Explain How The Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative Heightened Cold War Tensions
a.) Explain how the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative heightened Cold War tensions.
Soviet intelligence services went on watchful in 1981 to observe for US preparations for initiating a shocking nuclear hit against the USSR and it allies. This warning was escorted by a new Soviet intelligence collection program, known by the acronym RYAN, to observe signals and provide early warning of US target. Two years later a major war scare exploded in the USSR and this study traces the beginning and capacity of Operation RYAN, its relationship to the war scare and Reagan administration's strategic defense initiative (SDI) heightened Cold War tensions.
In 1983, from disagreement in the beginning of postwar decades, to détente in the late 1960's and 1970's and back to disagreement in the early 1980's, US-Soviet relations had come full circle. Outbreak of "Cold War II" was declared by the Europeans. This situation was compared to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the 1948 face-off Berlin by the French President Francois Mitterrand. George Kennan, (from the doyen of Soviet-spy), exclaimed that the new superpower mess had the "familiar characteristic, the unfailing characteristic of a march toward war, and nothing else". Such fears were overstated; that even during this time of heightened tension, it is impossible in this world were …show more content…
The warning was a collide agenda to generate a planned caution system in reaction to new challenges that the Soviets observed as alarming on the horizon. The reaction was frightened but not unreasonable. One unknown historian, rejecting the paranoia thesis that has often been used to explain Russian reaction to technologically superior Western military power, captured the point when he wrote "at various times, Russian strategist were acutely fearful. But those fears, although at times extreme, were scarcely insane" (Time magazine's "Man of Year",
Soviet intelligence services went on watchful in 1981 to observe for US preparations for initiating a shocking nuclear hit against the USSR and it allies. This warning was escorted by a new Soviet intelligence collection program, known by the acronym RYAN, to observe signals and provide early warning of US target. Two years later a major war scare exploded in the USSR and this study traces the beginning and capacity of Operation RYAN, its relationship to the war scare and Reagan administration's strategic defense initiative (SDI) heightened Cold War tensions.
In 1983, from disagreement in the beginning of postwar decades, to détente in the late 1960's and 1970's and back to disagreement in the early 1980's, US-Soviet relations had come full circle. Outbreak of "Cold War II" was declared by the Europeans. This situation was compared to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the 1948 face-off Berlin by the French President Francois Mitterrand. George Kennan, (from the doyen of Soviet-spy), exclaimed that the new superpower mess had the "familiar characteristic, the unfailing characteristic of a march toward war, and nothing else". Such fears were overstated; that even during this time of heightened tension, it is impossible in this world were …show more content…
The warning was a collide agenda to generate a planned caution system in reaction to new challenges that the Soviets observed as alarming on the horizon. The reaction was frightened but not unreasonable. One unknown historian, rejecting the paranoia thesis that has often been used to explain Russian reaction to technologically superior Western military power, captured the point when he wrote "at various times, Russian strategist were acutely fearful. But those fears, although at times extreme, were scarcely insane" (Time magazine's "Man of Year",