In running for president in 1980, Reagan wrapped his hard-line anti-Communist message in the rhetoric of peace. “I’ve called for whatever it takes to be so strong that no other nation will dare violate the peace,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention on August 18, 1980. Still, he made it clear that he did not intend to pursue peace at any price; it “must not be a peace of humiliation and gradual surrender.” Once in the White House, Reagan left no doubt about his anti-Communist stance. He called the Soviet Union “the evil empire,” regarding it as “the focus of evil in the modern world.” The president planned to confront that evil with both words and deeds, backing up his rhetoric with a massive military buildup.
In a show of moral and economic might, Reagan proposed the largest military budget in American history. Under the Reagan administration, the defense budget grew about 7 percent per year, increasing from $157 billion in 1981 to around $282 billion in 1988. Reagan clearly intended to win the Cold War by outspending the Soviets, even if it meant running up huge deficits that greatly burdened the U.S. economy (see chapter 27).
The president sought to expand the Cold War by developing new weapons to be deployed in outer space. He proposed a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars,” as it was dubbed, to create an orbiting shield of antiballistic missiles, which even Secretary of State Shultz privately called “lunacy.” Seeming more like a page out of science fiction, the SDI was never carried out, though the government spent $17 billion on research.
Reagan was unyielding in his initial dealings with the Soviet Union, and negotiations between the superpowers moved slowly and unevenly. The Reagan administration’s initial “zero option” proposal called for the Soviets to dismantle all of their intermediate-range missiles in exchange for the United States agreeing to refrain from deploying any new medium-range missiles. The administration presented this option merely for show, expecting the Soviets to reject it. However, in 1982, after the Soviets accepted the principle of “zero option,” Reagan sent negotiators to begin Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). Influenced by antinuclear protests in Europe, which had a great impact on European governments, the Americans proposed shelving the deployment of 572 Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe in return for the Soviets’ dismantling of Eastern European–based intermediate-range ballistic missiles that were targeted at Western Europe. The Soviets viewed this offer as perpetuating American nuclear superiority and rejected it.
Relations between the two superpowers deteriorated in September 1983 when a Soviet fighter jet shot down a South Korean passenger airliner, killing 269 people. The Soviets charged that the plane had veered off course and violated their airspace on a trip from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea. Although the disaster resulted mainly from Soviet mistakes, Reagan chose to condemn this attack as further proof of the malign intentions of the USSR, and country singer Lee Greenwood wrote the patriotic song “God Bless the USA” in support of the country and of Reagan. The United States sent additional missiles to bases in West Germany, Great Britain, and Italy; in response, the Soviets abandoned the disarmament talks and replenished their nuclear arsenal in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. More symbolically, the Soviets boycotted the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, in retaliation for the U.S. boycott of the Olympics in Moscow four years earlier. As the two adversaries swung from peace talks to threats of nuclear confrontation, one European journalist observed: “The second Cold War has begun.”