Though it didn’t feel like it by the 1970s, the United States was still powerful, still transformed institutionally by the Cold War--but now deeply cynical about authority. American disunity of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was back by the 1970s, with its contours transformed and deepened by Cold War exigencies and outcomes. Dissent was everywhere, and postwar consensus a distant memory. Important
milestones in disarmament and cross-cultural understanding marked the detente period of the late
1960s and 1970s, and China’s diplomatic moves disrupted the balance of East vs.
West. In addition, the two self-inflicted wounds of Vietnam, for the US, and
Afghanistan, for the USSR, along with systemic global changes, slowly unraveled
the bipolar world.
As historian Thomas Blanton has explained, changes that challenged the top-down, two-state system included the information revolution, the rise of grassroots movements in key places like Poland, and the economic globalization that was slowly, then all at once, transforming lives throughout Asia, especially in China after 1978. In addition, developments in the Middle East challenged both the Soviet Union and the United States, from the instability of oil prices to the growing threat of violent terrorism--to the Soviet Union's failed conquest of Afghanistan, and the United States' disastrous role in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
As historian Thomas Blanton has explained, changes that challenged the top-down, two-state system included the information revolution, the rise of grassroots movements in key places like Poland, and the economic globalization that was slowly, then all at once, transforming lives throughout Asia, especially in China after 1978. In addition, developments in the Middle East challenged both the Soviet Union and the United States, from the instability of oil prices to the growing threat of violent terrorism--to the Soviet Union's failed conquest of Afghanistan, and the United States' disastrous role in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
