The USA won the cold war by pushing the soviets as far as they could go. Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, saw the USSR as an evil empire and wouldn’t by any means negotiate with them. He implemented the Strategic Defence Initiative (star wars) to prevent missile attacks from other countries but especially from the USSR. Ronald Reagan made it known to the Soviets that the US were investing in a massive defence network called Star Wars. Star Wars was to offer an immense amount of protection from any missile attack. The Soviets therefor thought that they had an advantage knowing the US’s “secret.” However the Soviets could not come up with a solution, they kept spending more and more money trying to come up with an answer but were unsuccessful and eventually their economy sank. This put the US way ahead of the soviets. This program was successful in driving them away. The soviets could no longer keep up to this kind of science. This was successful because it hit the Soviets in exactly the right place. The US knew that they were not as wealthy them and therefore found their weak spots. The soviets lost the Cold war from not having as strong an economy in comparison to the US at that time.