| |  1981-1989The Denouement of the Cold War
The election of President Ronald Reagan brought back a policy of hard-line anti-communism and U.S. military build-up. The Reagan Doctrine committed the United States to a foreign policy that made a fundamental shift away from the idea of containing the spread of communism to that of actively working to roll it back. Rollback meant aiding forces around the world engaged in fighting left-leaning governments. President Reagan also undertook a massive buildup of the nuclear arsenal, investing in such programs as the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars.” Struggling with its own economic crises, the Soviet Union could not keep up in this arms race, and during President Reagan's second term, the two sides met with increasing frequency to discuss arms control and limiting hostility. The rise of a new generation of leadership in the Soviet Union, less attached to its Stalinist past and more determined to cooperate with the world, led to internal reforms and the dramatic end of the Cold War with the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Key Issues and Ideas
The Lebanon War, 1982-1984
U.S. Invasion of Grenada, 1983
Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983
Reagan Doctrine, 1985
Armed Confrontation between the U.S. and Libya, 1986
South African apartheid, American business, and economic sanctions
El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), 1981-1988
CIA, the Nicaraguan Contras, and the Iran-Contra Affair, 1986
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), 1987
Gorbachev and New Thinking in Soviet Foreign Policy, 1987-1988
Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989
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