hey there and welcome back to heimler's history now we've been going through unit 9 of the ap us history curriculum and in this video we're going to be talking about the end of the cold war so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk with space lasers well then let's get to it so in this video our objective is as follows explain the causes and effects of the end of the cold war and its legacy so in the last video we dealt with all the reasons that our boy ronald reagan was elected to the presidency and in this video we're gonna see how ronald reagan even though he was out of office by the official end of the cold war really did a lot of work to hasten that in and the work that he did came in the following forms speeches diplomatic efforts limited military interventions and a buildup of nuclear and conventional weapons and each one of those is bringing some spicy sauce so let's taste each of them in turn so first how did reagan work to end the war through speeches well reagan spoke not only to americans but throughout the world in order to convince anyone who would listen that the soviet union was ready to fall he gave a speech in 1982 to the british parliament in which he said the forward march of freedom and democracy will leave marxism leninism on the ash heap of history so you know about as subtle as a stomach pump the next year he went so far as to label the soviet union an evil empire so you know no doubt where reagan stood second he also worked to end the cold war through diplomatic efforts thanks to richard nixon's work with the soviet union in the 1960s there was a period of detante or cooling down of the tensions between the u.s and the soviet union but all of that got flushed down the toilet in carter's presidency and the tension was built back up again on which more in a moment but in 1985 a reform-minded leader rose to power in the soviet union and his name was mikhail gorbachev his big reforms were known as glasnost and perestroika glasnost was the attempt to bring more political freedom to soviet citizens and perestroika was the introduction of some limited free market practices into the soviet economy and with this bit of common ground reagan worked to ease the tensions between the two superpowers first was the inf agreement by which both parties agreed to destroy all intermediate-range missiles and second gorbachev agreed to remove soviet troops from afghanistan which made the u.s very happy all right next reagan also worked to end the cold war through limited military interventions and i'll mention only two nicaragua and the iran-contra affair and in order to understand both you need to understand what's known as the reagan doctrine this doctrine essentially said that the u.s will support any regime that was anti-communist and it didn't matter if those regimes were democratic or autocratic upheld civil rights or squashed those rights with utmost glee as long as they were anti-communist they had the support of the u.s so nicaragua in 1979 that country became communist under the sandinista government as the result of a coup and so the reagan doctrine mandated that we do something about that so the u.s funded and trained a military group known as the contras in order to overthrow the sandinistas however by 1982 it became clear that these contras were becoming very abusive of human rights and so congress put the kibosh on the whole thing all right now let's talk about the iran-contra affairs since 1980 iran and iraq had been at war and the u.s secretly sold weapons to the iranian contras in order to aid their efforts the reagan administration then used those funds to aid the contras in nicaragua which in case you don't know your constitution happens to be illegal since congress has budgetary authority and not the president after a hearing several convictions were made and it was determined that reagan had taken no part in the illegal activity on one hand reagan's critics labeled him the teflon president because accusations of wrongdoing simply wouldn't stick to him on the other hand the iran contra affair did make reagan seem aloof to what was happening with those closest to him okay now let's talk about how reagan sought to end the cold war through the building up of nuclear and conventional weapons i mentioned in the last video that reagan loved to spend money on the us military on reagan's watch new weapons like the b-1 bomber and the mx missile were created to the tune of billions of dollars and he also oversaw the expansion of the u.s navy's fleet from 450 ships to over 600 ships probably the weapon initiative that reagan is most known for was the strategic defense initiative the idea here was to build military-grade satellites that could shoot down enemy missiles from space with lasers i kid you not since this was the 80s reagan's critics dubbed this program star wars as a result of all this the us defense budget grew from about 170 billion dollars in 1981 to over 300 billion dollars four years later now ultimately despite all the work that he did to end the cold war reagan left office before the conflict actually ceased and instead his successor george h.w bush would do it by the time of his election in 1988 the soviet union was beginning to fall apart and partially this was because of the constant challenges to soviet power and eastern european nations and as a result gorbachev made the decision that he would decrease soviet influence in those countries by no longer supporting their communist governments with soviet military and so in 1989 poland elected a non-communist leader and in short order the rest of the communist bloc followed suit including east germany whose leaders were forced out of power after east germans tore down the berlin wall which had long stood as a symbol of oppression in that country and in the midst of all this turmoil the soviet union itself fell in 1991 and with that the cold war was over however with the end of the cold war there was a fresh occasion for new diplomatic efforts for example after the cold war the u.s and russia agreed to the start one treaty in which both agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads they possessed down to ten thousand and then later down to three thousand that seemed like a big win because with that reduction in nuclear arms each nation could only blow up the world 50 times over instead of a thousand times over and that's something to celebrate additionally under the start 2 treaty the u.s offered funds to russia to shore up their unstable economy after the collapse okay that's what you need to know about unit 9 topic 3 the ap u.s history curriculum and if you need help getting an a in your class and a five on your exam may then click right here and great review package if you were helped by this video you want me to keep making them then you can let me know that by subscribing heimler out