REAGAN DOCTRINE REPRESENTS ESCALATION IN THE COLD WAR
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) This coming Tuesday evening, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will deliver his State of the Union message. On February 6, 1985, President Ronald W. Reagan gave his in which he said...
"We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives...from Afghanistan to Nicaragua."
This statement became the theme of U.S. foreign policy until the end of the Cold War in 1991. It was supported by the President's top national security and foreign policy advisers.
Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time Magazine, was the first to apply the term Reagan Doctrine* to the policy.
Robert Longley says the doctrine reversed "several aspects of detente" established during Jimmy Carter's administration and so represented an escalation in the Cold War.
*Reagan Doctrine was the strategy employed by President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s to end communism and the Cold War.
JFK+50 NOTE
Dr. Alan Axelrod says President Reagan is "widely credited" with winning the Cold War, but his defense budget "quadrupled the national debt from one to four trillion dollars."
SOURCES
"An Ideology Crumbles," The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History, Fourth Edition, by Alan Axelrod, Ph.D., Alpha, 2006.
"The Reagan Doctrine: To Wipe Out Communism," by Robert Longley, May 8, 2019, ThoughtCo., www.thoughtco.com/
