The end of the Cold War is often considered a bit of a geopolitical anomaly. In 1980 the increasing antagonistic relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union caused many to fear that the conflict was once again on the path to nuclear fallout. President Regan famously characterized the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and while Soviet media described U.S. foreign policy as “nuclear insanity.”
Then suddenly, things quickly shifted. The two superpowers started cooperating and even more surprisingly the Soviet Union collapsed by the end of the decade and just like that the Cold War ended. As historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed “Wars, hot or cold, do not normally end with the abrupt but peaceful collapse of a major antagonist.” So what changed in those 5 years that brought about the end of the Cold War?
Simon Miles is an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, and his recently released book Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War seeks to answer this question among several others. The book focuses on the often overlooked period of the early 1980s. Was this shift in relations as abrupt as it appeared? To what extent did popular perception of the conflict reflect the reality of the situation?
Grab a copy of Simon's book: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501751691/engaging-the-evil-empire/
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Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/
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In a special episode, Policy 360 joins a panel of Duke University experts for a debrief the day after election day 2020. Sanford professors Mac McCorkle, Director of POLIS: Center for Politics, and Deondra Rose, director of Research at POLIS: Center for Politics, moderate a discussion with four other professors here at Duke.
John Aldrich is a professor of Political Science and an expert on politics in the United States.
Duke Law School professor Guy-Uriel Charles is an expert on constitutional law, election law, campaign finance, and more political issues in the United States. He is also the Co-Director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race, and Politics.
Public policy and journalism professor Bill Adair is the director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Bill also created the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Politifact.
Judith Kelley is the Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy. She is an expert in international relations and has written extensively about election observation in an attempt to monitor democracy across the world.
Watch the entire video from the Zoom event: The Day After Election Day: An Expert Recap:
https://bit.ly/3oXy801
Subscribe to the Policy 360 podcast: social.sanford.duke.edu/Policy360_ApplePodcasts
Read the episode transcript: https://sanford.duke.edu/articles/day-after-election-day-expert-recap-policy-360-podcast
Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/
Music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/