818 Chapter 30 Running on Empty, 1975–1991
1973 Israel, aided by United States, defeats Egypt
and Syria
1973– Arabs impose oil embargo
1974
1974– Gerald Ford serves as president after Nixon’s
1976 resignation
1975 Vietnam War ends when South Vietnam falls
1976 Jimmy Carter is elected president
1978 Egypt and Israel sign Camp David Accords
1979 Jerry Falwell founds the Moral Majority
Muslim militants seize U.S. Embassy in
Tehran, Iran
United States recognizes People’s Republic
of China
1980 Soviet troops invade Afghanistan
U.S. rescue mission in Iran fails
Ronald Reagan is elected president
1980s Entrepreneurs’ merger movement leads to huge
corporate debt1981 Iran releases U.S. hostages
Reagan appoints Sandra Day O’Connor to
Supreme Court
1981– War persists between Iran and Iraq
1988
1984 Reagan is reelected president
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes premier of the
Soviet Union
1986 Reagan secretly sells arms to Iran to finance
Nicaraguan Contras
1988 Republican George H. W. Bush elected president
1989 Gorbachev allows Eastern European nations to
establish independent democratic governments
1990 Iraq invades Kuwait
1991 UN forces, led by the United States, drive Iraqi
forces from Kuwait
Soviet Union is dissolved; Boris Yeltsin becomes
president of RussiaMilestones
Chapter Review
Key Terms
Camp David Accords A 1978 peace treaty
between Egypt and Israel, mediated by President
Jimmy Carter, signed at Camp David, a presiden-
tial retreat near Washington, DC, 803
Iran-Contra affair Scandal involving high officials
in the Reagan administration accused of funding
the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in violation of
1984 Congressional laws explicitly prohibiting
such aid. The Contra funding came from the
secret sale of arms to Iran, 813
Iranian hostage crisis Protracted crisis that began
in 1979 when Islamic militants seized the
American embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held scores
of its employees hostage. The militants had been
enraged by American support for the deposed
Shah of Iran. The crisis, which lasted over a year,
contributed to President Jimmy Carter’s defeat in
his reelection campaign in 1980, 803
Moral Majority A term associated with the organi-
zation by that name, founded in 1979 by the
Reverend Jerry Falwell to combat “amoral liber-
als,” drug abuse, “coddling” of criminals, homo-
sexuality, communism, and abortion, 806
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) A cartel of oil-producing nations in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America that gained sub-
stantial power over the world economy in the
mid- to late-1970s, 798
Persian Gulf War The 1991 war following Iraq’s
takeover of Kuwait; the United States and a coalition
of allies defeated the army of Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein but failed to drive him from power, 817
Reaganomics A label pinned on President Ronald
Reagan’s policies of tax cuts, social welfare cuts,
and increased military spending; it generated huge
federal deficits, but also promoted the reorganiza-
tion of large corporations, 805
stagf lation A term coined in the 1970s to describe
the period’s economic downturn and simultane-
ous deflation in prices, 801
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) The concept of
a space-based missile defense system—popularly
known as “Star Wars,” after the movie by that
name—proposed by President Ronald Reagan in- Controversial and costly, the concept was
never fully realized, 807