Less than a year after Reagan left office after the end of his second term, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War essentially ended in 1991 after the Soviets experienced the Chernobyl disaster, the Baltic rebellions, and consumer demands for better quality products (Hoffman 2004).

According to David Williamson in the December 2003 issue of History Review, Berlin had become a symbol of the Cold War. The construction of the wall had divided East and West Germany for several decades however this long period of detente in Europe was based on the status quo in German and Berlin, "which was underwritten by what was perceived to be nuclear parity between the superpowers" (Williamson 2003). Yet when it became clear that Russia was no longer strong enough to maintain this status quo, the East German state crumbled and Berlin once again became the capital of a united Germany (Williamson 2003)....
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