CHAPTER 32 OUTLINE – The End of the Cold War and the Challenge of Economic Development and Immigration, 1975-2000
I. Postcolonial Crises and Asian Economic Expansion
A. Revolutions, Depressions, and Democratic Reform in Latin America
1. The success of the Cuban Revolution both energized the revolutionary left throughout Latin America and led the United States to organize its political and military allies in Latin America in a struggle to defeat communism.
2. In Brazil, a coup in 1964 brought in a military government whose combination of dictatorship, use of death squads to eliminate opposition, and use of tax and tariff policies to encourage industrialization through import substitution came to be known as the Brazilian Solution. Elements of the Brazilian Solution were applied in Chile by the government of Augusto Pinochet, whose U.S.-assisted coup overthrew the socialist Allende government in 1973, and in Argentina by a military regime that seized power in 1974.
3. Despite reverses in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, revolutionary movements persisted elsewhere. In Nicaragua, the movement overthrew the government of Anastasio Somoza and ruled until it was defeated in free elections in 1990. In El Salvador, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) fought a guerilla war against the military regime until declining popular support in the 1990s led the rebels to negotiate an end to the armed conflict and transform themselves into a political party.
4. The military dictatorships established in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina all came to an end between 1983 and 1990. All three regimes were brought down by their own excesses and by popular desires for a return to constitutional government.
5. By 2000, the United States had gained more influence in Latin America. This may be seen in the U.S. use of military force to intervene in Grenada in 1983 and in Panama in 1989.
6. The United States was then able to influence Latin American nations to reduce state involvement in the economy, called neoliberalism in Latin America. The result of fewer government protections for local industries was economic stress in some regions, such as in Venezuela where Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 and began rolling back the neoliberal reforms.
B. Islamic Revolutions in Iran and Afghanistan
1. Crises in Iran and Afghanistan threatened to involve the superpowers; the United States reacted to these crises with restraint, but the Soviet Union took a bolder and ultimately disastrous course.
2. In Iran, American backing and the corruption and inefficiency of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime stimulated popular resentment. In 1979, street demonstrations and strikes toppled the shah and brought a Shi’ite cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to power. The overthrow of an ally and the establishment of an antiwestern, conservative Islamic republic in Iran were blows to American prestige, but the United States was unable to do anything about it.
3. In the fall of 19...
