10. Britain and the usa in the late 20th century.

In the 1980s, Britain was governed by a strong Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, who reversed the policies of her predecessors, returning nationalized industries to private control and cutting government expenditures. Benefiting from a military victory over Argentina in a war (1982) over the Falkland Islands, the Conservatives won reelection in 1983 and retained their majority over a divided opposition in 1987 and 1992. In 1990, Thatcher resigned after quarrelling with other party leaders over her opposition to European integration. Her Conservative successor, John Major, was more favorable to the European connection but was continually hampered by the “Eurosckeptics” in his own party, who shared Thatcher’s views. In May 1997 the Conservatives were voted out of office, and John Major was replaced by Tony Blair at the head of a moderate Labour government. Talks aimed at a peace settlement for Northern Ireland, sponsored jointly by the British and Irish governments, produced an agreement in April 1998. In 1999, Britain was a leading supporter of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.

In 1999 a Scottish Parliament with the power to tax and make laws was established for the first time since 1707; a Welsh Assembly with more limited powers was also created.

Republican Ronald Reagan promised to restore American supremacy both politically and economically. Reagan’s foreign policy was aggressively anti-Communist as he discarded the policy of détente employed by Nixon and Carter. He revived Cold War, referring to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”, enlarged the U.S. nuclear arsenal and suggested the Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan popularly known as “Star Wars”. In 1981 Reagan imposed sanctions against Poland; he sought aid for counterrevolutionaries trying to overthrow the Marxist-ori­ented Government in Nicaragua; he ordered the invasion of the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada. In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing the entire sev­en-person crew, including six astronauts and a civilian school­teacher. Reagan improved his image before he left office, how­ever, by agreeing to a series of arms reduction talks initiated by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachov.

In foreign affairs George H. W. Bush was as aggressive as his predecessor. In 1989, after a U.S.-backed coup failed to oust President of Panama, Bush ordered the invasion of Panama by U.S. troops. Bush’s major military action, however, was the Persian Gulf War. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, Bush announced the commencement of Operation Desert Shield, which included a naval and air blockade and the steady deployment of U.S. military forces to Saudi Arabia.

President Bill Clinton was generally considered a political moderate. The economy gradually improved during Clinton’s first year in office. Clinton withdrew U.S. troops from Somalia and helped in reestablishing democratic rule in Haiti. In April 1995, in the act of terrorism a bomb was exploded at the feder­al building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 people.

The 2000 presidential election brought George W. Bush to power. Internationally, the United States experienced some fric­tion with its allies, who didn’t like the Bush administration’s desire to abandon both the Kyoto Protocol (designed to fight global warming) and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (in order to proceed with developing a ballistic missile defense system). But the politics and concerns of the first months of 2001 be­came secondary on September 11, when terrorists hijacked four planes, crashing two into the World Trade centre, which was destroyed, and one into the Pentagon; the fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Some 3,000 persons were killed or missing as a result of the attacks. The U.S. government sought to build an international coalition against Al Qaeda group and the Taliban and, more broadly, against terrorism, working to influence other nations to cut off sources of financial support for terrorism.

In October air strikes and then ground raids were launched against Afghanistan by the United States with British aid. By December the Taliban government had been ousted and its Al Qaeda’s fighters largely had been routed. A force of U.S. troops was based in Afghanistan to search for Bin Laden, the main leader of terrorists.

President Bush ordered the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system to be effective in 2004; the system would be de­signed to prevent so-called rogue missile attacks. In advance of this movement the United States had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia.

In 2003 Bush continued to press for Iraqi disarmament. In February, however, the nation’s attention was pulled away from the growing tension over Iraq by the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia as it returned to earth. Seven astronauts were killed in this second shuttle mishap.

U.S. weapon inspectors reported in January 2004 that they had failed to find any evidence that Iraq had possessed biological or chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the U.S. invasion.

In July the U.S. commission investigating the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for fail­ings that contributed to the success of the attacks, and called for reorganization of those agencies.

ASSIGNMENTS