Reagan entered the White House with an entourage bent not merely on deterring and containing the Soviet Union but on weakening and rolling back its empire. Thirty-two members of his administration, including Reagan himself, were members of Paul Nitze’s Committee on the Present Danger. In his opening months in office, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger boosted military spending by 13 percent. He revived every nuclear weapons program that Carter had killed (notably the B-1 bomber) and accelerated all the others.
