The End of the Cold War

President Reagan established special relations with the Soviet Union, which he termed "the evil empire" – he declared a policy of "peace through strength". The Reagan administration spent huge sums on arms control placing nuclear missiles to combat Soviet missiles. The possible threat from the Soviet Union increased American military spending by more than $100 billion during Reagan's first term in office.

However, his second term was marked by warming in the USA-Soviet relations. Warming in the Cold War began after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, and declared changes in the Soviet domestic policy – glasnost (openness) and perestroika (change). In November 1985, Regan held a summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev to agree on the 50-percent reduction in strategic offensive nuclear arms. Two years later they signed a treaty providing for the destruction of a whole category of nuclear weapons.

In July 1989, Gorbachev repudiated the Soviet doctrine of intervention into the affairs of communist countries and within some months after his statement the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed as many Eastern European countries rose for democratic reforms. The symbol of the Cold War – the Berlin Wall was destroyed in November 1989 and in February 1990 the Soviet Union had to renounce the wartime rights and accept the unified Germany with full membership in NATO.

A year later the Soviet Union began pulling its forces from Eastern Europe, and former socialist countries immediately announced themselves democracies. The same year the Soviet Union itself dissolved into fifteen separate nations, some of them became democracies, some loosened totalitarian control.

Collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War and led to the reduction of nuclear weapons in the USA and former Soviet republics.

Information Age and the Global Economy

The last decade of the 20^th century brought to the world revolutionary changes in technology, particularly in computers. The birth of the Internet giving access to various information and e-mail led to a revolution in communications. It was coupled by cell-phones providing easy communication in almost all parts of the USA. By the end of the century virtually every part of the world was linked to every other part. Americans alone sent 2,2 billion e-mail messages per day, connecting different parts of the world. The Internet gave birth to entirely new type of communication, and allowed businesses to reduce their costs spent on communication.

Besides the "online shopping" that became a growing business across the country and around the world, computers led to a real reduction in time and space between America and the rest of the world creating "global economy". Today global economy drives growth for most American manufacturers and for much of the USA agriculture. For example, Coca-Cola has taken an aggressive aim at sales in foreign countries which now account for over 50 % of its annual revenue. More and more American manufacturing firms make half of their sales outside the United States.

The global economy was created not only due to the development of information-sharing technologies and computers; it also happened because many countries dropped their trade barriers and opened their markets to the rest of the world. Creation of international companies – "mega mergers" led to more efficiencies, better products and lower prices.

The reverse side of the medal is that intertwining of economies made America more sensitive to the downturns in the other parts of the world. Besides, more and more companies are transferred to the parts of the world where the cost of labor is lower.

Task 2. Globalization. Study the chart and give your ideas to the further development of the global society. Take into consideration such problems:

1. There is no international regulatory authority for financial markets and the taxation of capital.

2. There are no international institutions to protect individual freedoms, human rights, environment and to promote social justice.

3. Western democracy is not the only form of open society – each society must decide on specifics.

The reduction in the trade barriers between the countries after WW II

Development of communication means and globalization of world financial markets

Global integration leads to international division of labor and rapid spread of innovations

International movement of ideas is associated with the freedom of thought and of choice

Development of global society is lagging behind the growth of global economy. The question of values and social cohesion becomes important. Every society needs some shared values to hold it together and market values can't serve this purpose

Challenge of Diversity. New Strategies and Language Patterns

The second half of the 20^th century saw great changes in the population patterns of the USA – the reforms in immigration policy shifted the focus from Western Europe to Asian and Latin American countries. In the 1990s, immigration added more than a million people a year to the population of the USA, and most of the immigrants came from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

The shift in the population became characteristic of different regions of the country. For example, in Miami, Florida more than 60 % of population spoke Spanish at home, and on the west coast, the Los Angeles school district taught students who spoke one or more of eighty-two different languages.

New patterns of population affected many aspects of national life. The issues of honoring differences and learning to work together became a matter of hot debate.

It was clear that in a country with diverse population the issues of cultural tolerance and language sensitivity became of primarily importance. Besides, Civil Rights and feminist movements raised pride and awareness in the historically disadvantaged groups of population. This resulted in a new movement in the 1990s – Political Correctness, when native English speakers became sensitive of biased terms and phrases that exist in the language and many universities acknowledged that their curriculum did not reflect the multicultural society.

During the 1990s, most American universities diluted or displaced the core curriculum stressing the great works of western civilizations to make room for new courses in non-western cultures, African-American Studies and Women's Studies.

As people became sensitive to bias on the basis of race, gender, age, and sexual orientation, they tried to minimize the negative impact of language that they used to discuss such issues.

Among the first signs of this movement was the feminist attempt to get gender equality in all spheres of life and diminish differences between men and women in the society. It included the criticism of the English language as "male-dominated" and "patriarchal". The history of society, as the feminists argued, was written from the male point of view ("it's HIS-tory, not HERstory"). So the solution was to shift from the old, "sexist" language to a new inclusive language. This meant, for example, avoiding the usage of male pronouns in the cases when the gender of the person is unknown. Utterances like Every student has to pass his exams were replaced by Every student has to pass their exams which violates traditional rules of subject-verb agreement but conforms to new rules of gender neutrality. General terms containing the segment man, like mankind and man-made were replaced by synonyms like humankind and artificial.

Functioning of new lexicon in English reflected the main social process in today's America – a tendency to race- and gender-blind society, toward equal opportunities for everybody. This new movement intended to erase discrimination that exists in language, its aim was to attain speak-no-evil consensus.

The serious changes in the English vocabulary touched many spheres of life. The US Department of Labor has attempted to overcome the exclusion of women from job categories and has revised the titles of almost 3,500 jobs, so that they are no longer male-designated, but sexually neutral: flight attendant instead of steward/stewardess, sales person/representative instead ofsalesman/woman, police officer instead of policeman, chairperson or chair instead of chairman.

The tendency toward "desexing" English was followed by the attempt to diminish ethnic and racial prejudices in the language. "Deracialisation" in English provided new names for nationalities and ethnic groups. The words Negro, colored, and Afro-American were replaced by black and African-American; Oriental or Asiatic became Asian or more specific designations such as Chinese American, Korean, Japanese American. Indian, a term that refers to people who live in or come from India, was differentiated from terms used for the native peoples of North America such as American Indian, Native American, or more specific terms like Chinook or Hopi.

Task 3. Showing sensitivity to ethnicity. Column A represents traditional names for different races and nationalities, and column B gives the sensitive version. Match the names from column A to column B.

A	B
1) Oriental, Asiatic	a) Native American, American Indian
2) Colored, Afro-American	b) Asian
3) Indian	c) African-American