Changes

==The Threat==

==The Threat==

The early Seventies saw the West demoralized and uncertain. The United States was traumatized by the [[Watergate]] affair and America's premature withdrawal from [[Vietnam]] led to [[Communist]] victories across [[Indo-China]]. This feeling of demoralization led to the election in 1976 of President [[Jimmy Carter]], the most [[liberal]] of all US presidents. Carter's presidency saw betrayal of US foreign policy: pro-American regimes in [[Latin America]] were abandoned, the [[Panama Canal]] was abandoned, the fight against Communism in other parts of the world such as [[Africa]] was abandoned in favor of a woolly-minded policy of ''[[detente]]'' towards the [[USSR]] (appeasement by another name) and, the pro-Western government and Shah of [[Iran]] were abandoned to the forces of Islamofascism, with results which reverberate today. The Iran Hostage Crisis was perhaps the lowest point of American foreign policy in this period.

The early Seventies saw the West demoralized and uncertain. The United States was traumatized by the [[Watergate]] affair and America's premature withdrawal from [[Vietnam]] led to [[Communist]] victories across [[Indo-China]]. This feeling of demoralization led to the election in 1976 of President [[Jimmy Carter]], at the time the most [[liberal]] of all US presidents. Carter's presidency saw betrayal of US foreign policy: pro-American regimes in [[Latin America]] were abandoned, the [[Panama Canal]] was abandoned, the fight against Communism in other parts of the world such as [[Africa]] was abandoned in favor of a woolly-minded policy of ''[[detente]]'' towards the [[USSR]] (appeasement by another name) and, the pro-Western government and Shah of [[Iran]] were abandoned to the forces of Islamofascism, with results which reverberate today. The Iran Hostage Crisis was perhaps the lowest point of American foreign policy in this period.

[[Britain]] was becoming "the sick man of [[Europe]]", as power seemingly slipped from elected institutions to unelected, and often communist-dominated, trade unions. Strikes became more frequent and damaging to the economy, already under strain due to rising [[oil]] costs, the legacy of the 1973 [[Yom Kippur War]]. The efforts of [[Edward Heath]] to control the unions failed when he lost a general election in 1974; the subsequent [[Labour Party]] government, led by [[Harold Wilson]] and from 1976 by [[James Callaghan]], routinely caved in to union demands.

[[Britain]] was becoming "the sick man of [[Europe]]", as power seemingly slipped from elected institutions to unelected, and often communist-dominated, trade unions. Strikes became more frequent and damaging to the economy, already under strain due to rising [[oil]] costs, the legacy of the 1973 [[Yom Kippur War]]. The efforts of [[Edward Heath]] to control the unions failed when he lost a general election in 1974; the subsequent [[Labour Party]] government, led by [[Harold Wilson]] and from 1976 by [[James Callaghan]], routinely caved in to union demands.