YIJC Prelim 2025 SBQ Suggested Approach

1 Yishun Innova Junior College 2025 JC2 H1 History Prelim exam: 8838/01 Suggested answer guide Section A: Question 1 1a. Compare and contrast the evidence provided in Sources A and B on the superpowers’ strategic geopolitical priorities during the 1987 Washington Summit. [10] How are the sources similar/different? Similarity • Inference: Both sources A and B are similar in terms of demonstrating that both the United States and Soviet Union prioritised the altruistic peacekeeping aim of nuclear disarmament to ease the tensions between the Western and Eastern blocs and establish peace and security in Europe. • Evidence: In Source A, Reagan emphasises the importance of ‘deep reductions in these offensive weapons’ and ‘agreed to reach agreements’ with ‘Gorbachev on reducing the levels of U.S. and Soviet long-range, or strategic, nuclear arms’ as part of a broader effort to reduce reliance on ‘mutual assured destruction.’ Similarly, in Source B , Gorbachev resonates with Reagan’s sentiments by underpinning the ‘signing of the treaty on the elimination of two classes of nuclear missiles’ as the summit’s main outcome and expresses hope for the ‘deepening of positive tendencies’ in nuclear disarmament. • Explanation: This reflects a shared superpower interest in de- escalating the arms race and reducing the threat of nuclear confrontation, indicating that disarmament was a common geopolitical priority despite ideological differences. Difference • Inference: Both sources A and B are different in terms of their divergent superpowers’ geopolitical priorities regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), reflecting their contrasting geopolitical concerns . While the United States fervently regarded the continued development of SDI as essential to deterring future Soviet aggression and ensuring strategic superiority even against the backdrop of easing Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union viewed SDI as the ultimate threat to genuine disarmament and advocated for its discontinuation/termination/halt/suspension to uphold the peacekeeping spirit of the 1987 Washington treaty. • Evidence: Source A highlights Reagan’s defense of the SDI program, asserting that the continued ‘development of SDI would do much to make the world safer’ as it functions as a ‘defense against offensive missiles.’ He presents SDI as part of a broader strategic shift away

2 from a reliance on mutual deterrence, where nations ‘hold each other hostage to nuclear terror and destruction.’ However, Source B reflects Gorbachev’s strategic concern that the expansion of SDI mirror ‘dangerous tendencies’ of rearmament which could ‘undermine the nascent turn in the process of demilitarizing international relations,’ thereby threatening the fragile progress prospects made in the disarmament agreement of 1987. • Explanation: While Reagan viewed SDI as an American defense mechanism rather than its weaponisation for future aggression — inte