The Policies and Actions Which Help/hindered U.S-Soviet Relations During the Administrations Of: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

Events, Policies and Actions Which Help/Hindered U.S-Soviet Relations during the Administrations of: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

American Government-MWF

Cyle Parker

Dr. Charles P. Willie

March 7, 2004

Events, Policies and Actions between the United States and the USSR during the Carter, Regan and Bush Sr. Administrations

The relationship between superpowers has always been complex. There is the natural inclination to achieve dominance on the world stage, while trying to keep a stable relationship with other world powers. The United States and the USSR had been recognized as superpowers since the end of World War II. The United States' Manhattan Project led to atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In 1949, the USSR surprised the world by breaking the United States' monopoly on atomic weapons and exploding their own atomic bomb. In 1952, the United States developed and exploded a thermonuclear weapon, also known as the hydrogen bomb. The next year, the USSR followed suit by detonating their own hydrogen bomb.

The countries had major ideological differences. The American system of free-market capitalism was in stark contrast to Soviet communism. The American economy was built, made and sustained by self-made men who had brought themselves from "rags-to-riches". This idea was encouraged and glorified by Horatio Alger in books while people like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were living examples. The USSR's communist ideology was based on the belief that every person should have the same social status as everyone else with no people of a higher caste so to speak.

Both countries began to stockpile nuclear weapons