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SALT II
SALT II was a series of talks between American and Soviet negotiators from 1972 to 1979 that sought to curtail the manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. It was a continuation of the SALT I talks and was led by representatives from both countries. -
Arab Oil Embargo
Oil Embargo, 1973–1974. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. -
The Camp David Accords
The Camp David Accords were a pair of political agreements signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David, the country retreat of the President of the United States in Maryland. -
Iran Hostage Crisis
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d'Affaires to the most junior members of the staff, as hostages. -
Détente
Détente, period of the easing of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1979. The era was a time of increased trade and cooperation with the Soviet Union and the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaties. -
Reagan’s Star Wars initiative
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. Otherwise known as “Star Wars,” SDI sought to create a space-based shield that would render nuclear missiles obsolete. -
Iran-Contra Affair
A secret operation in which the US government secretly sent weapons to a known enemy and sent financial aid to a rebel force.. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. -
The Reykjavík Summit
The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Reykjavík, Iceland, on 11–12 October 1986. -
Gorbachev Ronald Reagan
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the arms control agreement banning the use of intermediate-range nuclear missiles, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Reduction Treaty, in 1987. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders -
Mission Report December 16, 1991
On the night of December 16th, Howard and Maria Stark were en route to the Pentagon with the newly-completed super-soldier serum when the Winter Soldier (also known as James Buchanan Barnes) raced up behind them on a motorcycle and slashed off the front tire with his cybernetic arm, causing it to swerve off the road and crash into a tree and eventually killing the both of them. -
Final Collapse of Soviet Union
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.