The Cold War's final decade unfolds through five flashpoints where Washington and Moscow tested each other's nerve. On Grenada, a violent coup installs a hardline Marxist government just three and a half hours from Miami, and US troops land overnight to take the island. In Nicaragua, rebels topple a brutal dictatorship only to govern as Marxists themselves, prompting a covert American funding operation that becomes the Iran-Contra scandal. Ronald Reagan unveils the Strategic Defense Initiative, a laser-based missile shield so ambitious the press nicknames it Star Wars, and the film weighs fears that it could unbalance the entire nuclear standoff. Mikhail Gorbachev arrives promising economic reform and an end to confrontation, sitting down with Reagan to begin dismantling nuclear stockpiles, while Soviet troops pull out of Afghanistan only to leave the Mujahideen still fighting. Archival footage and newsreel material carry the narration through each episode, tracing how superpower rivalry played out from Central America to Kabul in Reagan's last years in office.