A-Level History: Détente to the End of the Cold War, 1969–91

The Cold War's final act runs from handshakes to collapse in barely two decades, and A-level questions on 1969-91 demand both the treaty detail and the big causal judgement: did the West win it, or did the Soviet system lose it? This set builds the case.

The détente questions open with Brandt's Ostpolitik and its normalisation of relations with the East, then the superpower architecture: SALT I of 1972, tested through its two components — the interim launcher agreement and the ABM Treaty — and the Helsinki Accords of 1975, examined for their central bargain, the recognition of post-war borders.

The collapse of détente follows through Afghanistan in 1979 and its consequences — the boycotts and the frozen diplomacy — alongside NATO's Double-Track decision, tested as what it was: the response to Soviet SS-20 deployment. Reagan's escalation and the Strategic Defense Initiative are covered with the precision the sources reward, including SDI's space-based conception and its Star Wars label.

The endgame questions carry the analytical weight: Gorbachev's domestic reforms of glasnost and perestroika and the 'new thinking' abroad with its abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine, the summit sequence from Geneva through Reykjavik to the INF Treaty of 1987 — the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons — the revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Wall, the Two Plus Four Treaty's international settlement of German reunification in 1990, and the Soviet dissolution of 1991. Each explanation feeds the "victory or implosion?" essay that closes the course.

• Explain Ostpolitik and the architecture of superpower détente
• Analyse SALT I, the ABM Treaty and the Helsinki bargain
• Assess the collapse of détente after Afghanistan and the Double-Track response
• Evaluate Reagan's escalation, SDI and Gorbachev's new thinking
• Trace 1989, German reunification and the end of the USSR

Covers the period from détente to the end of the Cold War (1969–1991) as taught across A-level boards: Ostpolitik, SALT and Helsinki, Afghanistan and the Second Cold War, Reagan and Gorbachev, 1989, reunification and Soviet collapse.