AP U.S. History · Lesson 3

The end of the Cold War and a new world role

Know Know it

Reagan began his presidency with a hard line toward the Soviet Union, which he called an 'evil empire' in 1983. He built up the military, proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, a planned system to shoot down nuclear missiles, and aided anticommunist forces in places such as Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Secret arms sales to Iran, with profits sent to Nicaragua's Contra rebels despite a ban by Congress, became the Iran-Contra affair.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who took power in 1985, introduced reforms called glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), which eliminated a whole class of nuclear missiles. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and communist governments across Eastern Europe collapsed, and in 1991 the Soviet Union broke apart, ending the Cold War.

As the only superpower, the United States looked for a new role. In 1991 President George H. W. Bush led a broad coalition, authorized by the United Nations, that drove Iraq's army out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War. In the 1990s U.S. forces took part in missions in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and Americans debated when the nation should use force to stop mass killing in places where no clear national interest was at stake.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. President George W. Bush declared a war on terror. U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban government that sheltered al-Qaeda, and in 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, citing weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Both wars lasted for years. In 2011 U.S. forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

At home, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), which expanded the government's surveillance powers, and created the Department of Homeland Security (2002). Americans debated how to balance security with civil liberties, including the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners could challenge their detention in federal court.

Trap Beware one-cause answers about the end of the Cold War

Historians weigh several causes for the end of the Cold War: American military and economic pressure, the Soviet Union's failing economy and costly war in Afghanistan, Gorbachev's reforms and his choice not to use force in Eastern Europe, and protest movements inside the Soviet bloc. A choice that credits a single cause alone usually overstates.

Worked example Easy

Which event in 1989 became a symbol of the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe?

  1. The fall of the Berlin WallAnswer
  2. The Cuban Missile Crisis
  3. The Persian Gulf War
  4. The signing of the NATO treaty

How to solve it

  1. Check the date and the place: 1989, Eastern Europe.
  2. The opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 is the best-known symbol.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Correct. Crowds opened and began tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989 as East Germany's communist government crumbled.
  • B. Incorrect. The Cuban Missile Crisis took place in 1962, at the height of the Cold War.
  • C. Incorrect. The Gulf War was fought in 1991 against Iraq, not in Eastern Europe.
  • D. Incorrect. NATO was founded in 1949, at the start of the Cold War.

Explain Explain it

Task verbs: explain, compare

To explain a change in foreign policy, name what the nation feared or wanted before and after, then the action that shows the shift. When you compare two periods, say what changed and what stayed the same, with one specific example for each.

Worked example Medium

From George H. W. Bush, address to a joint session of Congress, September 11, 1990 (public domain)

Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge: a new era -- freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony.

Bush's hopes in this excerpt were shaped most directly by which development?

  1. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon
  2. The fall of South Vietnam to the communist North
  3. The easing of the Cold War as communist rule collapsed in Eastern EuropeAnswer
  4. The oil embargo by Arab producers in 1973

How to solve it

  1. The speech is dated September 11, 1990, before the 2001 attacks.
  2. Its hope for East and West living in harmony reflects the ending of the Cold War.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. Those attacks came on September 11, 2001, eleven years after this 1990 speech.
  • B. Incorrect. South Vietnam fell in 1975, a defeat that did not inspire hopes for a new era of harmony.
  • C. Correct. With the Berlin Wall down and the Cold War ending, Bush hoped East and West could now cooperate, as the excerpt says.
  • D. Incorrect. The embargo had come seventeen years earlier and caused an economic crisis, not hopes for a new world order.

Explain Your turn

Explain one way the September 11, 2001, attacks changed U.S. policy at home and one way they changed U.S. policy abroad.

Write it, then compare. Nothing you type here is saved or graded.

Compare with a model answer

A full answer does this

  • Gives an accurate change in policy at home after the attacks
  • Gives an accurate change in policy abroad after the attacks

Model answer

At home, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, which widened the government's power to monitor communications in order to find terrorists. Abroad, the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban government that had sheltered al-Qaeda, beginning a war that lasted about two decades.

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