| Response sheet 12, for class, Thursday | |
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The first reading for today is an excerpt from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” speech in 1983. It has become very discordant reading certain sentences in the context of today, amid, for instance, the resurgence of virulent racism and segregationism. In 1983 the context was the Reagan administration”s recent initial proposal to reduce strategic nuclear weapons, which after years of mutual objections would culminate in a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union signed in 1991 (just months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union). We will analyze the speech in class on Thursday, but your first step is to investigate some historical context. In answering the following, please provide your source and how you determined that the source was credible:1. How many nuclear weapons did the United States and the Soviet Union each have in 1983? In what form were those nuclear weapons? How modernized or outdated were each of their stockpiles? 2. How many nuclear weapons do the United States and the Russian Federation each have in 2025? In the immortal words of Monty Python: “And now for something completely different”: 3. Links on the course syllabus are to two short descriptions of what is called the “Salvadoran Civil War” from 1979 to 1992. How was that civil war so much more than a civil war? (Please cite specifics from the two descriptions.) |