The Cold War was not won on the battlefield by the United States but instead won through the economic side of war because the Americans had alot more money than other counries. When Ronald Reagan came into power as the United States 40th President his thoughts on economic growth being most effective by lowering the publics barriers to produce services. This economic way of thinking was called "Reaganomics". It had four main foundations that involved the reduction of: government spending, federal income tax and capital gains tax, government regulation, and tightening the money supply to reduce inflation. The whole bases of Reaganomics was to use the United Staes strengths against the USSR. The Strategic Defence Initiative which was refernced to Star Wars was created to prevent missile attacks from Russia. Because of this idea of Star wars the US had installed into the Russians minds, they wasted extensive amounts of money trying to match the US and solve the problem, but the russian never could get to the US level and pulled out. Destroying their economy. This left the United States way a head of Russia with their economy. The US used their strength -money- against the Russians and prevailed in winning the Cold War through economics.