Chapter 40 Terms and Definitions

Reaganomics: Ronald Reagan's economic program of large tax cuts, deregulation, and reduced domestic spending, grounded in supply-side theory.
Supply-Side Economics: The theory that cutting tax rates, especially on businesses and high earners, stimulates investment and growth enough to eventually raise overall tax revenue.
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981: Reagan's signature legislation cutting federal income tax rates by roughly 25 percent over three years.
Paul Volcker: Federal Reserve chairman whose tight-money, high-interest-rate policy broke the inflation of the 1970s at the cost of a sharp early-1980s recession.
Federal Budget Deficit: The annual gap between government spending and revenue, which nearly tripled the national debt during the Reagan years.
"Evil Empire" Speech: Reagan's 1983 characterization of the Soviet Union, reflecting his administration's early hard-line Cold War rhetoric.
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): Reagan's proposed space-based missile-defense system, nicknamed "Star Wars," which alarmed Soviet leaders despite never being fully built.
Reagan Doctrine: Policy of providing U.S. support to anti-communist insurgencies fighting Soviet-aligned governments, including in Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
Invasion of Grenada: A brief 1983 U.S. military operation that removed a Marxist government on the Caribbean island, the first major American combat action since Vietnam.
Moral Majority: A politically influential evangelical Christian organization founded by Jerry Falwell that mobilized religious conservatives for Reagan's coalition.
Sandra Day O'Connor: Reagan's 1981 Supreme Court appointee, the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Iran-Contra Affair: A 1986 scandal in which administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran and illegally diverted the profits to fund Nicaragua's Contra rebels.
Contras: Rebel forces fighting Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government, whose funding by the Reagan administration violated a congressional ban.
Oliver North: National Security Council aide who became the public face of the Iran-Contra affair during televised congressional hearings.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Reform-minded Soviet leader from 1985 whose policies of glasnost and perestroika helped end the Cold War and hastened the Soviet Union's collapse.
Glasnost: Gorbachev's policy of political "openness," relaxing censorship and repression in the Soviet Union.
Perestroika: Gorbachev's program of market-oriented "restructuring" of the stagnant Soviet economy.
INF Treaty (1987): Landmark agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev eliminating an entire class of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
Fall of the Berlin Wall: The November 1989 collapse of the concrete barrier dividing East and West Berlin, symbolizing the end of Cold War division in Europe.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The December 1991 breakup of the USSR into independent republics, ending nearly 45 years of Cold War rivalry.
George H. W. Bush: Reagan's vice president and successor as president (1989–1993), who guided the peaceful end of the Cold War and led the coalition in the Gulf War.
Operation Desert Storm: The January–February 1991 U.S.-led coalition military campaign that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein: Dictator of Iraq whose 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered the Gulf War.