How were the neocons different?
The group that would come to be called the neocons—Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld—argued for a much larger share of the national budget going to defense spending. Détente had been a product of Nixon and Kissinger, and they wanted to break with that and confront the Soviet Union. They wanted a victory over them rather than détente. The defense budget jumped by more than a trillion dollars in the first few years of the Reagan administration; the Navy moved ships much closer to Russian waters; the Air Force flew bombers much closer to Soviet airspace. The U.S. also engaged in more covert schemes like getting the Saudis to increase oil production to lower the price of oil—the Soviets were living on their oil revenue at the time. It was direct belligerence, yet it had the opposite effect of what the neocons expected. You can’t bully large nations with huge nuclear stockpiles; it just makes them think you are getting poised to attack. What did the Soviets make of the arms buildu
