Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR in 1985. Having realistically assessed the reasons for the USSR’s economic weakness, Gorbachev began reforms which eventually contributed to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.
The arms race and involvement in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan had effectively bankrupted the Soviet Union by the early 1980s. In 1983 Ronald Reagan announced the start of the programme that came to be known as ‘Star Wars’. This involved the development of an early warning system which would enable enemy missiles to be destroyed in space. Some estimates put US spending on the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) and its successors as high as $100 billion yet to date no such system has been completed.
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