Class Action (1991)
History help? – Soviet Union & America?
Okay, this is a topic we never covered in class. I don’t have a textbook on me and right now I’m drafting four other outlines for our final essays. This is the question:
Evaluate the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union by addressing U.S. presidential policies and actions from 1945 to 1991, as well as Soviet policy.
If you can either tell me right here or give me some links to do this research (quickly is preferred, because I have other stuff to do before this afternoon, but I’ll take the time if I have to), I will forever be garteful and the best answer gets best answer, duh. 
Thank you so much!
The singular presidential policy that impacted the Soviet Union was the regan push to modernize and upgrade the US military. He pushed Star Wars which wasted a lot of money on dead end dreams but it did yield some workable breakthrough technologies, stealth being the biggest.
The USSR had built a huge radar guided defense network to defend against US bombers coming over the North Pole. Their interlocking fields guranteed any attack would be detected and fighters vectored to intercept before damage could be done.
Enter Desert Storm. The incredible reality of radar evading bombers like the F-117 Nighthawk and the B-2 Spirit showed that stealth worked. Suddenly the USSR realized that all of their radar defenses were now useless. Dozens of US bombers could leave the states, fly into the USSR and hit every target without being detected until the mushrooms bloomed.
It was important for the Soviets to project to their people and the world how strong they were. People respected their power. That power evaporate overnight in the city of Bagdad when a Black plane whispered through the night, through Soviet made radar defense and hit their targets, escaping without a scratch.
There was no way the Soviets could come up with the trillions of dollars needed to design, build and deploy a system capable of stopping stealth bombers. And by the time they did they knew we world still be moving further with the next generation. The whole paranoid structure collapsed under the mere threat of vulnerability.
SCREEN GODDESSES: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio