Ronald Reagan's surge of new conservatism led to an increased focus in the US military and a growth of the defense budget. Reagan wanted to eliminate the threat of a nuclear attack through a high tech space based defense system. This ambitious plan was dubbed Star Wars. Reagan's star wars called for an array of defense satellites in space capable of tracking nuclear weapons in flight and intercepting them, eliminating their payload and rendering the missile useless. This controversial plan only elevated tensions in and outside the United States. Star Wars called for a huge budget, and many scientists weren't certain that this kind of defense system was even possible. Even in today's world, many people are sure that Star Wars is technologically impossible to build. Besides being hard to build, Star Wars would cost the United States billions of dollars.
The USSR became wary of Star Wars and the possibility of upsetting decades of Mutually Assured Destruction. This fragile balance of nuclear annihilation had so far led the United States and USSR to not launch missiles at each other. The USSR feared that with no threat of nuclear retaliation, Ronald Reagan would launch missiles and destroy the USSR. This possible upsetting of MAD proved to be a large mistake for Reagan. USSR and US tensions grew to new levels with the conservative Reagan heading the US government. With no threat of mutually assured destruction, the fragile balance of nuclear power in the world was disturbed.
You did a great job defining Star Wars and while it is true that Reagan did want Star Wars defense, it was also true that Reagan got little to no support of his enterprise. However, one thing you should include is how the Star Wars systems could not defend on a submarine nuclear attacks and how the US and USSR later signed a peace treaty declaring not to set up any in space.
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