Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on 1979 to 1982, examining the new challenges to the existing order and assesses the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua and their consequences for regional and global politics. It discusses the domestic turn to the right in Britain and the US after the elections of two New Right thinkers, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The book considers the nature of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe at a time of the war in Afghanistan and the rise of Solidarnosc. It turns to developments in Africa twenty years after decolonisation and deals with Deng Xiaoping’s economic changes and the clampdown on democracy in China. The book explores some of the global concerns that united people across the world and considers their response to the threat of nuclear war, unemployment and famine in Ethiopia.