Iran-Contra Affair and Second-Wave Feminism Literature Essay (Essay Sample)

Iran-Contra Affair and Second-Wave Feminism
Name:
Institution:
How did the Iran-Contra affair reflect the Reagan administration’s larger foreign policy agenda?
The foreign policy by President Reagan was meant to proclaim the American power to the entire world. To achieve this, President Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as an evil empire and gave an order to build up the largest military in US history. The Iran-Contra Affair was an agreement involving the secret U.S. arms deal, which was to trade missiles and firearms to free some American who had been held captive in Lebanon by terrorists CITATION Bus16 \l 1033 (Busby, 2016). The resources obtained from the firearms deal were also used to support the armed conflict in Nicaragua. Reagan’s presidency was at the threat of being ruined by the political scandal and the controversial deal.
After winning the presidency in 1980, President Reagan was not able to maintain the political momentum of the fellow Republicans where the GOP lost the majority both in the house of representatives and the senate during the 1982 mid-term elections ("Iran-Contra Affair," 2019). After losing control of Congress to the Democrats, the Boland Amendment was passed, which resulted in restrictions of the Department of Defense (DoD) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities in foreign policies. This alteration by the Democrats was aimed at Nicaragua, where the anti-communist Contras were fighting the régime of the Sandinista communist CITATION Bar17 \l 1033 (Barker, 2017).