GRC - The Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton Administrations, 1981-2000 (Lesson)

The Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton Administrations, 1981-2000

 

1981—Science & Technology

• In 1981, doctors first recognized the symptoms of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in American patients, but it wasn't until the next year that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) used the term AIDS to describe the disease. And it wasn't until 1983 that the World Health Organization (WHO) held its first meeting on the global AIDS situation and started international surveillance. Caused by a Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV,) AIDS quickly turned into a pandemic. Since its discovery, tens of millions of people have died from the disease with millions more living with the condition.

January 20, 1981—United States

• On this date, Ronald Reagan became the 40^th president of the United States—reflecting a trend towards conservatism already seen with the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain.

April 12, 1981—Science & Technology

• The launch of the first space shuttle, Columbia, occurred on this date. It was the first reusable Earth orbital spacecraft as it was capable of reentering the earth's atmosphere and landing (like a plane) on a runway.

October 6, 1981—Egypt

• During an annual victory parade that celebrated Egypt's 1973 crossing of the Suez Canal during a war with Israel, a member of a radical Muslim group assassinated President Anwar Sadat (along with other foreign and domestic dignitaries.) Upset over the concessions granted to Israel in the Camp David Accords from years before, the assassination squad targeted the Egyptian leader. Upon Sadat's death, Vice President Hosni Mubarak rose to power—and stayed in the position of president for the next thirty years.

April 2, 1982—Great Britain/Argentina

• In April 1982, the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and Argentina entered into a ten-week war over British territories off of Argentina's coast. Still in the throes of the military junta that overthrew the government in 1976, Argentina invaded the British held Falkland Islands and South Georgia and started the Falklands War. In the end, the British retained control over the colonies, giving Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a big boost in popularity. In Argentina, the military government suffered a series of blows to its reputation and collapsed. This led to the first free presidential election in 1983.

June 6, 1982—Israel/Lebanon

• Spurred on by continuous attacks being launched out of southern Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982 and started the Lebanon War. During the war, Israel took over the government of Lebanon and placed a pro-Israeli president in power while expelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from the nation. Their hope was to create a peace treaty with the new Lebanese government to ensure peace—but this hope was dashed when a bomb exploded and killed the pro-Israeli president. The Lebanese Civil War (which had started in 1975) continued to rage even as the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon in 1985 and Syria's influence over Lebanon continued to grow.

1983—International

• During the Lebanon War between Israel and Lebanon, a new organization formed with the specific purpose of antagonizing Israeli occupiers in southern Lebanon—Hezbollah. The new organization contained political and military wings in Lebanon but was funded by Iran with the intent of driving American, French and Israeli forces out of Lebanon. Founded officially in 1985 at the end of the Lebanon War, Hezbollah grew quickly into a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East as members took seats within the Lebanese government and its military became stronger than some nation's militaries.

June 5, 1983—Sudan

• Following independence, Sudan engaged in a 17-year Civil War between the Sudanese of the north and south—largely over the cultural differences between the two regions. In the early 1970s, the civil war petered out as the Southern Sudanese were given a bit more political autonomy. But in the late 1970s, oil was discovered in southern Sudan and within five years, the Sudanese government repealed the south's regional autonomy. This sparked the Second Sudanese Civil War—this new phase, starting in June 1983, lasted the next 21 years and only ended when the southern region regained its political autonomy in 2005. In 2011, the region gained its independence and formed the nation of South Sudan.

October 23, 1983—United States/Libya

• On this date, members of Hezbollah attacked the Beirut barracks of U.S. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon as part of a multinational force present during the Lebanese Civil War. Over two hundred Americans died when a suicide bomber drove a truck to the barracks. The United States responded by shooting missiles into Syria. Afterwards, it became standard practice to construct barriers and barricades around buildings to prevent vehicles from getting too close.

October 31, 1984—India

• For years, Sikhs in India pushed for equal religious status and for greater self-rule for their state of Punjab. But in the early 1980s, this push became more violent and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used the military to suppress Sikh rebels in 1984. As part of their mission, Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple at Amritsar. This attack on Sikhism's holiest shrine led to a Sikh denouncement of Gandhi and her government. Months later, Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. The following week saw an outbreak of anti-Sikh riots that killed thousands and her son, Rajiv Gandhi, replaced her as prime minister. Five years later, he too, was assassinated.

November 25, 1984—International/Ethiopia

• On this date, a collection of mostly British and Irish musicians met in a recording studio to create the song, "Do They Know it's Christmas?," to raise money and awareness for the famine occurring in Ethiopia. The success of the song furthered the practice of "celebrity diplomacy" (a concept that first emerged when the United Nations started using celebrities in the mid-1950s to draw attention to global issues in its Goodwill Ambassador program.) Collaborating artists in the United States followed with their release of "We Are the World" in 1985 to continue celebrity fundraising for famine relief. The famine in Ethiopia stemmed from natural, political and demographic causes—a widespread drought, a civil war that strained the land as well as those that worked the land and a population explosion. And it resulted in nearly a million deaths—but it also resulted in lessons. Western governments did not immediately respond to the crisis in Ethiopia—at the time, Ethiopia was run by a Marxist government that was spending its money on a civil war rather than aid for its own people—and were heavily criticized by humanitarian organizations. Applying what was learned in the 1980s famine, Western governments reacted much faster and with more involvement in the 2003 Ethiopian famine.

December 3, 1984—Science & Technology

• In December 1984—still reeling from Gandhi's assassination and the ensuing anti-Sikh riots—India experienced one of the world's worst industrial disasters. Union Carbide , an American chemical manufacturing company, had a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. In the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, a toxic gas leak spread from the plant into the community immediately killing more than 2,000 people and injuring approximately 200,000 more. The Indian government, representing the victims, sued Union Carbide for damages due to corporate negligence. Union Carbide argued that the accident was the result of industrial sabotage. The courts awarded the victims hundreds of millions of dollars that the company paid years later—but it never allowed the international executives in charge of the plant to be put on trial. To this day, Indians still push for the extradition of Union Carbide's then-CEO Warren Anderson to face criminal charges of homicide through neglect. The only employees to face trial over the Bhopal Disaster were seven Indian nationals. Both international and local activists and organizations responded to the Disaster in India and around the world as it shed light on the possible ramifications of slack safety, security and emergency regulations within the industrial world.

December 11, 1984—South Africa

• As a bishop in the Anglican Church of South Africa, Desmond Tutu was in a unique position to travel—both domestically and internationally—and speak out against apartheid in his home nation. He traveled around South Africa and the world giving talks against Apartheid and orchestrating international sanctions against his homeland until Apartheid ended. But he also advocated non-violence in the struggle against apartheid and in 1984 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Following his acceptance speech in December 1984, stricter international sanctions on South Africa were put into place.

 

March 11, 1985—Soviet Union/Cold War

• In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. Under this new leader, the Soviet Union experienced the most wide-ranging changes of its history. Gorbachev first introduced perestroika —literally meaning "restructuring" in Russia. Under this policy, the Soviet Union restructured its economics to give wider leeway to industrial managers over production amounts and pricing. It also allowed for private ownership of some businesses. Gorbachev also initiated social, military and political transformations. He started the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988, reestablished relations with China, called for glasnost ("openness") among political entities, allowed more freedom of speech domestically, asked for a reduction in the nuclear arsenals, and eventually accepted the collapse of communism in Eastern Bloc nations.

July 15, 1985—International

• To review obstacles to the implementation of goals set in the 1^st and 2^nd Women's Conference, the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the UN Decade for Women met in Nairobi, Kenya in July 1985. Almost 2,000 delegates representing the 157 member nations attended, with an additional 12,000 attendees at the NGO parallel forum. Their focus was on achieving gender equality at the national level and the promotion of female participation in peace and development efforts within individual nations.

July 25, 1985—South Africa

• Amid the arrests and deportations of many protest leaders, masses of young South Africans determined to make their townships "ungovernable" led riots and strikes that became the new norm and the South African government declared a state of emergency. Within five years, roughly 53,000 black South Africans were arrested—some 10,000 of those being children. Those arrested were denied their right to trials and were often tortured by their guards. In response to the riots, strikes and state of emergency, South African President P.W. Botha gave his "Rubicon Speech" to a worldwide audience that declared his commitment to apartheid and the continued imprisonment of Nelson Mandela despite international and domestic pressure.

August 20, 1985—United States/Cold War

• During U.S. President Ronald Reagan's second term, he faced a scandal involving arms sales to Iran and the funding of guerrillas in Nicaragua. Over the next two years, the United States government investigated the Iran-Contra Affair—a scandal over the secret selling of arms by U.S. government agents to Iran (despite an American embargo on that nation) and the application of money from those sales to fund the anti-Communist forces, known as Contras, in Nicaragua (an action that was prohibited earlier by the U.S. Congress) that were fighting a guerrilla war with the leftist, but popularly elected, Sandanista government. Domestically, the scandal was not over whether or not these illegal actions had been carried out; but rather regarding how high up knowledge over the transfers went within the White House. Internationally, the United States experienced widespread criticism over its willingness to work with terrorist organizations; which critics declared empowered the latter and undermined the credibility of the former. Nicaragua filed a suit against the United States in the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) over violations committed against Nicaraguan sovereignty. Nicaragua won the suit and the ICJ ordered the U.S. to pay reparations—but the United States used its permanent position on the Security Council to veto any enforcement of the legal decision.

January 15, 1986—Guatemala

• Following the 1954 CIA-led coup in Guatemala, the nation was led by a series of military dictatorships. Then in 1960, guerrilla rebels embarked on a decades-long civil war with the government. In the early 1980s, the government's reaction to the rebels entered its most violent period yet—known as La Violenci, or "The Violence." The military's brutal treatment of the entire Guatemalan population resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths AND an outcry from the international community. Under pressure from other nations, the army ended its control over the government and on January 15, 1986, the first civilian president in decades took office. Ten years later, former guerrilla parties agreed to a cease-fire (as they had continued the civil war despite the shift in government control) on the basis that they be allowed to form political parties.

January 29, 1986—Uganda

• After five years of the National Resistance Army trying to overthrow Uganda's Milton Obote, government troops staged a military coup and deposed the corrupt and violent leader. So, while the corrupt Obote was no longer in office, a civil war continued between the government troops and the National Resistance Army. But it only lasted for one year before the National Resistance Army (NRA) emerged on top. Led by Yoweri Museveni, the NRA took over the running of Uganda. In an attempt to remove ethnic clashes, Museveni established a "no party" system and restored traditional kingships within Uganda. The nation adopted a new constitution just ten years into Museveni's rule that established free presidential elections that Museveni won. During his time in power, Uganda has accepted assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight poverty, waged a successful campaign against AIDS, initiated an affirmative action program for women and held free presidential elections every five years. On the other hand, Museveni has won all of those elections (as of 2016,) and Uganda has repeatedly been accused of meddling in neighboring nations while committing voter fraud within its own borders. So, like most nations including the United States, the international community views Uganda as having many pluses and minuses as it contemplates Uganda's future.

February 7, 1986—Haiti

• Since its independence in 1804 from France, Haiti has had multiple forms of government. From 1915 to 1935, its government was run by the United States as a means of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine and keeping European nations from invading over debts. Following the American occupation, there was a brief period of just over two decades involving Haitian political reforms. But in 1957, François Duvalier used his election as president to establish himself as a dictator for life (he changed the Haitian constitution—although he didn't use the word "dictator.") Known as "Papa Doc," his was a brutal regime that included several attempts to oust him—though none were successful. In 1971, "Papa Doc" died and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier took over. During the 1970s, the valuable tourism industry picked up—but with the rise of AIDS and its increasing numbers in Haiti in the early 1980s, tourism fell again. "Baby Doc" was more of a playboy (albeit of the dictator-type) than a statesman and conditions deteriorated quickly leading to unrest and then uprisings in the mid-1980s. On February 7, 1986, "Baby Doc" fled for France—he did not return to Haiti for another 25 years, at which point he was placed under house arrest until his death. Haiti has had a rocky political history ever since.

April 15, 1986—United States/Libya

• After years of deteriorating relations between the United States and Libya due to Libyan funding of suspected terrorist groups around the world, the United States imposed sanctions against Libya that increased the pace of rising hostilities between the two nations. In the preceding years, the United States gathered evidence on Libyan terrorist plots—some were carried out and some were thwarted. But in early April 1986, Libyan terrorists succeeded in bombing a known hangout for U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany. The United States retaliated by dropping bombs on the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi on April 15^th. The United Nations condemned the attack. And, two years later, Libya claimed responsibility for the bombing of a plane in route to the United States that exploded in air over Scotland, killing all aboard.

 

 

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