12.2The Cold War ends

Reagan pursued the Cold War aggressively, expanding the military and challenging the Soviet Union, even while later negotiating major arms reductions with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. As the 1980s closed, the communist system, strained by economic failure and reform, collapsed with astonishing speed.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and by 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved. The Cold War that had defined global politics for over four decades was suddenly over, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower. Americans greeted the moment with triumph and optimism, expecting a peaceful new era of expanding democracy and free markets—a hope that would prove more complicated than it first appeared.