1979-20XX[]
1979[]
January 1: The United States and China normalize diplomatic relations.
January 7: Vietnam deposes the Khmer Rouge and installs a pro-Vietnam, pro-Soviet government known as the People's Republic of Kampuchea.
January 16: the Iranian Revolution ousts the pro-Western Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and installs a totalitarian theocracy under Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
February 17: Sino-Vietnamese War begins. China launches a punitive attack on Vietnam as punishment for invading Cambodia.
February 22: Saint Lucia becomes independent from the UK.
May 4: Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, becoming the first female to lead a major Western democracy.
May 9: Civil war breaks out in El Salvador between Marxist-led insurgents and the U.S.-backed government.
June 2: Pope John Paul II begins his first pastoral visit to his native Poland. June 18: U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, sign the SALT II agreement.
July 3: President Carter signs the first directive for financial aid to opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, Afghanistan.
July 16: Saddam Hussein becomes President of Iraq after Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr steps down.
July 17: Marxist-led Sandinista revolutionaries overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. The Contra insurgency begins shortly thereafter.
August 3: Francisco Macias Nguema was deposed by a coup led by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
September: Nur Mohammed Taraki, The Marxist president of Afghanistan, is deposed and murdered. The post of president is taken up by Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin.
November 4: Islamist Iranian students take over the American embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution. The Iran hostage crisis lasts until January 20, 1981.
December 12: NATO Double-Track Decision – NATO offers mutual limitation of ballistic missiles combined with the threat that in case of disagreement NATO would deploy more middle-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe. The Soviets refuse their offer, and NATO announces the deployment of two new medium-range nuclear missile systems, the BGM-109 GLCM (Ground-Launched Cruise Missile) and Pershing II.
December 21: the Rhodesian Bush War ends with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement. Zimbabwe is granted independence from the United Kingdom.
December 24: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to oust Hafizullah Amin, beginning the Soviet–Afghan War and resulting in the end of Détente.
1980[]
January 3–4: President Jimmy Carter withdraws the SALT II Treaty from Senate confirmation and bans technology sales to the Soviet Union.
January 27: the Carter Doctrine commits the United States to defending the Gulf States from external invasion.
February 13: Britain's MI6 commences its indirect and direct covert operations in Afghanistan, to support the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet intervention.
February 25: a military coup occurred in Suriname eventually lead to the establishment of a military regime in the country.
March 21: the United States and its allies boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics (July 15 – August 3) in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
April 17: Robert Mugabe becomes Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
April 30: Iranian Embassy in London is taken over by DRFLA militants starting a 6-day-long hostage situation.
May 4: Josip Broz Tito, communist leader of Yugoslavia since 1945, dies at the age of 88 in Ljubljana.
May 17: Peru begins experiences a civil conflict between the government and the Marxist–Leninist guerilla groups, most notably the Shining Path.
May 18–27: an anti-government uprising occurrs in Gwangju, South Korea.
July 3: the CIA begins Operation Cyclone - a program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
August 31: In Poland the Gdańsk Agreement is signed after a wave of strikes which began at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk. The agreement allows greater civil rights, such as the establishment of a trade union, known as Solidarity, independent of communist party control.
September 22: Saddam's Iraq started to invade Iran, which ignites the Iran–Iraq War.
October 23: Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin (in office since 1964) resigns due to ill health, he dies on December 18. His replacement is Russian-Ukrainian statesman Nikolai Tikhonov.
November 4: In a stunning upset, conservative Ronald Reagan wins the 1980 Presidential election in a landslide victory, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
1981[]
January 17: martial law is lifted by Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos in preparation for the visit of Pope John Paul II.
Ronald Reagan is sworn in as 40th President of the United States by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger.
January 20: Ronald Reagan inaugurated 40th President of the United States. Reagan is elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of détente.
January 20: Iran hostage crisis ends after 444 days.
April 1: the United States suspends economic aid to Nicaragua.
April 6: the Somaliland War of Independence was waged by the Somali National Movement in northern Somalia.
August 19: Gulf of Sidra Incident: Libyan planes attack U.S. jets in the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya has illegally annexed. Two Libyan jets are shot down; no American losses are suffered.
September 21: Belize becomes independent from the UK. 1,500 British soldiers remain to deter Guatemala from attacking the country over territorial disputes.
Kalashnikov-wielding gunmen open fire on the Presidential Stand during the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
October 6: Assassination of Anwar Sadat. During a military parade, Egyptian soldiers suddenly break formation and open fire on the stand where Sadat is reviewing them.
October 27: a Soviet Whiskey-Class submarine, the S-363, runs aground not far from the Swedish naval base at Karlskrona.
November 23: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) begins to support the anti-Sandinista Contras.
General Jaruzelski announces the beginning of martial law in Poland in an address to the nation, December 13, 1981.
Martial law begins.
December 13: Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, having been appointed First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, introduces martial law, which drastically restricts normal life, in an attempt to crush the Solidarity trade union and the political opposition against communist rule in Poland.
1982[]
February 24: President Ronald Reagan announces the "Caribbean Basin Initiative" to prevent the overthrow of governments in the region by the forces of communism.
March 22: President Ronald Reagan signs P.L. 97-157 denouncing the government of the Soviet Union that it should cease its abuses of the basic human rights of its citizens.
April 2: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, starting the Falklands War.
May 30: Spain joins the NATO alliance.
June 6: Israel invades Lebanon to end raids and clashes with Syrian troops based there.
Victorious British troops following the liberation of the Falklands from Argentinian control.
June 14: The Falkland Islands are liberated by British task force. End of the Falklands War.
November 10: Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union, dies at the age of 75.
November 14: Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the KGB, succeeds Brezhnev and is elected the new General Secretary by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev's funeral is held in red square. Among the pallbearers is Dmitry Ustinov, Minister of Defense, and Yuri Andropov, KGB Chairman, to the right (in black coat).
November 15: Brezhnev's funeral is held in Moscow. He is buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square.
1983[]
January: Soviet spy Dieter Gerhardt is arrested in New York.
"To ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
March 8: In speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, President Reagan labels the Soviet Union an "evil empire".
President Reagan addressing the nation from the Oval Office at the White House on the Soviet threat and the start of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, March 23, 1983.
March 23: Ronald Reagan proposes the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars").
June 5: The Second Sudanese Civil War begins.
July 7: ten-year-old Samantha Smith accepts the invitation of Soviet premiere Yuri Andropov and visits the Soviet Union with her parents. Smith had written to Andropov to ask if he would "vote to have a war or not?" Smith's letter, published in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, prompted Andropov to reply and invite the girl to the U.S.S.R. The widely publicized event leads to other Soviet–American cultural exchanges. July 22: martial law in Poland is lifted.
July 23: the Sri Lankan Civil War begins between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government.
July 30: Sri Lankan government bans all its major communist parties claiming they were involved in ethnic riots, Soviet Union intervenes to unban the parties.
August 4: Thomas Sankara overthrows Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo and becomes president. He also renamed the country of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso a year later.
August 21: Former senator Benigno "Ninoy" S. Aquino, a prominent opponent of the Marcos regime, is assassinated at Manila International Airport by Filipino intelligence operatives on the orders of President Ferdinand Marcos.
Demonstrators gather near the White House demanding justice after the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007, September 1983.
September 1: civilian Korean Air Lines Flight 007, with 269 passengers, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald, is shot down by Soviet interceptor aircraft. Days later, demonstrators gather outside the White House in Washington, D.C. demanding justice for the victims.
September 26: The 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident occurs. The USSR's nuclear early warning system reports launch of multiple U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, correctly identifies them as false alarms. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack based on erroneous data on the United States and its NATO allies, which likely would have resulted in nuclear war and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
October 25: U.S. forces invade the Caribbean island of Grenada, overthrowing the Communist government, expelling Cuban troops, and aborting the construction of a Soviet-funded airstrip.
Pershing II tactical nuclear missile under US Army Military Police guard is deployed. Note the PASGT helmets.
November 1: First Pershing II missiles arrive in West Germany. Peace groups hold large demonstrations opposing the deployment of the missiles, fearing they would make prime targets for a nuclear first strike.
November 5: Politburo member and military industry Secretary Grigori Romanov delivers a speech to assembled members of the CPSU at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses in Moscow during the annual celebrations of the October Revolution. His speech attracts international attention after he made the following remarks: "The development of events in the world arena demands from us the highest vigilance, restraint, firmness and unremitting attention to the strengthening of the country's defense capability... Perhaps never before in the postwar decades has the situation in the world arena been as tense as it is now... Comrades! The international situation at present is white hot, thoroughly white hot." Western analysts, unaware of the growing tensions between East and West due to the Able Archer exercise, dismiss his remarks as propaganda.
November 7: Exercise Able Archer 83 begins – the Soviets misinterpret NATO's exercises as a cover for an actual NATO attack; in response, Soviet nuclear forces are put on high alert. Submarines are ordered to leave their bases in the Kola Peninsula and move out on to patrol in the North Atlantic.
Point of divergence: Late in the afternoon of November 7, Soviet and East German forces cut off all air and road links to West Berlin in an attempt to dissuade NATO from going through what the Soviets believe is an intent to attack the USSR and its allies. East German tank divisions move to seal off all access to the western sector of the city. This results in a face-off between the two superpowers, and soon many begin to fear that war may be imminent. NATO goes to a high state of operational residence, raising their counter-surprise alert level to "ORANGE" (enemy attack expected in the next 36 hours). The West German parliament, the Bundestag, declares a state of emergency. Civilian traffic and communications are restricted to official use only.
Meanwhile, a top-level meeting is held in the Kremlin - among the attendants are Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov, Warsaw Pact Supreme Commander General Viktor Kulikov, and General Mikhail Zaitsev, Commander of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG). Ultimately, they decide on an invasion of West Germany to end what they perceive as the "NATO threat" once and for all. Andropov gives the final orders, and hours later the invasion commences.
(For a more detailed description, read the World War III (The Watershed).)
November 8, 09:00 GMT (UTC+2) The invasion begins with heavy Soviet airstrikes on airbases and other military installations in West Germany. The Soviets have created three "fronts", each responsible for offensive operations in their corresponding area of West Germany.
At the same time, East German and Soviet marines stage a massive amphibious landing at the town of Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein, just 60 miles north of Hamburg. News of the outbreak of war results in panic in countries like Britain and the US; grocery stores are quickly crowded and emptied by panicked shoppers. NATO forces, surprised by the magnitude of the assault, struggle to hold back the Warsaw Pact forces, committing most of their ground troops to push back the beachhead in the North. Hours later, East German and Soviet ground forces drive through the Fulda Gap to divide the outstretched NATO armies and capture major cities, including Nuremberg. It soon becomes clear that conventional weaponry will not be enough to stop the enemy advance; NATO ultimately makes the fateful decision to use tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Soviets from reaching the Rhine. The Pershing II missiles stationed in West Germany are readied for launch.
November 9, 1:00 GMT (UTC+2): NATO airbursts several tactical nuclear weapons delivered via Pershing II missiles and aircraft over advancing Soviet troops. Hundreds of enemy soldiers, tanks and equipment are vaporized in an instant. The Soviets respond with tactical nuclear strikes on NATO airbases.
November 10: A single TN-1200 free-fall nuclear bomb hits the US Army installation on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. Half an hour later, several American F-111s take off from RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, England. After successfully penetrating East German airspace, they fire AGM-69 SRAM nuclear air-to-surface missiles, all hitting major Soviet field headquarters - the main operating bases for the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany's units. The GSFG's own headquarters is also destroyed.
| ||||||||||||||||
