“On January 17, 1991, hte U.S.-led coalition launched a massive air attack on Iraq.  The pummeling from the air of Iraq and Iraqi forces in Kuwait continued for third-eight days, as the United States and its allies unleashed just about every nonnuclear aerial weapon they had in their arsenals.”

With the United States advanced military technology, they successfully subdued the Iraq Republican Guard and eliminated Iraq’s formal military within days.  Also, the U.S was able to invade the country with ground forces and able to take over the country.  The U.S. led coalition forces only suffered 248 casualties opposed to the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed.  The casualties suffered in Iraq does not even compare to the ones suffered in Vietnam and prior wars.  This military victory for George Bush validated America’s military after they were unsuccessful in Vietnam.

“Hezbollah, a newly formed Shiite group with Syrian and Iranian backing, found a devastating, low- tech way to respond to the high-tech American forces.  On April, 18 1983, a pickup truck with two thousand pounds of explosives crashed into the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut, killing sixty-three people, including all six members of the CIA’s Beirut station and a high-ranking agency official who happened to be visiting.”

As we see in Chapter 16, Hezbollah is similar to other terrorist groups in the Middle East who combat American troops with unconventional warfare.  Their type of warfare is cheap, effective, and cowardly since they are using explosives and blowing themselves up.  With the most sophisticated military technology, America is still having difficulty defeating these types of forces.  This is similarly seen in Vietnam when America could not defeat them with the most advanced military equipment.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, required an elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear weapons by the United States and Soviet Union. This was a significant moment towards resolution with an old enemy, it was the first time both the Soviet Union and United States agreed to remove an entire class of weapons from their armory. This bargain was one of the first stepping stones in Gorbachev’s attempt to improve the Soviet Union’s poor international relations which he believed hindered the health of its civilian economy. Gorbachev’s reforms did not sit well with some communist leaders, which led to a coup in 1991. The coup was unsuccessful but proved fatal for Gorbachev’s ability to hold the reigns of the state. He eventually was forced to resign and signed a decree that broke the up the Union. The end of the Soviet Union symbolized the ending of a chapter in American politics. International relationships were structured by the Cold War, which was now officially over. “For the United States, it was had been the defining element in its foreign policy, the impetus for two major was and the occasion for an unprecedented level of peacetime military mobilization.” (404) An unexpected moment in the United States occurred with the conclusion of this superpower rivalry. Policies that once shaped family life, economy and politics had to be redefined, introducing a new age in American history.

Chapter 17, titled “I’m Running Out of Demons” is a quote from Colin Powell which accurately describes the attitude evoked by the “new world order” that began at the anticlimactic end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War freed the United States from a forty-year battle with the Soviet Union which international relations were structured around. The war ended in a manner that left Americans feeling uncertain in two ways. The fact that the end of the Cold War came as a result of their own demise rather than by direct U.S. action made it unclear whether or not the finale could be considered an American triumph. Also, with no remaining definite enemies to tackle, Americans were uncertain about what was going to happen next. What eventually happened next was the election of George H.W. Bush, who truly believed that the Cold War was a victory, and was determined to make his mark through foreign policy. Bush was a supporter of the use of force and occupying an enormous military. He was finally able to take part in foreign relations with the invasion of Panama. Tensions rose with leader  Manuel Noriega, who originally had been employed by the United States. When he became involved with arms and drug trafficking after forming an allegiance with Cuba, he became seen as unnecessary and was planned to be removed from office. When the U.S. attempted to replace Noriega he nullified the election that would have replaced his leadership, causing hostility. After an incident in which Panamanian soldiers killed an American soldier and abused an American couple who had witnessed the murder, the Bush administration called for an invasion, led by 27,000 soldiers. Noriega eventually surrendered, and the invasion, also called  “Operation Just Cause” was a success. The strength and swiftness of the United States army were proven during the invasion, making a spectacle of its technological talents and its ability to evade the entire country in the nick of time. The success of Operation Just Cause assisted the image of force military action and helped pave the way for future larger military operations, more specifically, the Gulf War. Bush’s “new world order” provided a new landscape for international relations, and according to Freeman, “Rather than a new world order, global disorder became normalized, as even relatively small groups, through low-tech terror tactics and guerrilla warfare, found that they could disrupt less developed and even advanced societies…Rather than a sense of security and peace, the end of the Cold War ushered in a period of unsettledness, at home and abroad.” (415)

“Gorbachev announced a unilateral Soviet moratorium on testing nuclear weapon and sought out a summit with Reagan. At their first meeting, in November 1985 in Geneva, the two leaders failed to come up with an arms control pact but agreed to further summits.” (Pg. 401)

Many worldwide conflicts, alliances and political aims were related to the Cold War since the end of the Second World War, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union were the center of the war and jostled each other over their behaviors. Sometimes, they invited other lands to hold a leading position of the war and threatened each other with a nuclear weapon. However, in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, the Cold War soddenly progressed toward a solution because Gorbachev shifted his attention to domestic problems such as deterioration in the standard of living in the Soviet and the nuclear plant disaster in Chernobyl, so the summit meeting between the U.S. and the Soviet was achieved.

The first Summit meeting started at November 1985, and it wasn’t successful, but they negotiated several times to eliminate nuclear arsenal and intermediate-range nuclear weapons. This reconciliation triggered settlements of other international problems. The Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan in 1988, many East European countries changed into democracy and the Berlin wall was collapsed in 1989. The summit meeting is definitely a key to end the Cold War.

“Especially frightening to Soviet officials was Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a plan to develop a system to defend against ballistic missiles, which he announced in a nationally televised address two weeks after the “evil empire” speech.” (p. 393)

Not only the two empires were fighting each other on foreign countries’ territories, but also they were in constant rivalry developing arms. SDI was the escalation point in the Soviet-American relationship. Reagan was excited to create a system to defend against ballistic missiles (antiballistic missile defense system). Even though it was portrayed as a defense system, the Soviet Union saw SDI as a “prelude to an attack”.

In 1986, three years later, Mikhail Gorbachev and Reagan would try to negotiate an agreement on strategic nuclear arsenal, cutting their intermediate-range missiles in Europe; and would try to reach a consensus on a certain SDI restrictions. This proves that existence of SDI was essential for both countries. And the fact of trying to reach a negotiation would be a powerful sign of the Cold War coming to its end.