Foreign policy of the Reagan administration
US foreign policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)
American foreign policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) focused heavily on the Cold War which shifted from détente to confrontation. The Reagan administration pursued a policy of rollback with regard to communist regimes. The Reagan Doctrine operationalized these goals as the United States offered financial, logistical, training, and military equipment to anti-communist opposition in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. He expanded support to anti-communist movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
By 1982, the Reagan-led CIA had in fact regarded Libya, the Soviet Union, and Cuba to be "some sort of unholy trinity," with controversial Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi being "our international public enemy number one."
Reagan's foreign policy also saw major shifts with regard to the Middle East. US intervention in the Lebanese Civil War was halted as Reagan ordered an evacuation of troops following the 1983 Marine Corps Barracks Attack. The 1979 Iran hostage crisis in Tehran strained relations with Iran and during the Iran-Iraq War, the administration publicly supported Iraq and sold weapons to Saddam Hussein.
Anti-communism was at the forefront with Reagan's Latin American foreign policy and the US supported forces fighting communist insurgencies or governments. As his administration progressed, opposition to continued US aid for these groups began to gather steam in Congress. Eventually, Congress forbade any US financial or material aid to certain anti-communist groups, among them the Contras in Nicaragua.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Foreign policy of the Reagan administration” is uS foreign policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Foreign, policy and Reagan, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5468451. The Library of Congress control number is sh85140105. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1989, 1982 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Foreign policy of the Reagan administration” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.