The Cold War after 1980
Cold War tensions increased in the early 1980's. The renewed friction resulted chiefly from the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and from continued American fear of Soviet and Cuban influence in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his Administration adopted a policy they called linkage, tying any U.S. arms agreement to consideration of Soviet expansion.
Meanwhile, the growing military power of the Soviet Union led the United States to increase its defense budget. Many observers thought the U.S. defense build-up would lead to a more dangerous nuclear arms race. But events in the late 1980's led to a sharp reduction in U.S.-Soviet tensions. In 1987, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty to eliminate many of the ground-launched, nuclear missiles of both nations. The treaty went into effect in 1988. In 1988 and 1989, the U.S.S.R. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. Also in the late 1980's, the Soviet Union began to reduce its conventional military forces in Eastern Europe. In the U.S.S.R., Gorbachev worked for a more decentralized economic system and allowed more democracy and freedom of expression. He also encouraged similar actions in Eastern Europe.
Beginning in 1989, Communist rule came to an end in a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. In addition, East Germany began to allow its people to pass freely to West Berlin through the Berlin Wall, and the East Germans soon began to tear the wall down. Germany was reunified in 1990, when East Germany united with West Germany. In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet government. Later that year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the republics that made up the nation became independent states. Russia was by far the largest of these states. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President George Bush formally declared that their countries did not regard each other as potential enemies. These events marked the end of the Cold War.
SOURCE: IBM 1999 World Book
Contributor: Burton I. Kaufman, Ph.D., Prof. of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ.
Additional resources
Arms, Thomas S. Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Facts on File, 1994.
Inglis, Fred. The Cruel Peace. 1991. Reprint. Basic Bks., 1993.
Leffler, Melvyn P. The Specter of Communism. Ed. by Eric Foner. Hill & Wang, 1994.
Walker, Martin. The Cold War. 1993. Reprint. Henry Holt, 1994.