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This chapter focuses on the so-called ‘second’ Cold War spanning the years 1981–5. Ronald Reagan came to power on the back of a general rightwards shift in the political mood. He concentrated on a presentational role in government and pursued a simple foreign policy. He dismissed détente as a communist trick, was initially determined to resist the spread of the Soviet Union’s influence wherever it threatened and, going beyond that, wanted to carry the new Cold War into the Soviet camp. The chapter first considers US–Soviet relations during the new Cold War, paying attention to ‘Reaganomics’, before discussing the crisis in Poland in 1980–2. It then explores the issue of nuclear weapons control and the ‘Year of the Missile’ and concludes with an assessment of the war in Afghanistan up to 1985.

This chapter examines how the United States and the Soviet Union sought to win the hearts and minds of people in various parts of the world as empires began to collapse during the period 1953–63. It begins with a discussion of the end of the French Empire, taking into account the loss of French Indo-China and the start of American involvement in Vietnam, along with the collapse of French rule in Morocco and Tunisia. It then considers the crises in the Congo, Angola, and the Middle East, focusing on the zenith of the Cold War in Black Africa, Britain’s declining power, and the Suez Crisis. It concludes by looking at the end of the British Empire in Africa.