From economic meltdowns to environmental catastrophes, the 1980s were marked by choices that continue to impact our world today. Join us as we examine the decade's most consequential missteps, from the mishandling of global health crises to political scandals that shook nations to their core.
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00:00My fellow Americans, I have spoken to you from this historic office on many occasions and about many things.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at disastrous political and economic choices from the 1980s that even decades later reverberate across the globe.
00:16The tanker, the Exxon Valdez, had just loaded more than a million barrels of Alaskan crude.
00:22Latin American debt crisis. Borrow, borrow, and borrow some more.
00:27This was the economic philosophy of many Latin American nations during the 1960s and 70s.
00:32Lured in by low interest loans, they sought to fund ambitious infrastructure projects and modernize their nations.
00:39Quieren ganar dinero? Vengan, vengan.
00:42Then the 1980s came and brought with it a perfect economic storm.
00:46Global recessions, soaring interest rates, and plummeting oil prices.
00:51Countries like Brazil and Mexico found themselves drowning in debt, unable to keep up with mounting interest payments.
00:57The crisis peaked in 1982.
01:00After August of 82, pretty much all Latin American countries defaulted.
01:04Mexico announced to the world that it could no longer meet its debt obligations.
01:09For Latin America, the 1980s was la decada perdida, or the lost decade.
01:15Economies stagnated, unemployment skyrocketed, and widespread social unrest spread across South America.
01:22Savings and loan crisis.
01:24By 1986, U.S. local banks faced an existential crisis.
01:29Originally, savings and loan banks specialized in long-term fixed-rate mortgages.
01:34Stability was everything.
01:36Stable interest rates made mortgages safe for both homeowners and banks.
01:40A soaring inflation of the late 1970s changed everything.
01:43As inflationary expectations have been worsened, business and other borrowers are also tempted to use credit to finance speculative ventures.
01:54The Federal Reserve stepped in, hiking interest rates dramatically.
01:58This shift left S&Ls in a bind.
02:00They were paying higher interest on new deposits while stuck with low-yield long-term loans.
02:06Enter Reagan-era deregulation.
02:09Well, this administration's objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans with no barriers.
02:18Without anyone looking over their shoulders, S&Ls ventured into the realm of high-risk investing without any expertise whatsoever.
02:25Reckless lending and fraud were rampant.
02:28We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison.
02:38By the mid-90s, nearly a third of S&Ls collapsed.
02:41American taxpayers had to shell out over $100 billion in bailouts.
02:46And now we know what happens when you destroy financial regulation.
02:50You produce a financial catastrophe.
02:53Worldwide failure to manage HIV-AIDS.
02:56In the early 1980s, gay communities were struck by fear of a nameless disease.
03:01The only thing I can liken it to is a war zone, but most of us have never lived in a war zone.
03:07But it was, as you never knew where the bomb was going to drop.
03:11Rumors spread of a gay cancer striking at the heart of the community.
03:14The disease, which turned out to be HIV-AIDS, wasn't just ignored by world governments.
03:20It was politicized to an appalling degree.
03:22Last Friday I started noticing difficulty swallowing.
03:27And it got progressively worse over the weekend to the point where I didn't want to eat.
03:35Religious leaders and policy makers around the world dragged their feet.
03:39Some even called AIDS divine punishment.
03:42In America, President Reagan stayed silent for years, letting the crisis explode.
03:47By the time action was taken, millions were infected worldwide.
03:51People who, because they had been diagnosed, suddenly disappeared.
03:57And we all knew what that silence meant.
04:00It wasn't just a public health disaster. It was a worldwide moral failure.
04:05The tide finally turned in 2003 with PEPFAR, an aid program that has saved over 25 million lives.
04:11Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many.
04:20Soviet war in Afghanistan.
04:22It's Christmas 1979, and Soviet tanks are rolling into Afghanistan.
04:27The first Soviet invasion of a country outside the Eastern Bloc since World War II.
04:32A communist superpower is hoping to prop up a faltering communist government in the face of overwhelming Islamic resistance.
04:39Moscow envisioned a swift intervention.
04:41What they found was a grueling, decade-long quagmire.
04:45Soviet forces faced huge resistance from the Mujahideen.
04:49Islamic rebels were bolstered by covert American support and supplies.
04:54Tonight, the Russians accused the United States of preparing to give the rebels in Afghanistan massive supplies of arms and equipment.
05:01The war drained USSR's coffers, sapped its morale, and was a significant contributing factor to their eventual collapse.
05:14Unfortunately, America fared no better.
05:16They refused to contribute to the country's rebuilding after more than a million civilians were killed.
05:22They left a vacuum that would ultimately be filled by both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
05:26And the Taliban came marching along from Kandahar to city to city to city, saying, we're going to make the cities safe for you again.
05:36The Tiananmen Square Massacre.
05:38Students have been the cornerstone of civil protests for centuries, espousing lofty ideals in search of justice and social change.
05:45In the spring of 1989, however, thousands of Chinese students found only sorrow.
05:51They flooded into Tiananmen Square, demanding political reform and personal freedom.
05:56They turned Tiananmen Square, the country's symbol of sovereignty, into a hub of dissent and protest.
06:01They staged peaceful protests for weeks as the world looked on, hopeful that it could spark a new Chinese revolution.
06:08When June rolled in, those hopes were dashed.
06:11The Chinese government sent in troops and tanks to quell the unrest.
06:15The military massacred unarmed civilians, scattering or arresting survivors.
06:20One man alone, of course, can't stop an army.
06:23Except for a moment, that's exactly what happened here.
06:26For three minutes in the middle of the day, an army was stopped by a man who stood still.
06:32The official death toll is unknown, with estimates ranging from a few hundred to several thousand.
06:37Thirty years on, it is still impossible to openly mark the anniversary in mainland China.
06:43Vigils are held every year in Hong Kong, attended by tens of thousands.
06:47The crackdown crushed any potential reform movement, ushering in decades of iron-fisted rule.
06:54African famine crisis and mismanagement.
06:57Famines have occurred for all of human history.
07:00Oftentimes, Mother Nature is at fault.
07:02The African famines starting in the 1980s are a different story.
07:06It's dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korum, it lights up a biblical famine.
07:13They began with horrific droughts, exacerbated by governmental mismanagement.
07:18Civil wars, corruption, and Cold War politics turned localized food shortages into mass starvation.
07:24Ethiopia's 1983-85 famine was the worst, killing over a million people by some estimates.
07:31The most difficult thing that I can never forget in my life is that,
07:36to go into the camp and choose from, make a choice of those young children, lactating mothers, and elderly people.
07:48All the while, local warlords and corrupt officials hoarded aid.
07:52Somalia and Sudan faced similar tragedies, with famines lasting long into the next decade and beyond.
07:59The global response was, and is still, slow and inadequate.
08:03Even Live Aid's record-breaking charity concert failed to fix systemic issues.
08:08The region is now trapped in a decades-long cycle of dependency, economic ruin, and mass death.
08:14Exxon Valdez oil spill.
08:16In the wee hours of March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker was steaming through the Prince William Sound.
08:24Unfortunately, against company policy, only one officer was on the bridge.
08:29Suddenly, it crashed into Bly Reef, tearing open its hull,
08:33and releasing almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine Alaskan waters.
08:39I want to assure everyone that Exxon is mobilizing all available resources to mitigate the impact from this incident.
08:46This environmental catastrophe devastated local wildlife,
08:49killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals, and whales.
08:53The spill spread over 1,300 miles of coastline, making containment and cleanup efforts incredibly challenging.
09:00The storm had come up, and the oil was moving, and almost nothing could be done.
09:05It also devastated multiple local economies, especially indigenous coastal communities.
09:10The incident led to changes in environmental regulations and spurred advancements in oil spill response strategies.
09:17Sadly, those strategies have had to be employed time and time again.
09:21The news was again filled with the struggle to contain a massive spill.
09:26Iran-Contra Affair
09:28In one of the most backhanded and absurd confessions in political history, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation in March 1987.
09:35His speech was a masterclass in self-serving moralism.
09:38A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages.
09:43My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
09:50What did he mean? You know that whole Iran-Contra denial? Well, turns out I did it.
09:56The Iran-Contra scandal was a tangled web of illegal arms sales to Iran, with the proceeds used to secretly fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
10:05It was an end-around Congress who banned that aid to the Contras.
10:09The amendment restricted the CIA and Department of Defense from using funds to provide military assistance to groups that were trying to overthrow Nicaragua's government.
10:18When exposed, it shattered Reagan's image as a supposed straight shooter.
10:22Fortunately for the Gipper, some of his aides fell on their swords.
10:26Reagan walked away largely unscathed.
10:29The scandal further eroded trust in the government and set a terrible precedent for future presidential misdeeds.
10:36There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake.
10:41Chernobyl disaster
10:43Few disasters have been as nearly apocalyptic as the Chernobyl meltdown.
10:47The Soviet version is this. One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant near the city of Kiev was damaged.
10:54And there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died.
10:58On April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Soviet nuclear power plant exploded, unleashing a radioactive nightmare.
11:06The disaster was caused by a lethal mix of flawed reactor design and human error.
11:12When the worst American nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island, most leaking radiation was kept inside the containment building.
11:18Unlike this Soviet accident, where radiation has been measured 600 to 1,000 miles away.
11:24The Soviet culture of secrecy delayed evacuation and caused more suffering.
11:29When people were finally moved out of Pripyat, it was too late.
11:33Thousands were already exposed to deadly radiation.
11:36The Soviet Union downplayed the catastrophe, but the truth leaked out when radiation alarms went off in Sweden.
11:43Chernobyl is now a ghost city, its former citizens left to suffer with lingering health crises.
11:48Decades later, the exclusion zone remains a threat thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
11:54The Ukrainian government says a fire broke out after a Russian drone struck the shelter of the destroyed power unit at the plant.
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12:18America props up dictators around the world.
12:21After World War II, America made one thing clear. Communism was the ultimate enemy.
12:26It has been a global threat, manifesting itself from the Far East to Europe.
12:31To fight it, Washington was willing to make deals with devils in every corner of the globe.
12:36From Pinochet in Chile to Mobutu in Zaire, America propped up brutal strongmen across developing nations.
12:44But the 1980s saw this strategy unravel spectacularly.
12:48The Reagan administration funneled cash and weapons to violent regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala.
12:54There, death squads massacred civilians.
12:57Beginning, it's the first step. It should not be read, as far as I can tell, as a suggestion that either this administration wants
13:05or suggests to the American public in general that we are condoning, that we are sanctioning events that are occurring within Guatemala.
13:13In the Philippines, U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos looted billions.
13:18Even Saddam Hussein received American support during the Iran-Iraq war.
13:23Isn't that interesting? There I am.
13:27The world's city on a hill turned a blind eye to widespread suffering, all in the name of stability, and it failed.
13:34The blowback still haunts America today.
13:36Is there a particular decision you think the world is still paying for? Let us know down in the comments.
13:42I asked so many questions about the hostages' welfare that I didn't ask enough about the specifics of the total Iran plan.