Moral Containment of Military Challenge: The Reagan Administration and the Soviet Union (original) (raw)

The Reagan Administration had come into office with the self-appointed mission to restore U.S. leadership in world affairs. This was to encompass greater moral self-confidence and economic growth at home as well as demonstrated military and ideological leadership abroad. With much ceremonial pomp, an unorthodox yet promising program of Reaganomics, and a global military and moral presence, the U.S. was to regain the self-confidence that had gone astray during the late 1960s and 1970s. Vietnam, the breakdown of "realistic" détente-a policy that had deviated from American valuesand the humiliating hostage-taking in Iran as well as Watergate and a sluggish economy had contributed to a relative decline in U.S. power. By an old American tradition, mistakes and neglect were attributable not to abstract, international political developments beyond one's control or to a relative decline in economic power and the corresponding rise of allies in Western Europe and Japan. Rather, the nation sought the mistakes in its own behavior. The notion of a "decade of neglect" attracted a strong following in the 1980 election campaign, as did the idea of self-correction.