Echoes of the 1980s: Inflation, wars, and slowing growth resurface globally

The decade was also marked by the so-called "Star Wars". This was an American effort to bankrupt the USSR by pretending to develop space-based weapons

“Brezhnev took Afghanistan, Begin took Beirut and Galtieri took the Union Jack”. Circa 1983, Roger Waters offered some incisive commentary on the geopolitical fun and games of the ’80s. The Soviet Union was into the fourth year of the occupation of Afghanistan. Israel had waltzed into Lebanon, and enabled two bloody massacres in Palestinian refugee camps. Argentina under General Galtieri had occupied The Falkland Islands and the UK had recaptured the Falklands.

 

Iran, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, and Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, were doing their best to wipe each other’s nations off the map. The US was trying to