Reagan, Ronald Wilson (1911–2004)

40th president of the USA 1981–89, a Republican. He was governor of California 1966–74, and a former Hollywood actor. Reagan was a hawkish and popular president. He adopted an aggressive foreign policy in Central America, attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, and invading Grenada in 1983. In 1987, Irangate was investigated by the Tower Commission; Reagan admitted that USA–Iran negotiations had become an ‘arms for hostages deal’, but denied knowledge of resultant funds being illegally sent to the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. He increased military spending (sending the national budget deficit to record levels), cut social programmes, introduced the deregulation of domestic markets, and cut taxes. His Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced in 1983, proved controversial owing to the cost, unfeasibility, and opposition from the USSR. He was succeeded by Vice-President George Bush.

Reagan became a Hollywood actor in 1937 and appeared in 50 films, including Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Kings Row (1942), Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), and The Killers (1964).

He joined the Republican Party in 1962, and his term as governor of California was marked by battles against student protesters. Having lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976 to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford respectively, Reagan won it in 1980 and defeated President Jimmy Carter. He was wounded in an assassination attempt in 1981. The invasion of Grenada, following a coup there, generated a revival of national patriotism, and this, along with his record of tax cutting, was one of the various causes of his landslide re-election in 1984. His last years in office were dominated by friction with the USSR over the SDI, popularly called Star Wars because incoming missiles would be intercepted in space.

Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, the son of a shoe salesman who was bankrupted during the Depression. He graduated from Eureka College, Illinois, and was a sports announcer in Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa 1932–37. As president of the Screen Actors' Guild 1947–52, he became a conservative, critical of the stifling of free enterprise by bureaucracy, and named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Following his re-election in 1984, Reagan pursued his policy of funding the SDI. He believed that this new technology would end the threat of nuclear war by making long-distance intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) obsolete, as their flight path had to be made through space. This insistence on militarizing space contributed to Reagan's failure to achieve a disarmament agreement when he met the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and 1986. Gorbachev opposed the Star Wars initiative and claimed that it posed a major threat to world peace. However a 4% reduction in nuclear weapons was agreed in 1987.

The impact of Reagan's tough stance on negotiations with the USSR is difficult to assess. It is possible to say that he alienated an otherwise conciliatory USSR through his aggressive foreign policy, and so delayed the reductions of nuclear weapons that could have been achieved in the mid-1980s. Alternatively it could be said that Reagan's pursuit of Star Wars technology made the USSR think that it was about to lose the Cold War, as the USA would be able to destroy their nuclear threat by making their weapons obsolete. The USSR would have been unable to match US investment in SDI, as their centrally-planned communist economy was in terminal decline by the mid-1980s. The prospect of an operational Star Wars defence system meant that the USSR had to negotiate with the USA from a position of weakness. Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders had no wish to start a nuclear war, and the threat of Star Wars technology could be said to have forced them to end the Cold War.

In 1986 Reagan ordered the bombing of Tripoli, Libya, following the alleged killing of a US soldier in Berlin, Germany, by a guerrilla group funded by Libya. Reagan had become increasingly frustrated by the support that he believed Libya's leader Colonel Khaddafi was giving to international terrorism targeted on the USA and its allies. The bombing was condemned by many world powers, including the USA's allies, with only the UK, under Reagan's close friend and ally Margaret Thatcher, supporting the action.

Reagan retired from politics in 1988. In 1994 he revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and by the end of 1999 his wife Nancy reported that he was no longer able to converse. The Washington National Airport in Washington, DC, was renamed the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in his honour in February 1998.