Contemporary America and Globalization
The end of the Cold War
Nixon pursued détente, opened relations with China (1972), and signed SALT I, while stagflation and Watergate eroded trust. Carter's Camp David Accords (1978) and the Iran hostage crisis framed the late 1970s. Reagan combined tax cuts, deregulation, and military buildup with anticommunist intervention; Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, the INF Treaty (1987), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the Soviet collapse (1991) ended the rivalry.
The post-Cold War order
The Gulf War (1991) used a United Nations coalition. Clinton signed NAFTA (1994), reformed welfare (1996), and presided over the dot-com boom and his own impeachment (1998). Bush v. Gore (2000) settled a contested presidential election.
The twenty-first century
9/11 produced the Patriot Act, the war in Afghanistan (2001), and the Iraq invasion (2003) justified by claims about weapons of mass destruction. The 2008 financial crisis brought TARP and a deep recession. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (2010) and the Paris Agreement; Trump cut taxes (2017), imposed tariffs on China, and faced impeachment and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Traps. The Cold War ended with the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, not with the Berlin Wall, and NAFTA is a trade agreement rather than a security alliance.
Rule of thumb. Classify which-trend items as economic, technological, demographic, or foreign policy.
Worked example. A chart of falling manufacturing jobs alongside rising imports illustrates globalization and outsourcing, not the New Deal.