Reagan Doctrine Research Paper

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The Reagan Doctrine In different periods of history, different presidential doctrines formulated by different U.S. Presidents, have acted as milestones in the realm of U.S. politics and U.S. foreign policy. Among such presidential doctrine the doctrine formulated and initiated by President Reagan should be considered as an important one because this doctrine of Reagan contributed a lot to the lessening of the Soviet supremacy during the Cold War era. It must be noted that even though the doctrine lasted less than a decade, it is still considered as a pivotal one which acted as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy that was implemented between the early 1980s and 1991 (“Reagan Doctrine”, n.d.). The importance of the doctrine also lies in the…show more content…
This presidential doctrine directly opposed the Soviet-instigated communism and it directly proposed “American moral and material support for insurgent movements attempting to oust Soviet-backed regimes in various Third World nations” (Carpenter, 1986). It was a doctrine which, precisely in an indirect manner, paved the way for the U.S. funding of those groups that were rebelling against communism, and according to the Reagan Doctrine the members of these groups were freedom fighters who were trying to free their nations from the clutches of the Soviet instigated communism. As a matter of fact, “this policy translated into covertly supporting the Contras in their attacks on the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua; the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviet occupiers; and anticommunist Angolan forces embroiled in that nation's civil war” (“Feb 6, 1985: The "Reagan Doctrine" is announced”,…show more content…
presidents before Reagan. The policy of containment proved to be an utter failure because despite of the implementation of the policy the aggressive approaches of the Soviet Union could not be contained. Reagan had a thorough knowledge about the tension that was gradually building between Soviet leaders and their U.S. counterparts, and during his election he justifiably wanted to focus on the issue, and after getting elected as the President, the solution to the Soviet problem became a major area of concern for Reagan. Moreover, the initiation and wide implementation of the Reagan Doctrine was also instigated by the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet armies in 1979 and it was due to this invasion that, apart from enacting embargoes on the Soviet Union, the U.S. think tank became inclined towards restricting the spread of communism through a stringent foreign policy. And the result of such inclination was the Reagan Doctrine. Leaders from both the nations met in New York to minimize the ongoing tension on September 25, 1980 (“United States Relations with Russia Timeline: The Cold War”, 2009), but the aftermath of the discussion proved to be a failure in respect of putting checks and balanced on the aggressive policies embraced by the Soviet
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