Humanities - The 20th Century - The Cold War - La Task 2
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Twentieth Century Conflict – The end of the Cold War Your task is to use this information to create a Domino Set which clearly shows the steps that ended the Cold War. You are to create 10 dominos A map Reagan Gorbachev + 7 others
Due date – September 9th. By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985,] the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. To restructure the Soviet economy, Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform, called perestroika, or restructuring. Within two years, however, Gorbachev came to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary. Gorbachev redirected the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race, but the new Soviet leader eventually proved more concerned about reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition than fighting the arms race with the West. Also introduced was glasnost, or "openness", which allowed for criticism of the Soviet government, and Soviet institutions to be more transparent. The Kremlin made major military and political concessions; in response Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland There, Reagan invited Gorbachev to take a walk to a nearby boathouse and leave their aides. The two men, with only a translator, agreed on a proposal calling for 50 percent reductions of each country's respective nuclear arsenal. Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988
The second summit was held the following year in Reykjavík, Iceland. The negotiations ended in failure, but achievements were made at the third summit in 1987 with the signing of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure. It was the first treaty to reduce nuclear arms. The East–West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1988. The following year, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe: oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented an economic drain and the security advantage of a buffer zone was so reduced that by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. In December 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at a summit meeting in Malta;[155] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against longtime Soviet ally Iraq. By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power;[157] Gorbachev's "Common European Home" began to take shape when the Berlin Wall itself came down in November, the only alternative (as he later admitted) being a Tiananmen scenario. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev had tried to reform the party to quash internal resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power. At the same time, the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely. (At first, Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.) On December 25, 1991, with a growing number of SSRs, particularly Russia, threatening to secede, the USSR (fatally weakened by an August coup attempt) was declared officially dissolved. Legacy The four decades of the Cold War carried a tremendous cost. Military expenditure by the US in this period is estimated to have been $8 trillion and nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in Korea and Vietnam. Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviets was even higher. In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States as sole remaining superpower. In the words of Samuel P. Huntington,
The United States, of course, is the sole state with preeminence in every domain of power–economic, military, diplomatic, ideological, technological, and cultural– with the reach and capabilities to promote its interests in virtually every part of the world. Formation of the CIS, the official end of the USSR Created on December 21, 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States could have been viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but according to Russia's leaders its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation, similar to the European Community. Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults and its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced in the Great Depression. Although Russian living standards have worsened overall in the postCold War years, economic growth has been strong since 1999. The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post-World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries. The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science. In areas where the two superpowers had been waging proxy wars and subsidizing local conflicts many of these ended along with the Cold War; the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and refugee and displaced persons crises has declined sharply in recent years. However, the legacy of Cold War conflict is not always easily erased. Many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. In some countries, independence was accompanied by state failure, such as in Afghanistan. In other areas, particularly much of Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies.
1980 •
• •
February 22: The United States Olympic Hockey Team defeats the Soviet Union in the final group stage of the Winter Olympics, in the Miracle on Ice. March 21: The United States boycotts the 1980 Summer Olympics (July 19–August 3) in Moscow. August 31: In Poland the Gdańsk Agreement is signed after a strike wave starting at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk. The agreement allows
greater civil rights, such as the establishment of a trade union independent of communist party control.
1981 •
• • •
January 20: Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States. Reagan had been elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of Détente. September 3: Poland and the Uprising of Solidarity. October 27: A Soviet submarine, the U137, runs aground not far from the Swedish naval base at Karlskrona. November 23: The US Central Intelligence Agency begins to support antiSandinista Contras.
1982 • • •
April 2: Argentina invades the Falklands, starting the Falklands War. May 30: Spain joins NATO. June 6: Israel invades Lebanon to end raids and clashes with Syrian troops based there.
1983 • •
•
September 1: Civilian Korean Air Flight 007 shot down by Soviet jet interceptors. October 25: US forces invade the Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow the Marxist military government, expel Cuban troops and abort the construction of a Soviet-funded airstrip. November 2: Exercise Able Archer 83 — Soviet air defenses mistake a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as fake cover for a NATO attack; in response, Soviet nuclear forces are put on high alert.
1984 • • •
January: US President Ronald Reagan outlines a foreign policy speech reinforcing his previous thoughts July 28: Various allies of the Soviet Union boycott 1984 Summer Olympics. December 16: Margaret Thatcher and the UK government, in a plan to open new channels of dialog with Soviet leadership candidates, meet with Mikhail Gorbachev at Chequers.
1985 • •
March 11: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union. August 6: Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet Union begins what it has announced is a 5-month unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. The Reagan administration dismisses the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refuses to follow suit. Gorbachev declares several extensions,
•
but the United States fails to reciprocate, and the moratorium comes to an end on February 5, 1987. November 21: Reagan and Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, where they agree to two (later three) more summits.
1986 • • •
•
February 13: France launches Operation Sparrowhawk in an effort to repulse the Libyan invasion of Chad. April 26: Chernobyl disaster: A Soviet nuclear power plant in the Ukraine explodes, resulting in the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. October 11-12: Reykjavík Summit: US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, nearly achieving a breakthrough on nuclear arms control. November 3: Iran-Contra scandal: the Reagan administration publicly announces that it has been selling arms to Iran to free hostages and illegally transferring the profits to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1987 •
• • •
June: Gorbachev announces Glasnost and Perestroika. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking glasnost is to pressure conservatives within the Party who oppose his policies of economic restructuring - perestroika. Mikhail Gorbachev hopes that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people will support and participate in perestroika. June 12 - During a visit to Berlin, Germany, US President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. September 10: The Battle of Cuito Carnevale (Angola) begins. December 8 - The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed in Washington, DC by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Some, like Hobsbawm, later claim this was the end de jure of Cold War.; Gorbachev agrees to START I treaty.
1988 • •
May 15: The Soviets begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. December 22: South Africa withdraws from South West Africa (Namibia).
1989 • • • •
January 20: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as the 41st President of the United States. February 2: Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan. June 4: Tiananmen Square protests are crushed by the communist Chinese government. August: Solidarity Movement elects new non-communist government in Poland.
•
•
•
November 9: Revolutions in Eastern Europe: Soviet reforms and their state of bankruptcy have allowed Eastern Europe to rise up against the Communist governments there. The Berlin wall is torn down. December 3 : At the end of the Malta Conference Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush declare that a long-lasting peaceful era has begun. Many observers regard this summit as the official beginning of the end of the Cold War. December 16-25: Romanian Revolution. Rioters overthrow the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, executing him and his wife, Elena. Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to violently overthrow its Communist regime or to execute its leaders.
1990 • •
February 26: The Sandinista government in Nicaragua is rejected in democratic elections. October 3: Germany is reunified.
1991 • •
• •
August 19: Soviet coup attempt of 1991. The August coup, in response to a new union treaty to be signed on August 20. December 25: US President George H. W. Bush, after receiving a phone call from Boris Yeltsin, delivers a Christmas day speech acknowledging the end of the Cold War December 25: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the USSR. The hammer and sickle is lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. December 26: The Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognizes the dissolution of the Soviet Union and dissolves itself.
Due date – September 9th. By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985,] the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. To restructure the Soviet economy, Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform, called perestroika, or restructuring. Within two years, however, Gorbachev came to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary. Gorbachev redirected the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race, but the new Soviet leader eventually proved more concerned about reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition than fighting the arms race with the West. Also introduced was glasnost, or "openness", which allowed for criticism of the Soviet government, and Soviet institutions to be more transparent. The Kremlin made major military and political concessions; in response Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland There, Reagan invited Gorbachev to take a walk to a nearby boathouse and leave their aides. The two men, with only a translator, agreed on a proposal calling for 50 percent reductions of each country's respective nuclear arsenal. Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988
The second summit was held the following year in Reykjavík, Iceland. The negotiations ended in failure, but achievements were made at the third summit in 1987 with the signing of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure. It was the first treaty to reduce nuclear arms. The East–West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1988. The following year, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe: oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented an economic drain and the security advantage of a buffer zone was so reduced that by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. In December 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at a summit meeting in Malta;[155] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against longtime Soviet ally Iraq. By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power;[157] Gorbachev's "Common European Home" began to take shape when the Berlin Wall itself came down in November, the only alternative (as he later admitted) being a Tiananmen scenario. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev had tried to reform the party to quash internal resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power. At the same time, the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely. (At first, Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.) On December 25, 1991, with a growing number of SSRs, particularly Russia, threatening to secede, the USSR (fatally weakened by an August coup attempt) was declared officially dissolved. Legacy The four decades of the Cold War carried a tremendous cost. Military expenditure by the US in this period is estimated to have been $8 trillion and nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in Korea and Vietnam. Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviets was even higher. In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States as sole remaining superpower. In the words of Samuel P. Huntington,
The United States, of course, is the sole state with preeminence in every domain of power–economic, military, diplomatic, ideological, technological, and cultural– with the reach and capabilities to promote its interests in virtually every part of the world. Formation of the CIS, the official end of the USSR Created on December 21, 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States could have been viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but according to Russia's leaders its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation, similar to the European Community. Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults and its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced in the Great Depression. Although Russian living standards have worsened overall in the postCold War years, economic growth has been strong since 1999. The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post-World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries. The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science. In areas where the two superpowers had been waging proxy wars and subsidizing local conflicts many of these ended along with the Cold War; the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and refugee and displaced persons crises has declined sharply in recent years. However, the legacy of Cold War conflict is not always easily erased. Many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. In some countries, independence was accompanied by state failure, such as in Afghanistan. In other areas, particularly much of Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies.
1980 •
• •
February 22: The United States Olympic Hockey Team defeats the Soviet Union in the final group stage of the Winter Olympics, in the Miracle on Ice. March 21: The United States boycotts the 1980 Summer Olympics (July 19–August 3) in Moscow. August 31: In Poland the Gdańsk Agreement is signed after a strike wave starting at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk. The agreement allows
greater civil rights, such as the establishment of a trade union independent of communist party control.
1981 •
• • •
January 20: Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States. Reagan had been elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of Détente. September 3: Poland and the Uprising of Solidarity. October 27: A Soviet submarine, the U137, runs aground not far from the Swedish naval base at Karlskrona. November 23: The US Central Intelligence Agency begins to support antiSandinista Contras.
1982 • • •
April 2: Argentina invades the Falklands, starting the Falklands War. May 30: Spain joins NATO. June 6: Israel invades Lebanon to end raids and clashes with Syrian troops based there.
1983 • •
•
September 1: Civilian Korean Air Flight 007 shot down by Soviet jet interceptors. October 25: US forces invade the Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow the Marxist military government, expel Cuban troops and abort the construction of a Soviet-funded airstrip. November 2: Exercise Able Archer 83 — Soviet air defenses mistake a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as fake cover for a NATO attack; in response, Soviet nuclear forces are put on high alert.
1984 • • •
January: US President Ronald Reagan outlines a foreign policy speech reinforcing his previous thoughts July 28: Various allies of the Soviet Union boycott 1984 Summer Olympics. December 16: Margaret Thatcher and the UK government, in a plan to open new channels of dialog with Soviet leadership candidates, meet with Mikhail Gorbachev at Chequers.
1985 • •
March 11: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union. August 6: Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet Union begins what it has announced is a 5-month unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. The Reagan administration dismisses the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refuses to follow suit. Gorbachev declares several extensions,
•
but the United States fails to reciprocate, and the moratorium comes to an end on February 5, 1987. November 21: Reagan and Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, where they agree to two (later three) more summits.
1986 • • •
•
February 13: France launches Operation Sparrowhawk in an effort to repulse the Libyan invasion of Chad. April 26: Chernobyl disaster: A Soviet nuclear power plant in the Ukraine explodes, resulting in the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. October 11-12: Reykjavík Summit: US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, nearly achieving a breakthrough on nuclear arms control. November 3: Iran-Contra scandal: the Reagan administration publicly announces that it has been selling arms to Iran to free hostages and illegally transferring the profits to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1987 •
• • •
June: Gorbachev announces Glasnost and Perestroika. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking glasnost is to pressure conservatives within the Party who oppose his policies of economic restructuring - perestroika. Mikhail Gorbachev hopes that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people will support and participate in perestroika. June 12 - During a visit to Berlin, Germany, US President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. September 10: The Battle of Cuito Carnevale (Angola) begins. December 8 - The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed in Washington, DC by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Some, like Hobsbawm, later claim this was the end de jure of Cold War.; Gorbachev agrees to START I treaty.
1988 • •
May 15: The Soviets begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. December 22: South Africa withdraws from South West Africa (Namibia).
1989 • • • •
January 20: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as the 41st President of the United States. February 2: Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan. June 4: Tiananmen Square protests are crushed by the communist Chinese government. August: Solidarity Movement elects new non-communist government in Poland.
•
•
•
November 9: Revolutions in Eastern Europe: Soviet reforms and their state of bankruptcy have allowed Eastern Europe to rise up against the Communist governments there. The Berlin wall is torn down. December 3 : At the end of the Malta Conference Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush declare that a long-lasting peaceful era has begun. Many observers regard this summit as the official beginning of the end of the Cold War. December 16-25: Romanian Revolution. Rioters overthrow the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, executing him and his wife, Elena. Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to violently overthrow its Communist regime or to execute its leaders.
1990 • •
February 26: The Sandinista government in Nicaragua is rejected in democratic elections. October 3: Germany is reunified.
1991 • •
• •
August 19: Soviet coup attempt of 1991. The August coup, in response to a new union treaty to be signed on August 20. December 25: US President George H. W. Bush, after receiving a phone call from Boris Yeltsin, delivers a Christmas day speech acknowledging the end of the Cold War December 25: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the USSR. The hammer and sickle is lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. December 26: The Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognizes the dissolution of the Soviet Union and dissolves itself.
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