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Modern America

The Soviet Union's successful launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 shocked the United States. Decades of scientific and industrial superiority left the US complacent. Congress quickly voted funds to improve public education, especially in the areas of science and math. President Kennedy would later vow to place a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

The interstate highway system created a housing boom, as many young couples moved out of the cities for newer homes in the suburbs.

By the end of the 1950s, 90% of households would have a television. From family entertainment to electronic babysitter, television would change the pattern of family life in America.

Teenagers would become an economic force in the 1950s. Part time jobs would fund entertainment purchases. Rock 'n' Roll with its musical roots in black, rhythm and blues and white, country and western sounds achieved a perfect synthesis in Mississippi truck driver, Elvis Presley.

Teen demand for movies that reflected their outlook on life became a burgeoning genre in the 1950s. Many were exploitive, sensationalizing the harsher aspects of juvenile delinquents. However, a number of films attempted to offer an insightful portrayal of out-of-control kids from the right side of the tracks, like Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean and Natalie Wood.

The innocence of the 1950s was rocked in 1963 by the assassination of youthful President John F Kennedy. In the years that followed, America would be rocked by racial violence in our inner cities, protests against an unpopular war in Vietnam, and an out-of-control youth culture listening to a revitalized rock 'n' roll imported from England.

 Reinterpreting American blues and rock music, the Beatles were the vanguard of the English musical invasion. The witty and charming quartet endeared themselves to a youth culture that was still grieving the death of President Kennedy. Their music would change and grow with the audiences that played their records.

Woodstock epitomized the sixties music scene. The small, upstate New York resort was invaded by straights, college kids, and counter-culture radicals. The three day art and music festival survived thunderstorms, inadequate restrooms, and chemical over indulgences.

The Seventies became a decade of limits. The Arab-Israel War of 1973 led to the first oil boycott, which was followed five years later by another. Soaring gasoline prices touched off continuing rounds of inflation. After three recessions in the decade, many thought that America would have to be content with less.

A poor economy, an unresolved war in Vietnam, and then a political scandal plagued America.  President Nixon began 1972 with dramatic breakthroughs with Communist China and the Soviet Union. With a reelection landslide in the making, few noticed the bungled burglary at the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate complex. But by winter, three top aides resigned. The next two summers provided riveting political drama as congressional committees investigated "what the President knew" and "when did he know it".

With Vietnam and Watergate finally on the backburners, political reformers concentrated on Equal Rights for Women  and the Environment. While the ERA did not pass constitutional muster, falling three states short of ensuring gender equality, the EPA was enacted. Oil spills and toxic waste landfills that contaminated neighborhoods would be cleaned and the perpetrators fined.

The recreational drug culture spawned in the 1960s met its match with the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Cheap but addictive, it plagued inner cities as well as small town America, previously immune from counter culture drug use. Crack babies were born addicted. Drug dealing led to neighborhood violence and economic decay.

The Cold War Revisited

With the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, tensions between the US and USSR eased as communist leaders maneuvered for power. Nikita Khrushchev emerged as party chairman, but faced a crisis in Hungary. In 1956 the satellite state overthrew the communist government imposed by Stalin and asked the US for recognition.

The brief uprising in Hungary was quickly put down by the Soviet military. There would be no aid from the US and there would be no independence from the Soviet Union. The "iron curtain" would remain in place under Khrushchev.

Meanwhile at home, Americans were learning to live with the constant fear that a nuclear attack from the USSR could come at any time. Fallout shelters and "duck and cover" drills became commonplace.

In the 1960s the Soviets sought to take advantage of the new US president, John F Kennedy. Berlin again became the epicenter of  the East-West struggle. This time the Soviets constructed a wall separating the two halves of Berlin.

In Cuba Fidel Castro's revolution created a communist stronghold ninety miles off Florida's coast. A failed CIA invasion to overthrow Castro made Kennedy look weak. Khrushchev sought to take advantage of the US blunder and placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The resulting showdown forced the USSR to remove the missiles, as the world avoided a nuclear catastrophe.

Seeking reelection in 1972, President Nixon launched a dramatic new policy, "realpolitik".  As outlined by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the US would strike separate deals with the rival communist superpowers. After twenty three years, the President opened relations with Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong [right]. Later he concluded a strategic arms limitation treaty, SALT, with the Soviet Union. This "detente" or cooperative period between the US and the two communist superpowers aided the US withdrawal from Vietnam.  However, it came to an end in the last month of the 1970s.  Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan to stop a Muslim takeover of the communist state. The US would back the Muslim rebels and the Cold War would resume. In a decade the Soviet Union would collapse from internal pressures exaggerated by this invasion. Another decade after that, the US would be attacked by the same Muslim rebels on September 11, 2001.

Since the UN granted independence in 1948, Israel has been engaged in five wars with her Arab neighbors. In 1956 she allied with Britain and France to reclaim the Suez Canal which had been nationalized by Egypt's charismatic president, Gamal Nasser. In 1967 the Israeli army captured and occupied territories in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Arabs attacked in 1972 during Yom Kippur and withheld oil from Israel's allies. In 1982 the Israelis battled Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon. And since the late-1980s, an internal Palestinian rebellion, or intifada, has embroiled Israelis and Arabs in ongoing bloodshed. Most recently Israel constructed a wall to prevent suicide bombers from entering her borders.

The US government maintained a long relationship with the former Shah of Iran, preventing a communist takeover in 1946, and restoring the young Shah in the mid-1950s after he was overthrown by a left-wing coup. The alliance continued until 1979 when Iranian militants, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini [left], overthrew the Shah and held 52 Americans hostage for over a year. President Carter's inability to secure their release contributed to his political defeat by Ronald Reagan the following year. Relations have remained strained. In a speech in 2002, President George W Bush referred to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an "axis of evil", for their attempts to secure weapons of mass destruction.

The symbolic end to the Cold War came during the closing month of the 1980s. Soviet leader Michiel Gorbachev's new policies of openness and restructuring led to the collapse of communist authority over the satellite nations of Eastern Europe. The flood of émigrés over formerly closed communist borders climaxed in Berlin's citizens destroying the Wall that had separated the city for almost three decades. As television beamed pictures of the united city, a new era in East-West relations began.

The Post Cold War World

Communism collapsed throughout Europe. The Soviet Union dissolved into fifteen different states, all seeking the promise of democracy and capitalism. In Asia, aging, totalitarian states reformed amid growing popular protests. Despite a crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989, the communist regime in China recently has sought to market its economic potential to the West. Vietnam normalized relations with the US a quarter century after ending its war. And only North Korea's impoverished and isolated regime continues the aggressive, Stalinist rhetoric.

The first test of this "new world order" came as Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Russia aided the US, instead of her former client Iraq. President George H W Bush was therefore free to assemble the coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait. Hussein's continued defiance of post-war agreements led President George W Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 and oust Saddam from power. No weapons of mass destruction were found, but US and British occupation is focusing on a process to begin democratic elections by June of 2004.

Peace is still illusive in the other Middle East flashpoint. The 1993 agreement between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed by the end of the decade. The continuing intifada has left hundreds of civilians dead as Palestinian suicide bombings led to retaliation by the Israeli military. A 2003 "roadmap to peace" is the latest chapter in the struggle to bring a lasting peace to this region.

The terrorist attack on the United States September 11, 2001 killed thousands and marked a new phase in US foreign relations. President George W Bush announced a War of Terrorism that would include "preemptive strikes" against nations that supported terrorism. The first campaign was launched against Afghanistan. The Taliban regime harbored Al Qaeda cells responsible for crashing passenger airliners into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. In 2003 President Bush launched a second military campaign against the regime of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, citing failure to comply with UN resolutions, human rights violations, and the need to destroy weapons of mass destruction. Currently no weapons have been found, but the process of democratization is slowly making progress.