The Twentieth Century and Beyond

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GED® Full Online Course U.S. History The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The Cold War, Part 2

By the 1970s, the two superpowers were trying to find a way to lessen tensions between them to prevent a possible world-ending war. This period, during which both sides passed arms control agreements to limit their number of nuclear weapons, was known as détente. But détente failed to solve the issue of competition between them, and the Cold War grew worse after 1975 as the two powers competed in countires like Angola, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan.

Until the 1970s, the Soviet economy had grown steadily, but it weakened after 1970 as it came to increasingly rely on the sale of oil. For a time, this worked because oil prices were high in the 1970s, but those prices crashed in the 1980s and hurt the Soviet economy. The United States had been hurt by high oil prices in the 1970s, but when those prices decreased, the U.S. economy was in a position to perform better.

Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in 1981, and he oversaw the end of the Cold War. In his first term, Reagan promised to fight the Cold War more vigorously and to abandon détente. To do this, he raised military spending and committed to fighting communists or communist sympathizers around the world.

However, Reagan grew progressively concerned about nuclear war, recognizing that even an accident could spark a conflict that might end all life on the planet. He began making overtures to Soviet leadership, and by 1985, a younger Soviet leader named Mikhail Gorbachev expressed interest in working to eliminate certain nuclear weapons. Reagan developed a strong relationship with Gorbachev, and by 1988, as he prepared to leave office, Reagan felt confident in saying that the Soviet Union was no longer evil. In 1989, the communist countries of Eastern Europe transitioned from communism to democracy, and by 1991, the Soviet Union had dissolved, ending the Cold War.