History 1BB3: America and the World: The Twentieth Century

Dr. Stephen M. Streeter

McMaster University, Winter 2002

 

End of the Cold War

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I. End of the Cold War

disintegration of the Soviet Union
disintegration of the Eastern Bloc
fall of the Berlin Wall

II. Explanations

1. American strength and superior leadership

Ronald Reagan
Strategic Defense Initiative

2. Soviet leadership

Mikhail Gorbachev
perestroika
glasnost

3. antinuclear movement

4. rise of the Third World

5. Soviet and Eastern Europe dissidence

6. superpower decline

U.S. "imperial overstretch"
Soviet economic decline

III. Consequences of the Cold War

death and destruction
proliferation of conventional and nuclear weapons
environmental pollution and destruction
unleashing of ethnic conflicts, especially in Eastern Europe
wrenching transition from communism to capitalism

Further Reading

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