Compare And Contrast Reagan Vs Gorbachev

The 1980’s would forever go down in history as the decade America would find its self-identity. While economists and historians will show that it was the decade of great overspending and excess, America would find itself as the decade for American entertainment. movies, music, introduction to video games all being run by an actor out of Hollywood know as President Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union or the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev would take the head of the office in the Soviet Union.
Reagan and Gorbachev had different yet similar milestones to which they would attain the highest offices of their country. Reagan would serve as Governor of California, become president of the Screen Actors Guild during the time of the “Red Scare” while Gorbachev would become a reginal agricultural administrator and a …show more content…
Reagan’s opinion of Gorbachev, and vice-versa, was “distrustful” at best. Reagan would constantly call the Soviet Union the evil empire and constantly focus his attention on the deterrent system known as at the time “Star Wars”. This program would shoot missiles out of the sky from outer space if a nuclear attack was to ever happen. Once Gorbachev knew of such a system, he had all but given up on trying to outspend America in defense. Gorbachev would start to focus his efforts and money to the people of the Soviet Union because they desperately needed it. (Stone, & Kuznick, 2012) In the years to follow, four summits would take place between the two countries. In 1985, Reagan would meet with Gorbachev in Geneva to talk about arms control. Gorbachev would bring to the table of scrapping a Nuclear SDI missile project while Reagan needed to scrap the development of it. (PBS. 2013) Gorbachev would not stop there. In Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev would try to appeal to Reagan on a human level about completely scrapping all Nuclear arms (Stone, & Kuznick, 2012). Reagan, once again, would not