Edited sentence: Able Archer 83 was the last nuclear scare of the Cold War.By 1983 the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, was in the middle of a massive arms build up, one which would last throughout the 1980s.Gorbachev's policies and programs within the Soviet Union were a final attempt to revive the moribund civilian economy — notably glasnost and perestroika.He also returned to the arms negotiation table, which the Soviets had walked away from in 1981, largely out of a critical need to reduce the colossal level of military spending.His reforms set into motion the economic and political events that ultimately and unintentionally led to the USSR's dissolution in 1991.It was a risky strategy but it had the desired effect.The declining health of then General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko led to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.United States military policies of the 1980s, such as the 600-ship Navy, showed the US aimed to force the Soviet Union into an unaffordable arms race that would wreck its fragile economy