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Contras and Invasion of Nicaragua
In 1979, President Carter had supported the Socialist Sandinista movement when it overthrew Nicaragua's dictator. Reagan, however, opposed the Sandinistas's claim to power and the organization's Communist ties. In 1981, Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to train an army of 10,000 Nicaraguan "freedom fighters," or Contras, to fight the Sandinistas. Congress passed Boland Amendment to ban the operation, but Reagan's administration ignored it and continued support for the Contras. -
Mid 1982: Reagan Initated START with Soviet Union
Reagan initiated START, or the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, with the Soviet Union in mid 1982. Not surprisingly, these talks quickly failed because the language of the talks demanded that the USSR significantly reduce its nuclear arsenal, but allow the US to continue building its arsenal. -
Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars Program)
he most notorious of the programs Reagan invested in was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more commonly known as the Star Wars program in reference to the popular 1980s science fiction film trilogy. The SDI was designed to be a national defense network of missiles that could target and destroy any incoming enemy missiles before they reached the United States. Unfortunately, it failed miserably, costing nearly up to $1 trillion dollars, acting as a huge contributor to the 1980s recession. -
Lebanese Civil War
With the approval of Congress, Reagan in 1983 sent forces to Lebanon to reduce the threat of civil war. The American peacekeeping forces in Beirut, a part of a multinational force during the Lebanese Civil War, were attacked on October 23, 1983. The Beirut barracks bombing killed 241 American servicemen and wounded more than 60 others by a suicide truck bomber. Reagan sent in a battleship to shell Syrian positions in Lebanon. He then withdrew all the Marines from Lebanon. -
Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada)
On October 25, 1983, Reagan ordered U.S. forces to invade Grenada, code named Operation Urgent Fury, where a 1979 coup d'état had established an independent non-aligned Marxist-Leninist government. President Reagan also cited an allegedly regional threat posed by a Soviet-Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean and concern for the safety of several hundred American medical students at St. George's University as adequate reasons to invade. The U.S. won and installed a new government in Grenada. -
Mikhail Gorbachev Became Leader of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbechev became the leader of the Soviet Union and actively sought both political and economic reform in the USSR as well as an easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first time since the beginning of the Cold War, a Soviet leader approached the United States to seriously discuss a possible peace. This initiative took the Reagan administration completely by surprise, but Reagan quickly responded in kind. -
Iran-Contra Scandal 1986
Secret arms sales to Iran was discovered in trade for American hostages as well as funds for the Contras in the war in Nicaragua. This is directly in violation of Congress and international laws, and Reagan's administration was heavily affected with his popularity sliding drastically, the largest margin ever in the history of the U.S. -
Attacks on Libya
President Reagan did not back down from the Libyan terrorist attack on US forces in Germany, however. Libya, too, disliked American involvement in the Middle East and funded many terrorist organizations that pledged to destroy the United States. After learning of the attack in Germany, Reagan launched a missile campaign on Libya, and even bombed the personal residence of Libya's ruler, Muammar Qaddafi. Qaddafi survived the attack, but backed away from anti-American terrorist movements.