The CIA remained a fixture at the heart of Indian civil debate throughout the 1980s. To the very end of the Cold War, the political fortunes of Indira Gandhi, and her son, and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, were intertwined with a series of espionage scandals in which, almost inevitably, the CIA figured prominently. This chapter examines the Reagan administration’s reliance of the CIA as a cold war foreign policy tool and its difficulties in securing Indian support to counter what officials in Washington perceived to be an alarming and unacceptable expansion in Soviet disinformation activity in the subcontinent. It explores the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and how these two tragic events came to be connected by South Asians with the Agency and its earlier CIA involvement in subversion and political assassination in the Global South. As the Cold War approached its end, and Hindu nationalism, rampant corruption, and political violence gripped India, the chapter considers why national powerbrokers in the subcontinent were once again unable to resist urging citizens to ‘look the other way’ and attribute the country’s troubles to a ubiquitous foreign hand?

This chapter examines the emergence of an ever closer energy relationship between Western Europe and the Soviet Union in the late Soviet period, leading to the construction of the first major natural gas export pipeline from Siberia to Europe.

In the early 1980s, Soviet–US relations, which had deteriorated since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, reached a new low under President Ronald Reagan, who imposed sanctions on the USSR and escalated nuclear build-up. This chapter investigates Moscow's growing challenges: a quagmire in Afghanistan, and a crisis in Poland in 1980–81, which very nearly resulted in a Soviet military intervention. The chapter documents internal Soviet debate on the pros and cons of invading Poland to quash the anti-Communist protests. It then recounts the Kremlin's response to Reagan's militant rhetoric: increasing paranoia, fears of a pre-emptive strike, and a renewed interest in better relations with China.

The efforts of academics, conservative think tanks, and political leaders on emphasizing markets and reducing government paid off after the election of President Ronald Reagan, which resulted in a new mix of government and markets, although not to the extent that many proponents of small government favored. There have been additional legal procedures and political oversight, which has made it more difficult to regulate some markets; government services have been outsourced, and government spending on regulation and social welfare has been reduced. Bill Clinton, influenced by the anti-government mood in the county, supported deregulation of telecommunications, welfare, and banking, but Congress reversed the banking deregulation after a Wall Street collapse in 2008 and was forced to spend billions of dollars to save the economy. Despite the anti-government mood, nearly all the laws and programs established in the New Deal and Great Society eras have remained on the books and have not been repealed. Besides the bailout, there were some other significant expansions of government including most notably the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obama Care.

The revelation that David Foster Wallace voted for Ronald Reagan caused surprise among Wallace’s readers, many of whom had seen Infinite Jest’s Johnny Gentle as an excoriating parody of Reagan’s persona and politics. While Gentle is undoubtedly a partial caricature, Wallace’s connection to Reagan, and indeed the concept of political leadership, is more complicated than it might first appear. In his essay on John McCain, Wallace uses Reagan to outline a difference between two political personae, suggesting that the first figure, a “leader,” whatever their moral foibles, has the ability to “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.” The second figure is a “salesman,” whose “ultimate, overriding motivation” (despite having the charisma of a leader) is “self-interest.” During Wallace’s career, his position on Reagan’s status gradually changes from the former to the latter, and this transition illuminates an important shift in both Wallace’s politics and the subjects of his writing, one particularly evident in the increased focus on “civics” in the later fiction.

Central to this shift is the short story “Lyndon,” which I argue is partially an analogy for Reagan’s second term and his response, or lack of response, to the AIDS crisis. The story is also, crucially, a dramatization of the death of “New Deal” politics and the steady encroachment of neoliberalism, this latter famously becoming the subject of intense critique in Wallace’s later writing, especially The Pale King, which is itself set in Reagan’s second term. Through a discussion of “Lyndon,” Infinite Jest, The Pale King and the McCain essay, and concluding with an analysis of Wallace’s unpublished short story “Wickedness” that features a dying Reagan, I argue that Reagan comes to stand as perhaps the figure of single widest-ranging importance to understanding the politics of Wallace’s writing.

Prisons in this country did not fill simply because crime went up, police arrested more people, and judges sent them to prison. The crime surge’s primary contribution was that it fostered an environment where politicians and the public became attracted to harsh criminal laws. The steady ratcheting up of the severity of American criminal law played a larger role in Mass Incarceration than the transitory crime rise. This chapter introduces the critical punitive pattern: crime leads to public outrage, and outrage leads to harsher laws.

The Water Quality Act of 1987 is a product of the ideas of federalism in place at the time of its development and passage. Driven by the "Reagan revolution," the 1980s was a time of substantial policy change as new imperatives such as states' rights, a smaller national government, an expanded role for the private sector, and deregulation came into vogue. The WQA is an expression of this policy environment, and represents several of these imperatives in the form of a revised infrastructure program to provide clean water. With a switch from a categorical grant to a block grant, the WQA exemplified a policy instrument consistent with the underlying tenets of the "Reagan revolution." This chapter examines the underlying elements of Reagan's philosophy of federalism, and details the ways in which the mechanisms and structure of the WQA reflect this philosophy. Finally, this chapter serves to lay the foundation for context of the development, implementation, and administration of the Water Quality Act.

The Great Migration ended in 1970 as manufacturing was replaced with electronic goods. Wages stagnated, and income inequality increased rapidly. This led to a new Gilded Age. Nixon replaced Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty with his War on Drugs. Blacks were opposed to Nixon’s Vietnam War, and he penalized them by incarcerating them. This, helped by state laws and President Reagan, led to mass incarceration – which became known as the New Jim Crow. Public education was reserved for suburban whites, while urban Blacks were in prison or attended underfunded schools. The Flint, Michigan, water crisis demonstrates the difficulty of urban Blacks as jobs and urban facilities disappeared. President Obama was the first Black president, elected in the financial crisis of 2008. The Supreme Court nullified the 1965 Voting Act as it had done with amendments in the 1880s. Obamacare was the most enduring achievements of Obama’s presidency.