This unit covers the years from Nixon's presidency in 1969 to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, a stretch when many Americans lost confidence in their government and the economy as Cold War tensions eventually eased. By the end, you should be able to explain why Watergate, oil shocks and the Iran hostage crisis shook public confidence, and how the U.S. moved from détente to confrontation to the end of the Cold War.
Start with the overview for the big picture, then work through each topic's notes and checkpoint question before reading the common mistakes at the bottom.
Unit 13 picks up after the turmoil of the 1960s and follows five presidents through a run of crises. The thread connecting them is confidence. Americans asked whether they could trust their leaders, whether the economy would keep growing, and whether the U.S. could still shape events overseas.
Honors US History Unit 13 covers Richard Nixon's presidency and the Watergate scandal (1969-1974), the energy crisis and stagflation of the 1970s, Jimmy Carter's presidency and the Iran hostage crisis (1977-1981), and the end of the Cold War, from Reagan's military buildup through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. You'll practice explaining causes and effects, such as how the 1973 oil embargo fed inflation, and making arguments, such as how much credit the U.S. deserves for the Soviet collapse.
Nixon's cover-up of the 1972 Watergate break-in led to the only presidential resignation in U.S. history. Congress responded by passing the War Powers Resolution in 1973 and new ethics laws later in the decade. Polls showed trust in the federal government falling sharply during these years.
The 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution sent energy prices soaring. Inflation and unemployment rose together, challenging the tradeoff between them that many policymakers expected. Factory jobs disappeared from the Rust Belt, and voters started to question the government's ability to manage the economy.
Nixon eased tensions through arms control and an opening to China. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter and then Reagan took a harder line. In Reagan's second term he negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms helped unravel the Soviet system by 1991.
Watergate, stagflation and the hostage crisis left many Americans convinced that government had failed them. Reagan won in 1980 by promising less government at home and more strength abroad. Within a decade the Soviet Union, weakened by its own economic problems, no longer existed. When you write about this unit, connect domestic frustration to the political shift it produced.
Nixon (1969-1974) had real foreign policy wins, and a scandal at home ended his presidency.
In October 1973, Arab members of OPEC cut off oil shipments to the U.S.
Carter, a former Georgia governor, won in 1976 by running as an honest Washington outsider after Watergate.
Reagan took office in 1981 promising to confront the Soviet Union.
Nixon (1969-1974) had real foreign policy wins, and a scandal at home ended his presidency. Working with Henry Kissinger, he pursued détente, a deliberate easing of tensions with communist powers. He visited China in February 1972. That May he and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT I agreements, including the ABM Treaty, which limited certain missile systems but did not end the nuclear arms race. In Vietnam, his policy of Vietnamization cut U.S. troops from over 500,000 to under 30,000 by late 1972 while bombing expanded. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 ended direct U.S. combat.
At home, Nixon's New Federalism sent federal money to states through revenue sharing. He also created the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, through an executive reorganization in 1970 and imposed wage and price controls in 1971.
Watergate began on June 17, 1972, when burglars tied to Nixon's reelection committee (CRP) broke into Democratic National Committee offices. The cover-up is what brought Nixon down. Reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, televised Senate hearings in 1973, and the discovery of a secret Oval Office taping system built the case. In United States v. Nixon (1974), the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that executive privilege didn't let him withhold the tapes. One tape showed him directing an aide to have the CIA ask the FBI to limit its investigation. Facing near-certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Gerald Ford pardoned him a month later.
Check yourself: Why did the Watergate cover-up matter more than the break-in? (Answer: The break-in was a burglary by campaign operatives, but the cover-up showed Nixon directing an aide to involve the CIA in limiting the FBI investigation. That conduct was grounds for impeachment.)
In October 1973, Arab members of OPEC cut off oil shipments to the U.S. to punish it for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The embargo lasted until March 1974, and oil prices roughly quadrupled, from about 12 a barrel. Americans waited in long gas lines, some states used odd-even rationing by license plate, and a national 55 mph speed limit followed. A second shock came in 1979, when the Iranian Revolution disrupted supply and prices more than doubled again.
The result was stagflation, meaning high inflation combined with high unemployment and slow growth. Many policymakers expected inflation and unemployment to move in opposite directions. The 1970s challenged that simplified tradeoff. Unemployment hit 9% in 1975, and inflation reached 13.5% in 1980.
Oil wasn't the only cause. Loose Federal Reserve policy had pumped money into the economy, and Nixon's 1971 decision to end the dollar's convertibility to gold added uncertainty. Nixon's price controls caused shortages, and Ford's voluntary "Whip Inflation Now" campaign did little. In 1979 Carter appointed Paul Volcker to lead the Fed. Volcker raised interest rates sharply, which caused a deep recession in 1981-1982 but brought inflation down. Meanwhile, deindustrialization closed factories across the Midwest, creating the Rust Belt.
Check yourself: Why did stagflation confuse policymakers in the 1970s? (Answer: Many policymakers expected a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. With both high, tools that cut inflation risked worsening unemployment, while tools that created jobs risked raising inflation.)
| 1973 oil shock | 1979 oil shock | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Arab OPEC embargo over U.S. support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War | Iranian Revolution disrupted Iran's oil production |
| Price effect | Roughly quadrupled, from about $3 to $12 a barrel | More than doubled between 1979 and 1980 |
| President | Nixon during the embargo; Ford during its aftermath | Carter |
| U.S. response | 55 mph speed limit, rationing, Strategic Petroleum Reserve (1975), fuel economy standards | Gas lines and rationing, Carter's 'crisis of confidence' speech, phased removal of oil price controls |
Carter, a former Georgia governor, won in 1976 by running as an honest Washington outsider after Watergate. He created the Department of Energy in 1977, but inflation and the 1979 gas shortages hurt his standing. In July 1979 he gave a televised speech about a national "crisis of confidence," later nicknamed the malaise speech, which many voters took as blaming them.
In foreign policy Carter made human rights a priority. He negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties (1977) and brokered the Camp David Accords (1978) between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin, which led to a 1979 peace treaty. Then two crises hit. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, so Carter asked the Senate to postpone consideration of the SALT II treaty, embargoed grain sales and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Iran had a long history with the U.S. The CIA had helped restore Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in 1953, and the Shah ruled harshly with U.S. support. In early 1979 a revolution forced him out, and Ayatollah Khomeini took power. When Carter let the Shah enter the U.S. for cancer treatment, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. They held 52 Americans for 444 days. A rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, failed in April 1980 and eight U.S. servicemen died. Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, and the hostages were freed on January 20, 1981, minutes after Reagan's inauguration.
Check yourself: Why did Carter's decision to admit the Shah into the U.S. set off the hostage crisis? (Answer: Many Iranians remembered the CIA-backed 1953 coup that restored the Shah, so they feared the U.S. was protecting him or planning to put him back in power.)
Reagan took office in 1981 promising to confront the Soviet Union. He called it an "evil empire" in 1983 and raised defense spending from about 250 billion by 1985. He proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile defense program with space-based and ground-based components that critics nicknamed "Star Wars." Under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. armed anti-communist groups such as the mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua. Secret arms sales to Iran to fund the Contras became the Iran-Contra scandal.
The Soviet economy was already stagnating from central planning, high military costs and the war in Afghanistan. Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985 and launched glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). Both reforms were meant to save the system but loosened the Communist Party's control.
In his second term Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev. Their 1986 Reykjavik summit ended without a deal, but in 1987 they signed the INF Treaty, which eliminated U.S. and Soviet ground-launched missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. In 1989 Gorbachev refused to use force to hold Eastern Europe. Solidarity won every freely contested lower-house seat and 99 of 100 Senate seats in Poland that June. The Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. Germany reunified in 1990. After hardliners failed in an August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, the Soviet republics broke away, and the USSR dissolved in December 1991, while George H.W. Bush was president.
Check yourself: How did Gorbachev's own reforms contribute to the Soviet collapse? (Answer: Glasnost let people openly criticize the government and expose its failures, while perestroika disrupted the planned economy without fixing it, so both weakened the Party's hold.)
| Approach | Years | Main tools | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Détente | 1969-1979 (Nixon, Ford, early Carter) | Arms control, trade, diplomacy with China and the USSR | SALT I and the ABM Treaty (1972) |
| Renewed confrontation | 1979-1985 (late Carter, first Reagan term) | Military buildup, aid to anti-communist rebels, sanctions | Olympic boycott (1980), SDI (1983) |
| Engagement | 1985-1991 (second Reagan term, Bush) | Summits and arms reduction with Gorbachev | INF Treaty (1987) |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Détente | The easing of Cold War tensions in the 1970s through arms control and diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China. |
| Watergate | The scandal that began with a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters and ended with Nixon's resignation after his cover-up was exposed. |
| Executive privilege | A president's claimed right to keep certain communications confidential, which the Supreme Court limited in United States v. Nixon. |
| OPEC | The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose Arab members embargoed oil to the U.S. in 1973-1974. |
| Stagflation | A mix of high inflation, high unemployment and slow growth that defined the U.S. economy in the 1970s. |
| Camp David Accords | The 1978 agreements between Egypt and Israel, brokered by Carter, that led to a lasting peace treaty between the two countries. |
| Iran hostage crisis | The 444-day captivity of 52 Americans seized at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. |
| Strategic Defense Initiative | Reagan's proposed missile defense program, nicknamed "Star Wars," which included space-based and ground-based components and alarmed Soviet leaders. |
| Glasnost and perestroika | Gorbachev's reforms of political openness and economic restructuring, which loosened Communist control and sped up the Soviet collapse. |
Nixon was never impeached. The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment in July 1974, but he resigned before the full House voted. What made impeachment likely was the cover-up, especially the tape showing him directing an aide to involve the CIA in limiting the FBI investigation, more than the break-in itself.
Inflation alone was nothing new. The 1970s were unusual because prices and unemployment rose together, which challenged the simplified expectation that they move in opposite directions. When you define stagflation, include both halves and explain why that combination made policy so hard.
The release happened on Reagan's inauguration day, so it's easy to assume he arranged it. Carter's administration negotiated the Algiers Accords in its final weeks. The hostages were released minutes after Reagan took office. The timing has often been interpreted as a final rebuke to Carter, though the agreement and transfer of Iranian assets also had to be completed.
Some accounts say Reagan's buildup bankrupted the USSR, and others credit Gorbachev or Eastern European protesters alone. A strong argument weighs several causes, including long-term Soviet economic decline, Gorbachev's reforms, popular movements like Solidarity, and U.S. pressure and diplomacy. Also keep the dates straight, because the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved two years later in 1991.