Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration of the Soviet Union's total export earnings). To restructure the Soviet economy before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid reform, based upon what he called perestroika (meaning "restructuring") and glasnost (meaning "liberalization" and "openness"). Reform required Gorbachev to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe. Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race,
Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration in Malta. The Soviet alliance system was by then on the brink of collapse, and the Communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were losing power. On March 11, 1990 Lithuania, led by newly elected Vytautas Landsbergis, declared independence from the Soviet Union. The gate to the Berlin Wall was opened and Gorbachev approved. Gorbachev proposed to President George H.W. Bush massive troop reductions in Eastern Europe. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev tried to reform the party to destroy resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the state and union together. By February 1990,