars program”, was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles).
What is the goal of the program known as Star Wars?
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. Otherwise known as “Star Wars,” SDI sought to create a space-based shield that would render nuclear missiles obsolete.
Why was the Strategic Defense Initiative called Star Wars?
The SDI was first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in a nationwide television address on March 23, 1983. Because parts of the defensive system that Reagan advocated would be based in space, the proposed system was dubbed “Star Wars,” after the space weaponry of a popular motion picture of the same name.
Why was the Strategic Defense Initiative controversial?
Third, critics both in the United States and around the world called the SDI initiative a clear violation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. That treaty had committed the United States and the Soviet Union to refrain from developing missile defense systems in order to prevent a new and costly arms race.
How did the Strategic Defense Initiative help end the Cold War?
The Strategic Defense Initiative was a U.S. missile defense program that played a very prominent role in the U.S.-Soviet relationships in the 1980s and is often credited with helping end the Cold War, as it presented the Soviet Union with a technological challenge that it could not meet.
Why do you think the Strategic Defense Initiative was controversial quizlet?
The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). The ambitious initiative was criticized for allegedly threatening to destabilize the MAD -approach and to possibly re-ignite “an offensive arms race”.
Why would a treaty limit defensive weapons rather than offensive ones?
The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the ABM Treaty as part of an effort to control their arms race in nuclear weapons. The two sides reasoned that limiting defensive systems would reduce the need to build more or new offensive weapons to overcome any defense that the other might deploy.
Why did the US withdraw from ABM?
United States withdrawal Supporters of the withdrawal argued that it was a necessity in order to test and build a limited National Missile Defense to protect the United States from nuclear blackmail by a rogue state.
How did SALT II affect the United States?
The principal U.S. objectives as the SALT II negotiations began were to provide for equal numbers of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles for the sides, to begin the process of reduction of these delivery vehicles, and to impose restraints on qualitative developments which could threaten future stability.
What was agreed in SALT II?
In June 1979, Carter and Brezhnev met in Vienna and signed the SALT-II agreement. The treaty basically established numerical equality between the two nations in terms of nuclear weapons delivery systems. It also limited the number of MIRV missiles (missiles with multiple, independent nuclear warheads).
What did the SALT Treaty do?
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that were aimed at curtailing the manufacture of strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Why was nuclear testing banned?
The impetus for the test ban was provided by rising public anxiety over the magnitude of nuclear tests, particularly tests of new thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs), and the resulting nuclear fallout. A test ban was also seen as a means of slowing nuclear proliferation and the nuclear arms race.
What did the ABM Treaty and salt do to aid in our relationship with the Communist world?
What did the ABM treaty and SALT do to aid in our relationship with the communist world? The ABM treaty limited each nation to two cluster of defensive missiles. The SALT froze the number of long range nuclear missiles for five years.
Did the SALT treaty work?
There was nothing in the agreements, however, about multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle missiles (single missiles carrying multiple nuclear warheads) or about the development of new weapons. Nevertheless, most Americans and Soviets hailed the SALT agreements as tremendous achievements.
What was the outcome of the first SALT treaty?
The SALT agreement and the ABM Treaty slowed the arms race and opened a period of U.S.-Soviet detente that lessened the threat of nuclear war. SALT was an executive agreement that capped U.S. and Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) forces.
What year did the Soviet Union finally collapse and separate into a number of different countries?
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.