CHAPTER 26
The Age
of Fracture:
The 1970s
C
H
R
I
S
T
I
A
N
,
M
A
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
R
26-1 Evaluate Richard Nixon as president, focusing on
Khis policies in
Learning Outcomes
the United States and abroad.
6
26-2 Describe the events of Watergate and its ramifications
for the
country.
5
3
26-3 Describe the economic conditions of the 1970s, including
stagflation and the end of the post–World War II5economic
boom, and describe how Presidents Ford and Carter
B attempted
to confront the problem.
U
26-4 Describe the perpetuation of 1960s-style activism and how it
transformed into a politics of identity in the 1970s.
26-5 Evaluate the reaction to the 1960s social movements and
describe the rise of the New Right.
474
C h apte r 21
The Continued Move West
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“
Without a magnetic social vision
to unify the populace, the 1970s
came to be characterized as a time of
turning inward.
”
The social activism of the late
1960s continued into the 1970s,
but during the 1970s that activism ran into roadblocks. A variety of minority movements
Americans’ inability to buy gas whenever they wanted to
seemed poised to fracture any
was the first sign that the country’s position as most pownational unity that had been
erful nation in the world was faltering.
C
created in the struggle for
Strongly Disagree
Strongly Agree
Hrights,
African American civil
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
and the postwar economic
R
boom came to a startling end
I and unemployment as contentious and serious issues. American
in 1973, raising poverty
politicians learned theS
limits of politics’ ability to create change, and they simultaneously
learned that they could not publicly discuss these limits and expect to be reelected.
This widespread T
awareness of American limits had many sources. The war in
Vietnam ended in 1975,
I but only after it had increased friction and schisms between
Americans and diminished American expectations of imperial power. In addition, the
countless fabricationsA
that Johnson and Nixon had fed the public about the progress of
the war made many Americans
suspicious of their country’s leaders. Meanwhile, the civil
N
rights movement had succeeded in winning political rights for African Americans, but it
,
then faced social and economic limits that tested the reality of America’s commitment
to racial equality. And a series of new social movements—by women, Chicanos, American
Indians, and others—that followed in the wake of the civil rights movement seemed to
M
cast African Americans as just another minority group vying for institutional recogniA has been historically and uniquely wronged. Interest in other
tion rather than one that
causes, such as environmentalism, also exploded during the 1970s. All this turmoil and
R
diverse social action provoked a backlash from voters, who, by 1980, were willing to overK
look one Republican president’s
shady dealings in order to elect another conservative to
the nation’s highest office. Many Americans had tired of calls for social justice, and this
sheer exhaustion led many to turn inward, contributing to what one writer called the
6 rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” seemed to lose its collec“me generation.” The civil
tive meaning in the 1970s.
5 Few knew who “we” were.
At the same time, while the economy had remained healthy during the 1960s, it
3 1970s, officially ending the long post–World War II boom. The
soured badly during the
economic decline lasted
5 the entire decade, casting a pall over the other events of the
era. While the causes of the downturn are complex, a significant part was played by
B manufacturing. Companies moved out of the Northeast and
the demise of American
Midwest, heading to U
the South or the West in order to find better weather, cheaper
labor, and fewer unions. This demographic and economic shift created “the Sunbelt,” a
region stretching from Florida to California. As more companies moved to the Sunbelt,
What do you think?
One of the first visible signs that the post-World War II prosperity was over were gas lines that appeared dur>
Cold War, Nixon became the first
president to visit China, meeting with
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in 1972.
With regard to Chinese-Soviet relations, Nixon confided to Zhou that
if Moscow marched either east or
west, he was ready to “turn like a
cobra on the Russians.”
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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Nixon also made overtures to the Soviet Union. Just
months after going to China, Nixon went to Moscow
to meet with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. In this
meeting he agreed to sell excess American wheat to
the Soviets. The fact that their country needed wheat
was an early sign that Soviet-style communism was
not performing well economically, even though the
Soviets attempted to hide this fact. Under the auspices of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT),
the two leaders also agreed to freeze the number of
long-range missile launchers and build certain new
missiles only after they had destroyed the same
number of older missiles. This did not signify an
end to the Cold War, but it did demonstrate that the
nations’ leaders were beginning to recognize the
problems inherent in an unchecked arms race.
Thus, within four years, Nixon, perceived as
C had
a hard-nosed anticommunist Republican,
removed the American presence in Vietnam,
Hceding
it to communists, and made overtures to both China
Rtoward
and the Soviet Union. This softened approach
America’s supposed enemies was executed
I largely
by Nixon’s assistant for national security affairs and,
S
later, his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. These
more relaxed relations are labeled détente (a
T French
term meaning “a relaxing” or “an easing”).
I
Latin America and Africa
A
As the Cold War cooled with China and the Soviet
N
Union, it heated up in Latin America and Africa.
,
Each time a nation in one of these regions elected
a
leftist—potentially communist—regime, the United
States actively supported coups and the installation
M interof new governments that would support U.S.
ests. These new right-wing regimes routinely
A punished political opponents. For instance, the United
States supported the ousting of Chile’s R
Salvador
Allende in 1973, opting instead to provide assistance
K
to the authoritarian regime
Read a State
of General Augusto Pinochet.
Department
In Africa, the United
6 States
briefing on the
tolerated the racist regime of
status of Chile, 1970.
5
South Africa and sided with
anticommunists in the Angolan civil war. 3
But, taking a lesson from Vietnam, Nixon was leery of using
5
American troops in these situations.
B
U
26-1b Nixon the Accidental Liberal
While Nixon’s foreign policies often represented significant breakthroughs, his domestic policies were
even more transformative, although not always
in the way Nixon’s supporters had hoped. Upon
entering office, Nixon claimed to be a typical small-
Strategic Arms
government Republican. In
Limitation Talks
reality, Nixon’s relentless
(SALT)
preoccupation with and fear
Sessions held between
of being defeated for reelecPresident Nixon and
Soviet premier Leonid
tion led him to advocate
Brezhnev, in which the
many goals of the left and of
two leaders agreed to
the Democratic Party. Cagily,
freeze the number of longrange missile launchers
however, while Nixon sought
and build certain new misto increase budgets for libsiles only after they had
eral causes, he made these
destroyed the same number of older missiles
increases contingent upon
greater local control. This
détente
French term meaning “a
put Democrats in a tough
relaxing” or “an easing”;
political position, because
refers to more relaxed
they could not reject funds
relations with America’s
supposed enemies, China
for causes they had long
and the Soviet Union
advocated, but they could
not control how those funds
were spent locally. In this way, Nixon became an
advocate of many liberal causes, but he did so while
weakening the supposed Eastern Establishment he
despised.
Increasing the Size of Government
For instance, Nixon signed into law the National
Environmental Policy Act (1970), which established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
He endorsed the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA), which sought to make workplaces safer. He doubled the budgets of the National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Nixon also
became the first president to embrace affirmative
action, as discussed later in the chapter.
But each of these progressive developments
came at a cost to the liberals who had long advocated them. For instance, Nixon’s increases to the
National Endowment for the Humanities were earmarked for popular artists in Middle America or for
local museums, instead of the large museums in
New York and Boston, which championed abstract
art that was appreciated mostly by the well educated
and affluent. Politically, Democrats could not reject
his proposal to increase funding for the arts. It was a
stroke of political genius: Nixon got credit for being
a proponent of the arts, at the same time draining
support from his nemesis, the eastern liberal elite.
26-2 Watergate
Before Nixon could do more, he became mired in
scandal. During his successful reelection bid in 1972,
five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic
Watergate
477
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I have never been a
“
quitter. To leave office before
public trust and a dangerNational Committee offices
ous attempt to use the power
at the Watergate Hotel in
of the federal government
Washington, D.C. One of the
to illegally stifle his political
burglars worked directly for
opposition. It was potentially
Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect
a threat to the very nature of
the President (CREEP), a fact
democracy.
that did not impede Nixon’s
The televised testimony
landslide victory in the eleccaptivated millions, and,
tion. But print journalists,
although the testimony never
spurred by the investigative
revealed whether or not
reporting of the Washington
Nixon himself had ordered
Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl
—Richard M. Nixon, resignation
the break-in, what did
Bernstein, continued to follow
speech, 1974
emerge were Nixon’s susthe story and discovered that
picious nature and other
orders for the break-in had
attempts to spy illegally on
been issued from high up in
Americans. Watergate became an investigation
the Nixon White House. The Senate convened hearabout much more than a simple break-in; it became
ings, which were televised nationally. It seemed toC
a portentous glimpse inside the mind of the presimany Americans that Nixon had possibly orderedH
dent. The Senate learned that the president had
a break-in of his opponent’s Washington offices.
traded favors, spoken offensively about many of
If proven, this would be a tremendous breach ofR
my term is completed is
abhorrent to every instinct in
my body. But as President,
I must put the interest of
America first.
”
I
S
A scandal surrounding a break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 presidential
>>
T
election led to numerous revelations of presidential abuse. Before Nixon was indicted in 1974, he resigned from office; a month later,
President Gerald Ford pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed
I in the matter. Many in the nation were stunned.
A
N
,
M
A
R
K
© Owen Franklin/Corbis
6
5
3
5
B
U
478
C h apte r 2 6
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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the nation’s minority groups, and, most damningly,
taped nearly every conversation that had happened
in the White House. When the Senate demanded
to see the tapes, Nixon fired the special prosecutor leading the Senate’s investigation, prompting a
series of sympathy resignations from members of
his own administration.
As the scandal mushroomed, Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, admitted to tax evasion and
bribery. He resigned and was replaced by Gerald
Ford. The credibility of the entire administration
was under attack. Americans watched the scandal with alarm. It seemed
to confirm many people’s
Hear Nixon’s
beliefs that American leadresignation
speech.
ers were untrustworthy.
After the Supreme Court
C over
View a collection ordered Nixon to turn
of Bob Woodthe White House tapes,
H it was
ward and Carl
evident he was going to be
Bernstein’s papers.
impeached. Nixon Rinstead
chose to resign from
I office,
Learn more
which he did after a draS
about
matic televised speech to the
Watergate.
nation on August 9, T
1974. His
new vice president, Gerald Ford, became president.
I
To understand the reasons why Watergate was so
A reapivotal to the 1970s political culture, see “The
sons why . . .” box.
{
N
,
26-3 The Troubled
Economy and Politics
Adrift
The backdrop for all this political commotion was an
economic recession that officially ended the great
post–World War II economic boom. The conditions
that had made the American economy the most
powerful in the world after World War II vanished
quickly in the 1970s. The two presidents that succeeded Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, had
little success in solving this large structural problem.
26-3a Economic Woes
In the late 1960s, Vietnam, the Great Society, and the
costs of the arms race had diverted a lot of money
from federal coffers, and Johnson had refused to
raise taxes to pay for these expensive ventures.
Furthermore, by the early 1970s, America’s industrial sector was weakening due to the rise of foreign
competition and decreasing demand for American
goods. The economy was cooling off after its long
period of post–World War II growth. With the United
States having to maintain its tremendous expenditures during a time of declining tax receipts, it
had to borrow tremendous amounts of money to
balance its budget. This led the value of the dollar
M
The reasons
why . . .
}
A
There were at least four reasons whyRthe Watergate scandal was so pivotal in American life:
K
The death of political idealism. The disclosures of Watergate
put had been advocating a smaller role for government. The disaffecthe nail in the coffin of the political idealism of the early 1960s. During
that earlier period, social movements like the civil rights movement
6 of law to
turned to the federal government and the American system
advocate change. After the frustrations of the civil rights movements
5
and a decade of lies about the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal
validated many Americans’ darkest suspicions that a politician’s
3 first
priority was not to serve the public, but simply to get reelected.
5
Americans turn inward. These suspicions led many Americans to
B to large
turn away from politics, often choosing to search for answers
social problems through the individual groups that gave them
U their
identity. This, in turn, helped lead to the rise of identity politics, an
effort to create social change not through politics but instead by changing American culture and society. America’s politics seemed corrupt.
The irony. One major irony of the Watergate scandal was that it
served Republican ends. Since at least the New Deal, Republicans
tion toward politics inspired by Nixon, a Republican, was a longterm boon to the Republican Party. After Watergate, many people
began to see government as part of the problem rather than part
of the solution, and thus they too began advocating for smaller
government.
New political scrutiny. Meanwhile, before Watergate, presidents
were usually given a wide berth by the media and forgiven their
personal flaws, which frequently went unreported. After Watergate,
every dimension of a politician’s life was deemed newsworthy.
President Ford, who became president after Nixon resigned, was a
talented athlete and former college football star at the University of
Michigan, but he was widely portrayed as a goof and a bumbling
klutz because every stumble he made was televised and reported
on. Where there once had been deference and respect, now there
was cynicism and ire.
The Troubled Economy and Politics Adrift
479
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stagflation
to decrease, meaning it took
more dollars to pay for the
same goods. This condition
is called inflation. Nixon did
not really know what to do
to control the problem. First,
he made it more difficult to borrow money, which,
he hoped, would lower the amount of investments
and keep dollars spare. However, all this did was
constrict the economy even more, leading to an economic recession.
In 1971, facing reelection, Nixon initiated the
first-ever peacetime wage and price freeze. He also
accepted large federal deficits. These initiatives
reversed the direction of the economy long enough
for him to win reelection in 1972, but his economic plan was erratic and short term, confidence
remained low, and the American industrial sectorC
was beginning to decline in the face of cheaperH
prices on imported foreign goods.
Economic cycle in which
prices keep going up
(inflation) while the
economy is losing jobs
(or stagnating)
R
I
The whole problem was compounded by matters in
S
the Middle East. The establishment of Israel in 1948
as a haven for the world’s Jews after the atrocities ofT
the Holocaust was perpetually contested by many of
I
the Islamic nations of the Middle East, whose religious differences with the Jews were compoundedA
by the imposition of a political state on land they
N
claimed as their own. Egypt, Syria, and other nations
of the Middle East fought numerous battles against,
Oil Embargo
Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, and Israel won each of
them with the help of the United States and several
countries of Europe. After yet another confrontation,M
the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the oil-rich nations ofA
the Middle East sought to punish the United States
for supporting Israel by placing an embargo on oilR
sold to the United States. The result was that oilK
prices in the United States quadrupled. Gas became
hard to find, and long lines of drivers were seen
waiting at filling stations. Other sources of energy6
were not immediately available. Beyond the daily
5
frustrations of expensive gas at the pump, the oil
embargo raised the cost of making goods and mov-3
ing them from one place to another. Prices of all con5
sumer goods went up. Thus, the American economy
entered a complicated cycle in which prices keptB
going up (inflation) but the economy began losingU
jobs (or stagnating). Economists called this unique
condition stagflation.
Stagflation is notoriously difficult to fight,
because most of the tools the government has to
control the economy—such as regulating the interest
it charges banks to borrow money from the Federal
480
C h apte r 2 6
Reserve banks—are primarily designed to either
slow growth and end inflation, or increase growth
and boost inflation. Tools to lower inflation while
growing the economy do not exist. The economy
would continue to perform badly throughout the
1970s, bringing to an abrupt halt the consistent economic growth the country had enjoyed since 1946.
The Decline of Cities
Another force compounded these economic pressures. Since the Second World War, Americans had
been leaving cities at alarming rates, heading to
the suburbs, where good schools, bigger homes,
and larger spaces beckoned. Stagflation slowed the
American economy down, especially the manufacturing sector that was overwhelmingly based
in large Northeastern and Midwestern cities like
Chicago and Philadelphia. As these sectors declined
in productivity, many Americans lost their jobs and
left the industrial cities of the North in search of
work in the South or Southwest. As businesses left,
the tax base left with them, making the 1970s the
roughest time in the history of most American cities. During the 1970s, more than 1 million residents
left New York City and the city tottered on the brink
of bankruptcy; it took the city nearly two decades to
make up that population loss.
26-3b President Ford
After Watergate and the Vietnam War had discredited the role that government might play in solving
deep social problems, the two presidents who followed Nixon appeared to be rudderless and without
confidence that the American people would listen
to, much less enact, their attempts to solve the
country’s problems. For his part, President Ford was
the first president never subjected to a national
election, having assumed the vice presidency when
Spiro Agnew resigned, and risen to the presidency
after Nixon’s decline. A good-natured, well-liked
man who self-effacingly admitted he was “a Ford,
not a Lincoln,” Gerald Ford weathered the wrath of
the American public in the aftermath of Watergate.
And one of his first acts as president did not generate widespread goodwill: Ford offered Nixon a full
presidential pardon. This action ended the possibility of criminal proceedings and, perhaps, of finding
out whether or not Nixon had ordered the Watergate
break-in. But the pardon did allow the nation to
move beyond political scandal in order to focus on
the dire problems of the economy and the Cold War.
Unfortunately, Ford was unable to take complete
control of either.
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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Domestic Policy
Ford’s chief domestic problem was stagflation, but,
like Nixon, Ford had little luck tackling it. At first, he
encouraged Americans to
Read a Saturday save rather than spend their
Night Live
money. Then he offered a
transcript of
Chevy Chase’s impression large tax cut. Neither measure worked to improve the
of Gerald Ford
sagging economy. With little
national support, Ford regularly vetoed congressional bills, only to have his vetoes overridden.
Ford had better luck overseas. He laid the basis of
another arms agreement with the Soviets, which was
finalized as SALT II a few years later, under President
Carter. Ford’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger
C
negotiated between Israel and Egypt, leading to a
short-term break in hostilities in the MiddleH
East.
R
I
In 1976, Ford stood little chance of reelection. Affable
Sfaced a
and open as he was, even within his party he
strong challenge from California’s former governor,
T
Ronald Reagan, a symbol of the new Sunbelt conservatism that would dominate the 1980s and I1990s.
A
The Election of 1976
N won.
The Democrats, for their part, took a chance and
They nominated a little-known, one-term, Georgia
26-3c President Carter
1976
WA
8*
OR
6
MT
4
ID
4
NV
3
CA
45
ND
3
WY
3
UT
4
AZ
6
WI
11
IA
8
NE
5
CO
7
energy.
MN
10
SD
4
KS
7
IL
26
IN
13
AR
6
OH
25
KY
9
TN
10
M
A
R
K
ME
4
VT
3 NH MA
NY
4 14
41
RI
PA
NJ CT 4
27
17 8
MI
21
MO
12
OK
8
WV
6
VA
12
NC
13
Candidate (Party)
Electoral Vote
Carter (Democrat)
297
55.2%
Ford (Republican)
240*
44.6%
39,147,793
LA
10
TX
26
MS
7
AL
9
GA
12
DE
3
MD
10
SC
8
6
5
3
5
B
Popular Vote
40,830,763
U
NM
4
DC
3
FL
17
AK
3
HI
4
50.1%
48.0%
Election of 1976
SINGLE COLUMN MAP
Cengage Learning
Election
1976Learning 2014
. Cengage
Ms00495
20p6 x 19p0
Final: 4/07/08
Rev. 11/12/09—cm: reduce width to 20p6;
standard vote tally layout
No bleeds
governor named Jimmy Carter. Carter struck a note
with the electorate because he appeared to be honest, was a “born again” Christian, was progressive on
issues of poverty and treatment of minorities, and
was a southerner capable of talking to the demographically growing southern half of the nation (Map
26.1). Carter won the election, in which he competed
against the ghost of Nixon as much as against Ford.
Domestic Policy
*One Ford elector in Washington voted for Republican Ronald Reagan of California.
Map 26.1.
President Jimmy Carter, wearing the kind of sweater he
>>
urged all Americans to wear in order to reduce their consumption of
Dirck Halstead/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Foreign Policy
Domestically, Carter faced the same economic conditions that Nixon and Ford had: stagflation. Carter
could not manage it either, and when he proposed
to increase government spending to create jobs (à
la the New Deal), inflation skyrocketed. He then
made the ultimate political blunder when he asked
the nation to sacrifice on behalf of the “common
purpose” and offered a list of small and specific proposals as to how that might be done. These modest
proposals did not capture the public’s imagination,
The Troubled Economy and Politics Adrift
481
Rev. 11/14/09—cm: eliminate OR state boundaries
@ shoreline
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Three Mile Island
and his political inexperience in Washington, D.C.,
contributed to his making
several gaffes, which repeatedly made him look weak
Camp David Accord
and ineffectual.
1978 peace agreement between Israel
Carter was further burand Egypt, brokered by
dened
by the nationwide
President Carter
energy crisis, which had
surged after the Yom Kippur
War of 1973 and had not subsided since. By 1977,
elementary and high schools were forced to close
because there was not enough energy to heat
them. Carter’s ambitious plan to remedy the crisis combined higher taxes and a vigorous search
for alternative fuels. This plan was met with general disapproval by Congress and did not pass.
Making matters worse, the meltdown of a nuclearC
reactor at Three Mile Island,H
Watch Carter’s Pennsylvania, in 1979 dis“crisis of conficredited nuclear power, aR
dence” speech.
potentially viable alternativeI
to oil. With an economy this troubled, Carter could
S
not advocate any of the plans he had for expanding
American social justice.
T
Nuclear reactor in
Pennsylvania that suffered a meltdown in
1979
I
Carter made more progress abroad. His longest-last-A
ing achievement in foreign policy was in establishing
N
human rights as an element of American policy. Doing
so energized him to (1) call for the end of apartheid in,
Foreign Policy
South Africa, (2) give up control of the Panama Canal,
and (3) cite human rights considerations as a factor
in the granting of American aid. In the Middle East,M
Carter oversaw a peace agreement between Israel andA
Egypt, called the Camp David Accord, in late 1978.
But this accomplishment was overshadowedR
just six months later when Islamic militants tookK
fifty-two hostages from the American Embassy in
Tehran, the capital of Iran. The militants were part
of a coup in which fundamentalist Islamists seized6
power from the American-supported dictatorship,
5
in place since 1953. The terrorists held the American
hostages for more than a year. Each day that went3
by, Carter seemed more and more unable to handle
5
the problem. But the inability to bring together the
B
nation was not Carter’s doing alone.
U
26-4 The Rise of
Identity Politics
One historian has described the social movements
of the 1960s as a “coming together” of sorts, when
482
C h apte r 2 6
large gestures—the civil rights movement, the War
on Poverty—were intended to create a more unified
and inclusive nation. The 1970s, however, served as a
spin cycle, scattering the social energy of the sixties
in a thousand different directions. Without a magnetic social vision to unify the populace, the 1970s
came to be characterized as a time of turning inward
or, to use a term from the era, a celebration of the
culture of narcissism. People’s interest in pet causes
flourished, as did a variety of new faiths, most of
which prioritized personal renewal or an individual
relationship with God. Many of these themes were
manifested in the southern tilt of American culture
that began in the 1970s, and many of these melded
seamlessly into the political New Right, which prioritized, above all, individual rights.
26-4a Identifying with a Group
One of the most contentious and transformative
sociopolitical events of the decade was the codification and resurgence of identity politics. In other
words, people increasingly practiced politics and
voted based on their identification with a particular group rather than with the nation as a whole.
Identity politics had been made both politically
potent and divisive by African Americans, Mexican
Americans, Native Americans, and others following
the civil rights movement, especially in the militancy that emerged in the late 1960s.
African American Activism
America’s black population was the first to embrace
this brand of politics, which intended to change the
culture as well as public policy. Despite the federal
laws passed in the 1960s, racism against America’s
black people persisted. For the most part, racism
was no longer legally codified or socially acceptable at the broad institutional level, but it remained
entrenched in the personal-level institutions of
society and culture. Thus, many African American
activists broadened their focus from just politics
to politics and culture, hoping to change the way
Americans thought about their nation. Cultural
acceptance was different from political acceptance.
Political acceptance concerned the enforcement of
color-blind laws, while social acceptance depended
on an awareness of differences and a conscious
decision to ignore them.
In response to this heightened awareness, “Black
is beautiful” became a widespread call in the black
community. Africa became a destination for many
Americans seeking to understand their cultural
past, a sentiment epitomized in and popularized by
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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Alex Haley’s 1976 bestseller, Roots. Attending historically black colleges acquired cultural cachet. Black
Studies writers and professors established this field
as an accepted academic discipline within America’s
colleges. The cultural politics of the Black Freedom
Movement surpassed attempts to create protective
legal structures to ensure equal access. Social and
economic acceptance required different methods.
Affirmative Action and Busing
Amid this transition toward greater interest in
changing American culture, federal and state governments attempted to rectify the continuing effects
of racism. Because many white Americans were
afraid of dropping property values if their neighborhoods became racially integrated, and because
of deeply entrenched fears of interracial mingling,
schools generally remained segregated. ToCremedy
this persistent problem, cities such as Boston
H and
Los Angeles began busing students from one school
district to another in order to desegregateR
schools.
I
S
T
I
A
N
,
The Advertising Archives
M
A
R
K
6
5
3
5
B
U
See a slide show
about the awardwinning photo
from the Boston busing
crisis.
affirmative action
Program meant to ensure
that a certain percentage
of a company’s employees are minorities or that
a certain percentage of
government contracts are
given to minority-owned
businesses
This action provoked much
ire from parents, black and
white, who had their children bused far from home. Riots erupted in Boston,
and the level of suspicion increased between the
groups on either side of the color line.
Meanwhile, the federal government developed
programs of affirmative action, in which employers
were supposed to ensure that a certain percentage of employees were minorities, or that a certain
percentage of government contracts were given to
minority-owned businesses. In another example of
Nixon’s ruthless politics, affirmative action’s federal
origins can be traced to his proclaimed free-market
administration. He did this to cause political rifts
between white and black laborers, which
would, and did, break up a Democratic
political coalition that was first formed by
President Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Affirmative action also became policy in many of the nation’s universities.
In 1978, the Supreme Court upheld the
legality of some elements of affirmative
action, but disallowed the use of exact
quotas, in a case that emerged when
a white student
Read the Bakke
claimed he was
decision.
denied entrance
to medical school
because of the color of his skin. The case,
Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke, not only codified affirmative action
in American education but also dramatically displayed the overwhelming backlash against affirmative action brought
forward by many white Americans. Some
members of this furious group were children of turn-of-the-century immigrants
who, ignoring the centuries of racism and
favoritism inherent in America’s institutions, claimed to have never wronged
America’s racial minority groups during
the time of slavery and conquest. They
Ebony, a monthly magazine targeting African
>>
American readers since 1945, used this 1971 cover to
demonstrate the long road African Americans had traveled since slavery, now celebrating natural hairstyles like
the Afro and the Black Power symbol of the raised fist.
The Rise of Identity Politics
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The Chicano Movement
After the variety of successes won by labor leaders César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the lateM
1960s, in 1970 a more radical aspect of the ChicanoA
movement emerged and was embodied by the
organization La Raza. This term literally means “theR
Race,” although colloquially it is synonymous withK
“the People.” La Raza explicitly focused on electing Mexican American politicians to office in the
West and Southwest. Demonstrating their frustra-6
tion with the persistent racism that they had con5
fronted throughout their history, members of La
Raza rejected the name “Mexican American” in favor3
of the more particular “Chicano,” a term derived
5
from barrio slang.
Red Power
B
U
Heartened by African American and Chicano efforts
toward social, cultural, and economic equality, many
American Indians sought political redress as well.
Many Indians lived at the poverty level, and most
Indian reservations had no industry of any kind.
The crushing poverty inspired protests. Holding
484
C h apte r 2 6
Ralph Crane/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
C
H
R
I
S
In 1969, a group of activists called “Indians of All Tribes”
>>
occupied Alcatraz Island in California, demanding the land be returned toT
the tribes that had once occupied it. The occupation lasted 19 months.
I
claimed that they were not responsible for payingA
the debt for America’s offenses during the preN
colonial and colonial eras.
,
several sit-ins of their own,
in 1969 a group of activists
called “Indians of All Tribes”
occupied Alcatraz Island in
San Francisco Bay. Demanding
the land be returned to the
tribes that had once occupied
it, they intended to make an
Indian cultural center out of
the former prison. The occupation lasted nineteen months;
the protesters were finally
removed by the federal government, but only after sparking
numerous copycat occupations and bringing the plight of
American Indians to the attention of the nation.
The protest recalled the
pan-Indian resistance of the
early 1800s, although in 1970s
language. Indeed, the activists
boldly declared “Red Power!”
echoing Stokely Carmichael’s
Black Power campaign of the late 1960s. In 1968,
a group of Native Americans coordinated the
American Indian Movement and began a series of
audacious political protests, including occupying
the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs building, Mount
Rushmore, and Wounded Knee, South Dakota. As
with the occupation of Alcatraz, these protests
provoked headlines and benefited several moderate groups helping to craft laws in Washington, D.C.
They wrote a dozen new laws and steered more than
$100 million to educational and health programs
on Indian reservations. Furthermore, the number
of Americans who identified as Indians more than
doubled between 1970 and 1990.
26-4b The Women’s Movement
The politics of identity moved beyond racial groups
too. Throughout the 1970s, American women continued to press for increased political and economic
rights.
ERA and Equal Rights
Throughout the 1970s, women fought against sexual harassment in the workplace and for greater
awareness of women’s health issues. They also
secured congressional approval of the Equal Rights
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would
have made it illegal to discriminate based on sex.
Furthermore, in 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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Higher Education Act, which obligated universities
to spend the same amount of money on women’s
athletics that they spent on men’s athletics.
Roe v. Wade
The most controversial milestone of the women’s
movement was a landmark legal case. In 1973, the
Supreme Court handed down a decision in Roe v.
Wade that struck down laws in forty-six states that
limited a woman’s access to a safe, legal abortion.
The decision, which referenced a woman’s right to
privacy, extending that right
Read the text of to her reproductive system,
Roe v. Wade.
stunned the opposition, who
generally felt abortion was
morally equivalent to murder. The debate about
abortion has increased the polarization between the
C
left and the right ever since.
H
R the
In a change perhaps more profound than
debates about laws that delineated women’sI place in
American society, in the 1970s women began to play
S
a more active role in the economy and in forming
T
I
A
N
,
Social and Economic Participation
M
A
R
K
Roe v. Wade
the parameters of American
Supreme Court decision
social life. Like other minorof 1973 that struck down
ity groups, they fomented
laws in forty-six states that
limited a woman’s access
a social movement that
to a safe, legal abortion
existed outside of normal
Stonewall Inn
politics. For instance, conSite in New York City of
sistently struggling against
the riots that ignited the
a “glass ceiling” that limited
Gay Liberation movement
their ability to rise beyond a
in the late 1960s and
1970s; at the time of the
certain corporate level, in the
riots, all fifty states had
1970s women fought for and
antisodomy laws, and
sometimes won the right
police busts of gay bars
were routine
to earn pay equal to that
of men. Some companies
opened day-care centers and job-training programs
specifically for working mothers. Beyond economics, the 1970s saw a rise in the use of gender-neutral
terms (for instance, using the terms firefighter and
flight attendant in place of fireman and stewardess).
The Sexual Revolution
Some women also embraced their own sexuality in
what was called the sexual revolution. There was
a new cultural atmosphere in which women more
openly discussed their sexual needs and desires,
while sometimes flouting conventional arrangements, such as maintaining a single partner in a traditionally identifiable relationship. Divorce became
more common. Breaking such long-standing taboos
began a fundamental transformation in American
gender relations. The image of the ideal man transitioned from the masculine if inarticulate swashbuckler of the 1940s to the man who was more
“in touch with his feelings.” Women forthrightly
demanded equality in their private as well as their
public lives, although in the 1970s, women were not
always in agreement as to what exactly that meant.
Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives
26-4c The Gay Liberation Movement
6
5
3
5
B
U
The image of the ideal man transitioned from the mascu>>
line if inarticulate swashbuckler of the 1940s to the man who was
more “in touch with his feelings.”
Also in the 1970s, gay men and lesbians began to
demand equality as people living outside what had
been perceived as the heterosexual norm. As barriers against racial and religious minorities collapsed,
as women advocated and sometimes won equality, gay men and women still faced considerable
legal discrimination. For example, consensual sex
between two people of the same sex was illegal in
nearly every state. In 1969, a police raid on the bar
at the Stonewall Inn in New York City sparked the
Gay Liberation Movement. Gay men fought back
against the police raid, proclaiming “Gay Power.”
The riot propelled many gay men and lesbians into
politics and political activism, advocating for legal
The Rise of Identity Politics
485
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In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay politi>>
cian elected to public office in the United States. His sign, “I’m from
C
H
R
I
equality such as marriage rights. In 1977, Harvey
S
Milk, on being elected to the Board of Supervisors in
San Francisco, became the first openly gay person toT
win a major political campaign. He was assassinated
I
shortly thereafter and continues to be an iconic
A
martyr of the gay rights movement.
N
26-4d High Tide of Environmentalism,
Woodmere, NY,” suggests that anyone from anywhere can be gay,
challenging the notion that only freaks from radical locales are homosexuals.
Demanding respect for the environment was another
facet of 1970s social activism. Launched in 1962 by
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, the environmen-M
tal movement grew through the 1960s. In 1970, theA
United States celebrated the first “Earth Day,” which
stimulated greater awareness of humans’ treatmentR
of the land, sea, and air. Vital to 1970s environ-K
mentalism was advocacy of preserving unspoiled
lands and promoting ecologically sound practices in
industry, manufacturing, and automobile use.
6
Beyond creating valuable awareness, the politi5
cal record of the environmental movement is mixed.
Environmentalists cheered when Richard Nixon3
established the Environmental Protection Agency in
5
1970 and when Congress passed eighteen environmental laws throughout the decade. They rued theB
construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1973,U
however. Other defeats loomed as well. Most damning was the sense that, in an era when Americans
were searching for belonging, the cause of environmentalism asserted a species-wide identity, something too diffuse and broad to command much
allegiance.
486
C h apte r 2 6
American popular culture also reflected the broader,
inward-focused trend of the 1970s, often in increasingly flashy ways that demonstrated a more complicated morality, where one might feel like cheering
for the traditional bad guy. The music of the 1960s
icons Sly and the Family Stone, for example, transitioned from celebrating American unity and possibility in the 1960s to being more introspective and
aware of the limits of broad social change in the
1970s. In one poignant instance, Sly changed the
lyrics of one of his most popular 1960s songs from
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” to, in 1971,
“Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa.” In addition to
demonstrating the decline of hope for broad social
change, the changed lyrics also capture the rise of
identity politics, with Sly looking for his roots in
Africa rather than the United States.
In the later 1970s, disco music throbbed in
America’s cities. The 1979 film Saturday Night Fever
Topham/The Image Works
Terry Schmitt/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis
26-4e Popular Culture
John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (1979) does most of
>>
his dancing by himself.
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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enshrined disco music as a typical “seventies” cultural form, but the film also displayed as its depressing backdrop the decline and plight of American
cities of the Northeast. Recently, historians have
begun to debate the meaning of disco. Some see it
as a reflection of the narcissistic and individualized
culture of the 1970s, as people danced largely by
themselves and for their own glorification. Others,
meanwhile, see disco as a last gasp of the “coming
together” attitude of the 1960s, as African American
music propelled a Latino dance culture that was
open to homosexuals and white ethnics, all in an
arena of respect and fulfillment. If the meaning
of disco remains open to interpretation, similarly
conflicted emotions were reflected in the landmark
films of the era, such as The Godfather, The Godfather,
Part II, and Bonnie and Clyde, in which viewers were
C of viocompelled to root for the success and freedom
lent criminals who defy traditional American
Hmorals.
Thus the moral complexity of the period, with its
R backdramatically changing social and economic
ground, inspired many vibrant contributions
I to the
popular culture that also reflected the era’s malaise.
S
T
26-5 The Rise of
I
the New Right
A
All these calls for change led to a combative conservative reaction. This movement, collectivelyNdubbed
the “New Right” by the press, utilized the
, elite
intellectual conservatism symbolized by William
F. Buckley’s National Review magazine, which was
founded in the 1950s, and took conservatism
M to the
grassroots. The New Right was largely composed of
A
two groups, social conservatives and economic conservatives. Social conservatives opposed R
abortion
and what they saw as the moral decline of society,
K
while economic conservatives urged tax cuts to
limit the size and reach of government. Both types
of conservatives continued to urge an aggressive
6
stance against the Soviet Union. Both also strove to
5 lives.
diminish government intervention in people’s
The expansion of the federal state during the
3 Great
Society of the 1960s and what conservatives saw as
the loosening of laws regarding morality5spurred
this new coalition to work together, and B
it would
continue to do so for the remainder of the century.
U
26-5a Economic and Political
Conservatism
A key dimension of 1970s conservatism arose in
opposition to what were viewed as excessive tax
Moral Majority
policies in an era of inflation.
Conservative political
If government was deemed
organization begun by
corrupt, went the refrain,
Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1979
and consisting of evangeliwhy should a significant percal Christians who overcentage of our income go to
whelmingly supported the
taxes? This sentiment was
Republican Party
most evident in California,
where skyrocketing house
prices meant dramatic increases in property taxes.
When homeowners could not pay these higher property taxes, they revolted and passed Proposition 13,
which limited all further increases on property taxes
to 2 percent a year. Within months, nearly threequarters of other states passed similar laws. The
Republican Party capitalized on this populist anger,
positioning itself as the antigovernment party.
The state of California had a large economic
surplus, so the decline in property taxes there did
not limit services. In many other places, however,
states could not afford to pay for public schools, road
maintenance, or effective fire and police departments. In a familiar theme of the 1970s and 1980s,
Americans would have to turn inward—to their
communities—to solve these institutional problems.
Those cities and towns that could afford a good level
of local control thrived; those that could not faced
dire straits.
26-5b The Religious Right
Some of the shock troops of the New Right were
evangelical Christians, a growing force in the 1970s.
These Protestant evangelicals poured their efforts
into three things: (1) forming an intense personal
relationship with Jesus; (2) gathering converts, usually former mainline or liberal Protestants; and
(3) advancing a political agenda that stressed traditional “family values” that countered the women’s
rights movement and the Gay Liberation movement.
This new crop of evangelicals especially targeted
feminism and was visibly enraged by the Supreme
Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which has since served
as a rallying cry for the entrance of the fundamentalist movement into American politics.
In 1979, conservative Christians led by Rev.
Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority political
lobbying group, which, alongside tax-revolting economic conservatives, formed the other arm of the
Republican Party. Evangelicals became increasingly
visible in popular music and fiction. Diminished
were the paramount religious divisions between
mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, which had
defined American religious life in the 1950s; surging were new divisions between conservatives and
The Rise of the New Right
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liberals of all faiths, but especially Protestants. Not
only did the appearance of a more public aspect of
faith reflect the “southernization” of American culture, but it also demonstrated the inward turn that
took place in the 1970s, as religion became a realm
of division and exclusion rather than one of inclusion and community building.
“Family Values”
Predictably, the women’s movement served as
a touchstone for strong opposition. While many
women sought to take advantage of the new opportunities open to them, a substantial percentage
wanted to preserve the traditional roles of American
womanhood. If securing the right to low-wage work
was what the women’s movement was about, some
of these women thought the cost of equality too
high. Others cited biblical passages about a woman’sC
obligation to submit to her husband. Still others sawH
the women’s movement and the sexual revolution as
putting traditional families in jeopardy, by encourag-R
ing women to focus on themselves rather than theirI
children. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist,
S
headed the opposition by founding STOP-ERA to
block the Equal Rights Amendment, claiming thatT
the women in NOW were using politics to remedy
I
their personal problems. She also asserted that the
women in the women’s movement were all lesbi-A
ans, a mischaracterization intended to capitalize on
N
America’s homophobia. But Schlafly’s tactics were
effective. When she began STOP-ERA in 1972, thirty,
of the necessary thirty-eight states had approved
the amendment. After she began her organization,
the amendment languished, finally expiring withoutM
passage in 1982.
A
Looking Ahead . . .
R
K
At the end of the 1970s, the dominant news story
seemed to come from nowhere, even if it was a
6
perfect symbol of the weaknesses felt by much
of the American population. During the final year5
of Carter’s presidency, Islamic militants took con-
trol of the American Embassy in Tehran, taking 52
hostages and starting what came to be called the
Iranian hostage crisis. The crisis, which lasted 444
days and sparked numerous poorly executed rescue
missions, would help propel into office a president
who projected a more positive image of the United
States and who promised to return America to a perceived greatness of old. But rather than serving as a
definitive transition, the election of Ronald Reagan
solidified many of the changes that had taken place
during the 1970s.
Perhaps most importantly, Reagan symbolized the political conservatism that had gathered
strength in the 1970s, and also its libertarian ethos.
While projecting the Sunbelt image of a tough individual leader, he argued that government was more
of a problem than a solution to society’s problems.
He paid homage (if usually only that) to minorities
whose concerns had come to the forefront of 1970s
identity politics, by, for instance, appointing Sandra
Day O’Connor as the first female associate justice
to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, despite Reagan’s
rhetoric of a new America, the legacy of the 1970s
influenced developments for the remainder of the
twentieth century. And it is to those decades that
we turn next.
What else was happening . . .
1970
The Beatles split up.
1971
London Bridge is purchased by an American and
shipped to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, to be displayed as a tourist attraction.
1974
Art Fry invents Post-it-® Notes by using a colleague’s “failed” adhesive while working at 3M.
1975
Popular Electronics announces Altair, the first “personal computer.”
Visit the CourseMate website
at www.cengagebrain.com for
additional study tools and review
materials for this chapter.
3
5
B
U
488
C h apte r 2 6
The Age of Fracture: The 1970s
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CHAPTER 27
Reagan’s America
C
H
R
I
S
T
I
A
N
,
Learning Outcomes
M
A
R
K
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
27-1
27-2
6
Evaluate the domestic policies of Ronald Reagan5as president,
including the economic challenges the country faced in the
3
1980s.
5
Describe the divisions and “culture wars” that plagued
the
B
nation during the 1980s.
U
27-3 Discuss the problems Reagan’s successor faced in paying for
the “Reagan Revolution.”
27-4 Describe the conditions for, and aftermath of, the end of the
Cold War.
490
C h apte r 21
The Continued Move West
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“
Reagan defined the confident
America of the 1980s—a stark
contrast to the uneasy malaise of
1970s America.
”
The growing conservative
movement, with its anti–New
Deal and -Great Society fiscal policies and its desire to
restore what it defined as traWith the end of the Cold War, the world became a more
ditional family values, was
open, accessible place.
given an optimistic face by
Strongly Disagree
Strongly Agree
C
the actor-turned-politician
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Ronald Reagan. Born H
in 1911,
Reagan had been a New
R Deal
Democrat and supporter of FDR, but his staunch anticommunism and his sense that the
I too large pushed him in a conservative direction beginning in
government was growing
the 1950s and 1960s. A
Sformer actor, Reagan never claimed to be a deep thinker, but he
was an astute judge of the public mood and an incredibly personable man, with endless
T
anecdotes and a mannerism
that made even his political enemies often smile. Thus,
Reagan combined hisI conservative beliefs with the ability to bring those ideas to the
public in a nonthreatening way. This allowed him to take advantage of his broad appeal
A
to put conservative theories
into practice. By advocating tax and budget cuts, he wooed
economic conservatives,
N while his Supreme Court appointees usually made decisions
that favored social conservatives. In foreign policy, he adopted strong anticommunist
,
rhetoric and dramatically increased the military budget, even as changes in the Soviet
Union diminished the communist threat. He also sought to reinstitute school prayer in
public schools and to ban abortions, smilingly harkening America back to what he saw as
M
its more innocent days. More than anybody else, Reagan defined the confident America
A
of the 1980s.
This was a stark contrast to the uneasy malaise of 1970s America and to Carter’s
R
moralistic quests for American austerity. As opposed to Carter requesting Americans to
Kand live within their means, Reagan promised it was “morning
remember to be thrifty
in America” again, and the way to maintain American greatness was to boost the institutions of capitalism and invest heavily in the nation’s defense. In some ways, Reagan
symbolized the end of6the communal spirit of the 1960s by emphasizing the power and
talent of American individuals.
5
But Reagan’s policies came with a cost: his insistence on defending traditional “fam3 to ignore the growing AIDS crisis that emerged in the 1980s, seeily values” allowed him
ing it as disease that 5
affected only the gay community. Equally damningly, he ignored
growing disparities in wealth throughout the decade, as the rich got richer and the poor
B eye to these kinds of problems led to a growing and contengot poorer. Turning a blind
tious divide between U
America’s social conservatives and its social liberals. During the
1980s, the Democrats aligned more with social liberalism, while the Republicans established themselves as advocates for social conservatism, and the debates between the two
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
What do you think?
Reagan depicted in his favorite snack food, jellybeans. Throughout the 1980s, Reagan came to symbolize a
>
presidency with smiling ease, leading some to
see confidence and others to see aloofness.
492
C h apte r 27
Reagan’s America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
the administration proposed a massive increase
in military spending, equaling $1.2 trillion over
a five-year period. Despite using the rhetoric of
shrinking the size of the government, Reagan’s
investment in defense actually caused a tremendous growth in government spending. This, combined with a cut in taxes, led to a
dramatic rise in the nation’s already
growing debt.
Economically, the Reagan Rev
olution failed at first, then succeeded,
then failed again. In 1982, Reagan’s cuts
initially produced an economic recession; the supposed trickle-down
of wealth did not trickle down
and the cuts to welfare programs
limited the amount of consumer
C
dollars entering the market. By
1984, however, some of the policies,
H
especially the large defense expenR
ditures, sparked an economic recovery,
allowing Reagan to coast to an easy
I
reelection in 1984 against Democrats
S
Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine
Ferraro, the first woman to run on a major
T party’s
ticket (and another symbol of the success of the womI
en’s movement). By the late 1980s, however, Reagan’s
Abudget
policies had produced the largest peacetime
deficit in American history, which even conservaN
tives agreed was bad for the economy. The annual
, and
deficits had created a ballooning national debt,
it appeared increasingly unlikely that supply-side
economics would be successful for the economy as
M
a whole.
A
R
Reagan also advocated limiting government involveK
27-1b Deregulation
ment in business. Following this policy, he deregulated several industries from government control,
including airlines (which led to strikes by air-traffic
6
controllers) and savings and loan institutions (which
5 in this
led to a mammoth scandal, discussed later
chapter). He also loosened regulations on air
3 pollution and motor vehicles, actions that allowed corpo5 air
rations to continue polluting and delay installing
bags in cars for several years. He was worried
B that
such regulation would slow economic development.
U
27-1c Judicial and Administrative
Appointments
While Reagan’s fiscal policies reflected free-market
conservatism, his judicial and administrative
>>
The supposed trickle-down of
wealth did not trickle down. iStockphoto.com/
Andrew Dernie
appointments appealed to social conservatives. He encouraged conservative
positions on issues like abortion, school
busing, affirmative action, and prayer
in schools. Reagan appointed three
conservatives to the Supreme Court,
Sandra Day O’Connor (1981), Antonin
Scalia (1986), and Anthony Kennedy
(1988); he also named William Rehnquist
(a Nixon appointee) as chief justice. These
appointments did not
Read or listen to
ensure a conservative
a collection of
victory in every case, as
interviews with
some justices supported
Reagan’s closest advisors.
more liberal positions than
others (especially, it turned out, O’Connor), but
they were valuable bricks in the conservative
fortress.
27-2 America in the 1980s:
Polarization of the
American Public
The American public has always been divided by
wealth, politics, and religion. But in the 1980s these
divisions figured more prominently in American
society and in American politics. There were logical
reasons for this. Throughout the decade the wealthier amassed increased wealth, and the poor slipped
further into trouble. Also during the decade, and
perhaps more importantly, the New Right emerged
as an organized right-wing lobbying group. Their
stress on “family values,” moral issues, and popular culture challenged those who had supported
the new direction of social justice advocated in
the 1960s and 1970s. Many cite the rise of the New
Right as a reaction to the social liberalization and
the identity politics of the previous decades, and
it seems clear that the rise of conservative ideology in politics (as symbolized by Ronald Reagan)
led to a similar transformation in broader society
and culture. Throughout the 1980s, conservatives
mounted protests against the liberalization of family life, gender roles, and sexuality. They protested
the transformation of the literary canon of accepted
authors, which had dropped several famous “dead
white men” from the roster of significant Western
literature in favor of a more inclusive collection,
America in the 1980s: Polarization of the American Public
493
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
Inequality in trade
whereby one country’s
exports to another outweigh the second country’s exports to the first
country
including women and racial
minorities. Most sought
to make these social and
cultural arguments while
defending Reagan’s vision of
free-market capitalism.
27-2a Divisions in Wealth
Reagan’s tax cuts and his cuts to social welfare
programs affected different groups of Americans
differently. The policies clearly favored the wealthy.
Their taxes dropped, and they benefited the most
from Reagan’s business-friendly policies, including deregulation of big industries. The number of
American billionaires grew from just one in 1978 to
forty-nine in 1987. The number of Americans earning more than $500,000 increased by a factor of ten.C
On the other side of the scale, the poor wereH
becoming poorer. The percentage of Americans living
below the poverty line increased dramatically duringR
Reagan’s first term. More transformative, however,I
were the effects on the middle class, which during
S
the 1980s began to capture an increasingly smaller
percentage of the nation’s wealth. During Reagan’sT
years in office, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans
I
earned more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth,
a threefold increase over the previous two decades.A
The bottom 90 percent of earners, meanwhile, earned
N
slightly more than 20 percent of the nation’s wealth
in the 1980s, nearly a threefold decrease from the,
1960s. Reagan’s social welfare cuts and the decline of
middle-class industrial jobs had taken their toll.
It became increasingly apparent that thisM
inequality was afflicting various racial groups dif-A
ferently. While the black middle class was in fact
growing, and while the majority of impoverishedR
Americans were white, the proportion of poor peo-K
ple as a percentage of their race indicated that people
of color were vastly overrepresented below the
poverty line. The African Americans, Puerto Ricans,6
and Latinos who had moved to the northern cities
5
after World War II had been
hurt by the departure of large3
Read an
article discuss- manufacturers. These manu5
ing income
facturers had moved either
disparities.
to the South or the West,B
where labor unions were less powerful or, increas-U
ingly during the 1980s, abroad, where businesses
could find cheap labor and pay fewer taxes. While
1950s America was characterized by a robust and
growing population of middle-class Americans, the
1980s highlighted a reemergence of economic disparities that had been absent since the 1920s.
494
C h apte r 27
Decline of the Middle Class
Share of income captured
70%
Top 1%
Bottom 90%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
1923
–1929
1960
–1969
1976
–1979
1982
–1989
1992
–2000
2002
–2007
Source: CBPP calculations based on data from Piketty and Saez
Deregulation, new tax policies, and deindustrialization have
>>
all contributed to the decline of the middle class since the 1960s.
The Rise of Japan and the
American Trade Deficit
These economic problems were compounded by the
rise of Japan as an economic power. Partly as a result
of a deliberate American policy to build up a major
East Asian ally after China became a communist
country in 1949, Japan became the world’s first fully
modernized non-Western country during the second half of the twentieth century. Japan’s economic
“arrival” became plainly evident during a time when
the American economy was showing signs of weakness following the end of the postwar boom. The
United States developed a growing trade deficit
with Japan, which meant that Japan was now successfully exporting products such as cars, steel, and
The economic rise of Japan in the 1980s led many Americans
>>
to wonder if their nation’s days as a superpower were numbered.
Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection
trade deficit
Hollywood picked up this theme in the 1986 film Gung Ho, which portrayed the Japanese takeover of a failed American auto plant.
Reagan’s America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
consumer electronics to the United States, while the
Japanese were buying fewer and fewer American
goods. As a result, American congressmen began to
press for an increase in import tariffs on Japanese
goods, but these efforts hardly stemmed the flood.
Just as the economic muscle of oil-exporting countries had humbled the United States in the 1970s,
the rise of Japan led many Americans to wonder if
their nation’s days as an economic superpower were
numbered.
27-2b Continued Crisis in the Cities
These economic crises, combined with the demise of
many social welfare programs, led to the continued
breakdown of many American cities. While cities
had always been portrayed as dangerous places, by
C
the 1980s the growth of the suburbs, the departure
of social organizations and industries, and H
the subsequent decline in tax revenues had solidified that
image. Many major cities became symbols R
of decay,
poverty, and racial disparity. Accelerating the
I decay,
a cheaper form of cocaine called “crack” appeared in
S
the mid-1980s. This drug was highly addictive, and
its use spread rapidly throughout many inner
T cities.
Meanwhile, inner-city youth seeking identity and
I
security increasingly turned to gangs. Gang violence
escalated throughout the decade, leading A
in some
cities to an average of one gang murder per day.
N
Perhaps due to racism, perhaps due to fear,
lawmakers instituted harsh penalties for, crimes
committed in the inner cities. Possession of small
amounts of crack cocaine, for instance, merited a
M larger
punishment equal to that for owning much
amounts of cocaine, the more expensiveAversion
iStockphoto.com/John Anderson
R
K
6
5
3
5
B
U
of the same drug. As these penalties increased, so
did the American prison system, which was disproportionately populated by racial minorities from
cities. In addition to building prisons, the Reagan
administration addressed the growing drug problem with a public relations
Read Reagan’s
campaign entitled “Just Say
address on
No.” Nancy Reagan, the First
the campaign
Lady, spearheaded the camagainst drug abuse.
paign, and she got many
celebrities to join in. Critics claimed that the campaign was nothing more than hollow rhetoric that
missed the underlying provocations that drove drug
use. The causes of the urban crisis are complex and
were decades in the making, but politicians seemed
both uneager, and unable, to rectify the most central
problems.
27-2c Culture Wars
While a transformation in the distribution of wealth
led to one significant division in American life,
another emerged in the realm of culture. As the New
Right had developed at the grassroots throughout
the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the movement increased
its political leverage and sought to reshape the
nation in its idealized image. With leaders like Pat
Robertson, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell, evangelical Christians made up the bulk of the proponents
of the New Right, while conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh fueled the movement and
stoked the belief that the United States had become
unmoored from its Christian principles. With some
success, they protested what they saw as the sexual
licentiousness on television, the general permissiveness of American secular society,
the emphasis on relativism and pluralism in America’s educational system, and the liberties with which the
courts had interpreted the privacy
clause of the Constitution, especially regarding a woman’s right to
have an abortion. Although Reagan
only tacitly endorsed the New Right,
he did make appearances with
its leaders, giving the movement
mainstream leverage. They made
headlines when they fought to have
“I was making close to $2,000 a
>>
week selling weed when I decided to join the
Unknown Vice Lords. Doing so allowed me to
expand my drug-selling territory. Life seemed
great.”—Jeremiah, teen gang member
America in the 1980s: Polarization of the American Public
495
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H
R
27-2d AIDS
Along with increasing divisions in wealth and theI
culture wars, a third social crisis emerged in the
S
1980s, this one deadly. Autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a deadly disease that attacks aT
person’s immune system, the system that powers a
I
A
Jerry
>>
N
Falwell founded
the Moral
,
Majority in 1979,
using it to lobby
for conservative
social change
and provoking
what has come
to be called “a
culture war.”
M
A
R
K
Cynthia Johnson/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
6
5
3
5
B
U
496
C h apte r 27
During the eighties, state departments of public health
>>
wielded the power of advertising in a massive effort to educate the
Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives
textbooks remove evolutionary theory from their
pages, arguing that evolution contradicted a biblical
explanation for the origins of the world. They similarly struggled to remove sex education from public
schools, as well as works of literature that they perceived to be overly sexual in nature. Because many
of these battles were fought at the level of local
school boards, the so-called “culture wars” were felt
deeply in the heart of America.
The rise of the New Right stimulated the formation of a left-wing opposition. Political liberals
founded organizations like People for the American
Way (1981) and older groups like the American
Civil Liberties Union revamped and actively lobbied
against the policies of the New Right. They presented a full agenda based on separation of church
and state, individual privacy laws, and expanded
C
systems of social welfare.
public and prevent the spread of AIDS. The federal government opted
not to, with Reagan himself ordering his surgeon general to refrain
from discussing the disease publicly.
person’s body to fight other diseases. AIDS is spread
through transmission of bodily fluids, most especially by blood or semen. Because it compromises
the immune system, it leaves the body vulnerable
to other diseases. When undiagnosed or untreated,
AIDS is deadly.
AIDS was first detected in the United States
in 1981, and by 1988 more than 57,000 cases had
been diagnosed. But throughout the 1980s, no one
knew quite what it was; its etiology remained a
mystery. More troubling, because in America the
disease was initially detected in homosexual men,
many Americans were leery to respond, thinking it was simply a disease contained within one
American community. Demonstrating the levels of
homophobia that existed in the 1980s, politicians
were incredibly slow to respond to the epidemic
because it affected people they felt they could safely
ignore without political ramifications. Reagan himself ordered his surgeon general, the leading spokesperson of matters of public health in the federal
government, to refrain from discussing the AIDS
crisis publicly, dismissing it as only a gay disease
and thereby limiting federal funds for research on
the disease and aid to those who suffered from it.
But it quickly became apparent that, in places like
Haiti and Africa, AIDS had spread beyond the gay
community and was a disease that had little to do
with one’s sexual preference. When basketball star
Earvin “Magic” Johnson announced in 1991 that he
had contracted AIDS despite being heterosexual,
Reagan’s America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
“Read my lips: no new taxes.”
he helped transform the
The S&L Crisis
perception of the disease
Unbridled from governbeyond one that simply
ment oversight, large num—George H. W. Bush, 1988 Republican
impacts the gay commubers of savings and loans
National Convention, uttering a sentence that
nity. Safe-sex education and
(S&Ls) emerged to compete
would come back to haunt him during his
heightened awareness of
with banks as depositories of
1992 bid for reelection
the disease have curbed the
people’s money. But instead
runaway epidemic of AIDS
of securing that money, S&Ls
in the United States, but it is still a key concern of
invested people’s deposits in shady real estate deals,
American society, and it certainly roiled the veneer
bonds of dubious reliability, and other high-risk
of confidence and prosperity in Reagan’s America,
investments. Some of these high-risk investments
while at the same time putting on dramatic display
were successful: large companies used the money
the nation’s continued homophobia.
to buy up weaker competiSee a timeline of
tors, using their debt as a
events about the
tax write-off and downsizS&L crisis.
ing the weaker companies
to make them profitable or eliminating them altoC
gether. In the business world, this forced companies
Despite Reagan’s upbeat image, his “revolution”
H had
to streamline production and remain competitive.
immense costs that were borne by his successors.
Some S&L investors, however, were less successR
ful in their investments, leading to waves of layoffs,
I
companies burdened with huge debt, and overly
27-3a The 1988 Election
consolidated industries. When several of these highS
Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, empharisk deals went sour, millions of Americans lost their
sized Reagan-style conservatism as he campaigned
T
savings in the S&Ls. President Bush orchestrated a
for president in 1988. In the campaign, he portrayed
program to allow depositors to recoup their lost savI
Democratic candidate Massachusetts Governor
ings, but this plan came with a price tag of nearly
A who
Michael Dukakis as a big-government liberal
$500 million for Americans. American taxpayers
supported high taxes and who was too soft on
were paying the price of bank deregulation.
N
crime. Bush ran ads describing an African American
, Horton
No New Taxes?
Massachusetts prison inmate named Willie
who, released by Dukakis on a temporary furlough,
The combination of Reagan’s increased military
kidnapped a Maryland couple and raped the woman.
spending, his tax cuts, and the payouts to rectify his
Whereas liberals in the 1960s had been ableM
to scare
deregulation created a huge national debt. During
the public with ads playing on fears of nuclear
war,
his election campaign, Bush tried to maintain
A
Bush turned liberal into a derogatory term that
Reagan’s optimistic demeanor and promised the
implied a connection between DemocraticRpolicies
American people that he would not raise taxes. It
and social disorder.
was, he argued, still morning in America. This promK
Elected by a comfortable margin, Bush continise became untenable by 1990. That year, Bush and
ued many of Reagan’s social and economic policies.
Congress produced a budget that raised taxes and
In appointing a very conservative justice, 6
Clarence
cut defense spending, because maintaining high
Thomas, to the Supreme Court, Bush increased the
outlays without recouping the money via taxes was
5
conservative majority on the Court. But his ecodeemed dangerous federal policy. Politically, how3
nomic policies were not as successful. Indeed,
in
ever, the move did not work out for Bush. Reneging
both domestic and international affairs, Bush strugon his word about raising taxes would, in 1992, cost
5
gled to manage several of the long-term problems
him his bid for reelection. Even worse, raising taxes
B stuck
that Reagan’s policies had created. He was
and cutting defense spending did little to forestall a
paying for the Reagan Revolution.
serious recession. It was too little, too late.
U
27-3 Paying for the
Reagan Revolution
27-3b Bush’s Domestic Policies
Bush’s first hurdle was cleaning up a savings and
loan scandal produced by Reagan’s attempt to
deregulate that industry.
Recession
By 1990, unemployment had risen to 7 percent, and
companies were regularly downsizing. The number
of impoverished Americans rose by 2 million, and
the cost of operating with a huge national debt
Paying for the Reagan Revolution
497
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When he first entered office, Reagan took a hard line
C
with the Soviet Union, provocatively portraying it as
an “evil empire.” His efforts, along with the increas-H
ingly obvious economic collapse of the Soviet Union,
R
helped initiate the end of the Cold War.
Hear Reagan’s
its own in Europe. Reagan
“Evil Empire”
also proposed to build new
speech.
defensive weapons capable
of “rendering . . . nuclear weapons impotent” by
zapping them from space. This “Strategic Defense
Initiative” or SDI (denigrated by critics as “star wars”)
violated the 1972 ABM Treaty, which forbade defensive systems capable of covering either the entire
United States or the Soviet Union. Andropov and
other Soviet leaders saw SDI as a rejection of arms
control overtures in favor of a new quest for global
military supremacy.
Reagan may have been betting that the Soviet
Union could not afford to keep up with a revamped
arms race against the United States. After all, in
August 1980, shipworkers in Poland staged a series of
strikes that led to the formation of the first independent labor union in a communist-controlled country, Solidarity. The union’s launch sparked a wave
of sympathy strikes and indicated that the Soviet
Union was having problems maintaining its empire.
Star Wars
Perestroika
was becoming apparent. Incredibly, Bush failed to
respond immediately. He eventually proposed tax
credits and a middle-class tax cut, but these proposals came much too late to stem a recession.
27-4 Foreign Relations
Under Reagan-Bush
Meanwhile, both Reagan and Bush supported an
active, interventionist foreign policy. This was disastrous for balancing America’s budget, but it did help
end the Cold War.
27-4a The End of the Cold War Era
I
S
Among the many facets of Reagan’s actions, the
bluntest was to increase the number of AmericanT
weapons, reigniting the arms race that had slowedI
through the 1970s. Reagan revived military programs that Carter had cut. He dismissed overturesA
from the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, to cut backN
certain missiles if the United States would refrain
,
from deploying intermediate-range missiles of
M
A
R
K
Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library
6
5
3
5
B
U
498
C h apte r 27
Relations between Reagan and the Soviets softened
during Reagan’s second term. The chief impetus
for change was the arrival of a new Soviet premier,
Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a reformer eager
to restructure the Soviet economy (the Russian word
for “restructuring” is perestroika, a catchphrase of the
1980s and 1990s). He was also in favor of softening
the opposition between the West and the East (the
President
>>
Reagan developed a
solid partnership with
the Soviet Premier
Mikhail Gorbachev,
leading to several
breakthrough summits
and the opening of
the Soviet nations to
some Western goods.
It wasn’t all good will,
though: the Soviet
Union was in fact
going broke.
Reagan’s America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
The end of the Cold War shifted
>>
the focus of American diplomatic interests,
Russian word for “openness” is
glasnost, another catchphrase of
the era). Gorbachev was keenly
aware of the exceptional costs
of Reagan’s burgeoning arms
race, and he sought to rectify
the Soviet Union’s financial
problems by slowing the nuclear
buildup. In 1987, the two leaders—Reagan and Gorbachev—
agreed to eliminate thousands
C
of intermediate-range missiles
in the Intermediate Nuclear
H
Forces (INF) Treaty. Gorbachev
then removed troops from Afghanistan,Rsignaling Russia’s willingness (and financial need)
to
I
stop actively promoting the spread of communism
S
around the world, one of the key fears coloring the
American understanding of the Cold War.
T With
the Soviet Union’s removal from Afghanistan, the
I
American-supported Mujahideen took control, and
A warthe Mujahideen’s inability to control the
ravaged nation led to the rise of the Taliban, someN
thing that would have deadly ramifications for the
,
United States in 2001.
The Middle East
M
While relations with the Soviet Union simmered
down in the 1980s, America experiencedA
complicated new foreign policy problems. Its most complex international relations involved theRMiddle
East. There, an attack in Lebanon, the K
country
immediately north of Israel, was the initial flashpoint. Lebanon had been torn apart since 1975 by
a civil war between Muslims and Christians,
6 and
the small country had been turned into a battle5
field by the foreign armies of Syria, the Palestine
Liberation Organization, and Israel. Fearing 3
the presence of troops from Soviet-friendly Syria so close to
5
Israel, the United States sent peacekeeping forces
to Lebanon in August 1982. The HezbollahB
terrorist
organization viewed U.S. peacekeepers asUtargets
and kidnapped a number of American educators
and missionaries. The worst blow came in October
1983, when Hezbollah terrorists attacked the barracks of U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut; a single suicide
bomber driving a truck filled with explosives killed
241 Marines.
© Patrick Durand/Sygma/Corbis
with no area deemed more important than
the Middle East. Here, the American flag
flies next to a sign for Kuwait City, which
American troops had just liberated from Iraq.
Of course, much of the U.S. interest in the
Middle East centered on oil. Americans had become
increasingly dependent on the energy source during the second half of the twentieth century. When
America’s oil supplies were repeatedly threatened
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the United States
took military or diplomatic action. In 1980, for
instance, Iraq, a militarily powerful oil-producing
Arab state at the head of the Persian Gulf, attacked
its neighbor Iran in an attempt to secure control
of local waterways. The United States, the Soviet
Union, and other Arab states in the region supported
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his fight against
Iran’s militant Islamic republic. When Iran struck
back against Iraq and its allies by firing missiles at
their oil tankers, the United States responded by
reflagging Kuwaiti tankers with American colors,
bringing them under the defensive umbrella of the
U.S. Navy. The threat of direct American military
force reinforced the idea that the free passage of oil
traffic was a key national interest. It also signaled
deeper American involvement in the Middle East.
The Iran-Contra Affair
Reagan’s Cold War focus on keeping left-wing governments out of Latin America and his desire to
guard American interests in the Middle East converged in the Iran-Contra affair. In 1985, at the urging of Israel, the United States sold weapons to Iran
for use in its war with Iraq, which Israel viewed as
its most dangerous enemy in the region. Reagan did
this despite an embargo against Iran (imposed after
the 1979 hostage crisis) and the fact that Iran was an
avowed enemy; indeed, the United States was at the
Foreign Relations Under Reagan-Bush
499
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
60
0°
°N
20°E
40°E
Arctic
Communist regimes overthrown since 1989
Circle
SWEDEN
Soviet Union, dissolved in 1991
NORWAY
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
IRELAND
DENMARK
UNITED
KINGDOM
NETH.
Berlin Wall opened, Nov. 1989
German reunification, 1990
40
UG
RT
Berlin
AUSTRIA SLOVAKIA
HUNGARY
BELARUS
U K R AI NE
Black
Se
a
TUNISIA
GEORGIA
GR EECE
CYPRUS
KYRGYZSTAN
CHINA
TAJIKISTAN
T U R K MENI ST AN
AZERBAIJAN
PAKISTAN
N
SYR I A
AFGHANISTAN
I R AN
Ad
LEBANON
ri
IRAQ
at
ISRAEL
ic
JORDAN
Se
a
Sea
same time offering support
to Iran’s enemy, Iraq. It soldM
weapons to Iran becauseA
top officials in the Reagan
administration hoped thatR
doing so would ease relations between the UnitedK
States and that oil-rich nation.
More damning, however, was the discovery that
members of Reagan’s administration took the prof-6
its from the sale of arms to Iran and sent the money
5
to a right-wing guerrilla group in Nicaragua called
the contras, who were battling the left-wing govern-3
ment. It was never proven that Reagan was aware
5
that the Iran arms sale funds had been diverted to
the contras, but the nationally televised testimony ofB
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North demonstrated thatU
Reagan had not sufficiently controlled members of
his own administration.
Final
proof: 10/8/08
Right-wing
Nicaraguan
guerrilla group during
the 1980s
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
By the late 1980s, the perestroika and glasnost initiated by Soviet premier Gorbachev had begun to
C h apte r 27
0
250
KUWAIT
500 Km.
250
500 Mi.
ia
rs
Red
Trim 45p0 x 31p0
contras
SAU D I
AR AB I A
0
Pe
KOSOVO
500
U ZB EK I ST AN
ARMENIA
TURKEY
C
SLOVENIA
CROATIA
H
BOSNIANATO airwar against
R
HERZEGOVINA
Serbia to protect
SERBIA
Kosovo, 1994
I
MONTENEGRO
EGYPT
U.S. troops join NATO
S
F.Y.R.
peacekeeping forces,
MACEDONIA
Dec. 1995
T
I
A
Map 27.1. The End of the Cold War
N
. Cengage
Learning
2014
Cengage
Learning
Ms00504
,
The End of the Cold War Changes the Map of Europe
CHECHNYA
Sea
MALTA
a
ian
Se
BULGARIA
sp
ALGERIA
ALBANIA
Aral
Sea
Ca
n
KAZAKHSTAN
Chechnya declares independence
1991; Russia attacks, 1994
MOLDOVA
nea
Gorbachev in power, 1985 –1991
Moscow coup fails; Boris Yeltsin
declared president of Russia, 1990
Czechoslovakia broke
into Czech Republic
and Slovakia in 1993
ROMANIA
Mediterra
RUSSIA
Moscow
80°E
Largest and most influential of the former
Soviet republics after 1991
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
POLAND
CZECH
REP.
ITALY
SPAIN
PO
LUX.
SWITZ.
FRANCE
AL
°N
RUSSIA
GERMANY
60°E
ESTONIA
Elections, 1989
BELG.
Yugoslavia, dissolved in civil war, 1991–1992
F I NL AND
North
Sea
n
Gu
lf
TYPE BLOCK MAP
Bleeds top, right
Position top map trim at top page trim
Align leftbymap
trimexposure
on type block
blossom. Inspired
their
to capitalism,
Western popular culture, and the loosened Soviet
controls allowed by Gorbachev, in 1989, Poland,
Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, then followed by
Bulgaria and Romania, all overthrew their communist regimes. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall
came down. In 1990, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia
all declared their independence. In 1991, the oncemighty Soviet Union petered out, collapsing into a
number of independent states—Russia, Ukraine, and
many others (see Map 27.1). The USSR was no longer.
This meant that the United States had won
the Cold War. Or, more realistically, that the Soviet
Union had lost it. In the early 1990s, it quickly
became apparent that Gorbachev’s motives for
perestroika were financial: the Soviet Union simply
could not afford to maintain the huge military
presence needed to keep its buffer states under
disciplined communist control. Historians still
debate the role of the United States in the demise
of the USSR, with some saying America’s sometime hardline approach actually prolonged the
Reagan’s America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
In November
>>
1989, the Berlin Wall
Tom Stoddart/Getty Images
came down. The event
became a key symbol
of the fall of communism and, ever since,
has continued to be
a touchstone in the
struggle for increased
freedoms around the
world.
C
H
R
over Soviet-style communism. Regardless, the end
Cold War by giving political cover to Soviet leaders
of the Cold War led to a reduction of nuclear
who would rather talk about the evils of the
I United
weapons by both the United States and the former
States than poverty and hunger at home. Others
S
Soviet Union, although many weapons still exist.
argue that the policy of containment, first articuT
It also allowed the United States to station fewer
lated in 1946 and lasting through the presidency
troops in Europe. To understand why the Soviet
of George H. W. Bush, had succeeded in keeping
I
Union collapsed, see “The reasons why . . .” box
communism from conquering and dominating the
A
below.
world and that capitalism had cle...
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