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The end of the Cold War was unexpectedly abrupt, relatively peaceful, and unthinkable less than a decade earlier. In late 1983, fueled by Soviet meddling in the Third World, the Reagan administration’s uncompromising ideological rhetoric, and a renewed arms race, the Cold War reached its most dangerous phase since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then something remarkable happened. In 1985, the United States began serious negotiations with Soviet Union and its dynamic new leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Within two years, the superpowers had agreed to their first nuclear arms reduction treaty. Shortly thereafter, the USSR announced unilateral troop reductions in the Eastern Bloc and pulled out of Afghanistan. In 1989, the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet Union stood by as its East European satellites moved toward democracy. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved, and America, as the proverbial “last man standing,” proclaimed Cold War victory.

Looking back at the inflammatory “evil empire” rhetoric that had been the hallmark of his early administration in 1988, Reagan dismissed his harsh remarks as coming “from a different time, a different era.” To understand how the world arrived at this new era of international politics so quickly and without the cataclysmic violence predicted by some experts requires a multi-dimensional approach, encompassing diplomatic, military, economic, ideological, and cultural explanations. It is undoubtedly important to examine American foreign policy in the last years of the Cold War and America’s strategy of “peace through strength.” But it is equally vital to explore the impact of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” on Soviet policy and diplomacy. Moreover, the long-term influence of ideas and culture, felt both within and beyond the realm of diplomacy, were pivotal in shaping the Cold War’s peaceful conclusion. American and Soviet policymakers navigated a conciliatory course made possible through high-level interaction and by popular pressure on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

American Policy in the last decade of the Cold War

The Soviet-American détente of the mid-1970s was already in retreat when Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and conflict elsewhere in the Third World fresh in the new president’s mind, and concern with the specter of Soviet nuclear superiority a major campaign issue, the stridently anti-Communist former governor of California needed little incentive to hammer the final nail in Détente’s coffin. Moreover, in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis and facing a domestic recession, the administration’s first priority was to rebuild American strength and confidence. Reagan reinvigorated the Cold War, and the prospect for resolving the differences between Moscow and Washington appeared evermore unlikely.

Some observers have concluded that this chilling of the international climate—often described as “Cold War II”—was part of an elaborate strategy to bankrupt and ultimately crush the Soviet Union. Peter Schweizer’s appropriately titled, Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, argues that Reagan had a “comprehensive policy” and implemented a “strategic offensive” that effectively administered a “flurry of hard blows” to the Soviet Union. According to Schweizer, American policy underwent a “radical break from the past” as Washington adopted a wide range of aggressive policies designed to challenge the U.S.S.R. and strengthen America’s global position. Washington offered rhetorical support to Solidarity in Poland; provided financial and military aid to “freedom fighters” in Latin America and to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan; applied economic pressure to the Soviet Union and restricted the exportation of superior Western technology; issued direct rhetorical challenges to the Soviet leadership’s domestic and international legitimacy (encapsulated in Reagan’s famous denunciation of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”); and undertook an arms buildup—especially in the field of high technology (exemplified by the Strategic Defense Initiative)—that the Soviet Union could not match. The “cumulative effects” of these polices on the already weakened Soviet system prevented Moscow from weathering its own internal problems and extending the Cold War. Schweizer contends that with courage, clarity, and an astute understanding of the Soviet Union’s internal weakness, the Reagan administration brought the Cold War to a conclusion.

In a series of essays and articles, historian John Lewis Gaddis offers a more nuanced but still favorable interpretation of this military and ideological offensive. Although the Reagan administration lacked a plan to win the Cold War, Gaddis argues, its intense material and psychological buildup nevertheless demonstrated a shrewd appraisal of Soviet capabilities and intentions. In this account, “hanging tough paid off” by rebuilding American confidence, “spooking the Soviets,” and settling the Cold War on terms defined early in the Reagan administration. The president’s “strategic vision” placed incredible strain on the stagnant Soviet economy and forced Moscow into an untenable position. Reagan capitalized on Moscow’s predicament by recognizing that the Soviets had no choice but to make concessions to the United States in order to alleviate external pressure and to refocus on domestic transformation.

Perhaps the most notable chapter of this story is not the inflammatory rhetoric of the administration’s early years or its return to Cold War orthodoxy , but its remarkable shift in diplomatic posture. Beginning in late 1983, U.S. policy evolved from one of unremitting ideological opposition to the Soviet Union to one of negotiation, as Reagan and his team undertook a renewed effort to forge détente in a period identified by journalist Don Oberdorfer as “the turn.” What precipitated this remarkable transformation?

Some argue that the decision to enter into substantive negotiations with Moscow followed logically from the administration’s strategy of “peace through strength.” As Reagan’s secretary of state George Shultz outlined in his memoirs, Turmoil and Triumph: “when our country’s military strength was built up to a point where our Soviet rivals recognized that they could not match us, when they perceived that we might actually use our military strength to repel aggression . . . then came the turning point.” Believing that the United States would not and could not be taken advantage of with its confidence and power rejuvenated, Reagan led the United States down a path of peace—a peace negotiated on America’s terms.

Political scientist Beth Fischer’s Reagan Reversal draws on cognitive psychology to argue that Reagan underwent a sobering reappraisal of the Soviet relationship in the wake of what the president believed to be a “nuclear near miss.” In the fall of 1983, with Soviet-American tensions “burning white hot,” a confluence of international and domestic circumstances led Reagan and others to believe that a catastrophic nuclear war could result from dangerous miscalculations about the other side’s intentions. Reagan had nuclear war “on his mind” and acted more out of concern than confidence. Contrary to the distant, uninvolved management style he displayed on many issues, Fischer contends that the president “took the reigns of U.S.-Soviet policy and redirected it.” At first disbelieving that the Soviets could misinterpret American actions as aggressive, Reagan suddenly became empathetic to the Soviet perspective, which led him to identify a shared Soviet and American enemy: the prospect of inadvertent nuclear holocaust. This fear led him to prize negotiation over confrontation.

Like Fischer, Lawrence Wittner identifies an important shift in the Reagan administration in which the specter of nuclear power played a central role. Wittner, however, argues that pressure did not come from a psychological awakening. Rather, as he suggests in the The Struggle Against the Bomb, it was public pressure that led policymakers to conform to popular anti-nuclear sentiments voiced by “the biggest mass movement in world history.” The nuclear-freeze movement in the United States demanded a halt to the arms race and in 1982, activists organized one of the largest political rallies in American history. Concurrently, on the other side of the Atlantic, popular resistance to the placement of intermediate range nuclear weapons and cruise missiles in Western Europe created a transnational protest against Washington’s strategic buildup. Faced with pressure from both Congress and European allies, the Reagan administration reevaluated its approach to nuclear weapons, which permitted a transformation and softening of its position toward the Soviet Union.

Policymakers in Washington and Moscow struggled to maintain control of events once diplomatic negotiations began and the pace of events quickened. The Reagan administration was hampered by the Iran-Contra scandal, and the president’s successor, George W. Bush, displayed a cautious, “prudent” approach toward U.S.-Soviet relations. The Bush administration remained leery about the genuineness of the Soviet changes; as National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft stated, in reference to Gorbachev’s new initiatives, “he was attempting to kill us with kindness, rather than bluster.” Initial reticence aside, Strobe Talbot and Michael Beschloss argue in At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War that Bush developed an effective “partnership” with Gorbachev based on close personal consultations that, in the face of international crises and domestic opposition, “preserved and strengthened cooperation.”

Despite bilateral Soviet-American progress on arms control and diminishing tension in the Third World, the Cold War could not end until the division of Europe—the geographic and emotional heart of the conflict—was resolved. Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, in Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, contend that the Bush administration “set the tone” for the successful reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Iron Curtain by deciding to move “beyond containment.” Shrewdly playing an offstage role, Bush ensured that Europe would transform consistent with Western interests: NATO would remain intact with the reconstituted Germany as a member, the United States would continue to have a military presence in Europe, and German power would continue to be constrained in the post-1945 international structure. American statecraft accomplished this feat adroitly with due regard for the dignity of the Soviet Union, thus mitigating the effects of the jarring developments for Moscow. Diplomatic acumen not withstanding, why did the Soviet Union acquiesce so willingly to the changes in Europe?

The Soviet Union, Novoe Myshlenie, and the Ideas of the West

Soviet and East bloc behavior must be taken into account in order to avoid overly simplified assertions about America’s role in the demise of Communism. Just as the Reagan administration had initially demanded, the Soviet Union did take the “first step.” However, Moscow did not merely bend to America’s demands and negotiating positions. Rather, it unilaterally offered massive military cuts well beyond U.S. baselines, peacefully accepted the dissolution of its power in Eastern Europe, implemented deep economic and social reforms, and sought to transcend the Cold War.

Economic stagnation and social decay, prompted by both external pressure and internal shortcomings, necessitated some sort of change in the Soviet Union. These “material” explanations for the end of the Cold War—which include the “peace through strength” thesis—leave essential questions unanswered: why did the Soviet Union follow the unexpectedly peaceful and “liberal” path of reform once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power? Where did the ideas behind his New Thinking originate? How did Gorbachev and his cohorts successfully reorient Soviet policy? Most scholars believe that a slow erosion of the Soviet system and the infiltration of Western ideas behind the Iron Curtain, rather than a “flurry of hard blows” delivered by the Reagan administration, were central to ending the Cold War peacefully .

Raymond Garthoff’s The Great Transition typifies this line of argument. Garthoff, a former arms control official in the 1970s, applauds Reagan for displaying the flexibility that permitted the United States to embrace negotiation. He is critical, however, of what he regards as unnecessarily provocative American policies and is dubious of the claim that the Reagan military buildup won the Cold War. Garthoff has no qualms with Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet state and believes the containment doctrine effectively kept the Soviet Union in check long enough for the seeds of internal destruction to blossom. Nonetheless, he argues that Mikhail Gorbachev and the advent of novoe myshlenie—New Thinking—ushered the Soviet Union and the world into a new era. Gorbachev decided to reconceptualize Moscow’s global role and move away from the Marxist-Leninist belief in inevitable struggle and toward “acceptance of the interdependence of the world, the priority of all-human values over class-values, and the indivisibility of common security marked a revolutionary ideological change.” Gorbachev did not simply concede to American negotiating positions; he often went well beyond them in his effort to reshape Soviet foreign policy and end the Cold War.

As the Soviet Union confronted steadily dismal news in the early and mid 1980s, the proponents of New Thinking reached a “critical mass” and began to exert policy influence with the ascension of Gorbachev. However, as Robert English’s Russia and the Ideas of the West argues, a focus on New Thinking as a response to the Reagan challenge and the Soviet weakness of the early 1980s obscures the germination and meaning of New Thinking. According to English, New Thinking was an evolving “global-integrationist outlook” that existed among a small “policy-academic elite” since at least the 1960s. It was a complex set of ideas focusing on western political and social thought, the reevaluation of proper socialist models, and a reexamination of Soviet historical experience. Fundamentally, it represented a “westernizing” of the Soviet identity and expressed a Soviet desire to move toward European social-democratic models—to “rejoin the path of world civilization.”

How Western ideas came to influence the Soviet outlook, and thereby the course that Soviet policymakers chose as the Cold War melted, is a topic addressed by a growing body of scholarly literature. In Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain, Yale Richmond suggests that exchange programs in culture, education, information, science, and technology played a prominent role in increasing Western influence in the Soviet Union, particularly “among the people in Russia who count—the intelligentsia.” According to Richmond, the link between this exposure and the collapse of Communism is clear: the Cold War ended due to the “consequences of Soviet contacts and exchanges with the West, and the United States in particular.”

Beyond the impact of Western ideas on the Soviet intelligentsia and political elite, scholars have begun to explore the powerful appeal of American culture to the great mass of people in the Soviet bloc. Studies have been conducted on the impact of western music, consumerism, and pop culture in not only creating idealistic images of the United States, but also in highlighting the inability of Communist rule to provide the benefits of modern society and permit tangible manifestations of political freedom.

Walter Hixson suggests that it was the appeal of Western consumer culture and the prospect of the “American dream,” even more than the abstract principles represented in western democratic political and free market economic ideas, that fueled discontent and disillusionment, and eventually led to the disintegration of the Iron Curtain. In Parting the Curtain, Hixson contends that the driving force behind the transformation of the Eastern bloc was not simply the rejection of the Communist model in favor of capitalism, but peoples’ “pursuit of something greater (or perhaps shallower) . . . they longed for affluence, consumerism, middle class status, individual freedom, and technological progress.” John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney emphasize the influence of popular culture more directly. In an article in the journal Foreign Policy, they argue that “V.I. Lenin’s most potent ideological foils were John Lennon and Paul McCartney, not Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.” The appeal of the West and the freedoms it represented must be understood as the people behind the Iron Curtain understood them—in cultural and material forms. In other words, the United States and its allies may very well have played a preponderant role in the demise of Communism, but its influence has to incorporate dynamics beyond those of “high” diplomacy and grand strategy.

Conclusion

With the bulk of national security documentation for the later years of the Cold War still classified, existing scholarship still leaves much to speculation. This incomplete information, combined with the partisanship that dominates public debate over the end of the Cold War—particularly surrounding the proper legacy of Ronald Reagan in American history—indicates that we are far from achieving consensus on the meaning of the Cold War’s end. Peter Schweizer’s recent book, Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism, has distilled this episode into a paean to Reagan’s greatness in which the Gipper’s personal courage “made all the difference.” On the other end of the ideological spectrum, a compilation of essays by “leftist” historians, entitled Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History after the Fall of Communism, edited by Ellen Schrecker, questions whether the end of the Cold War should even be considered a “victory.” Historian Jeremi Suri has attempted to find common ground in the controversial and often contentious literature in an essay titled, “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?” Everyone can agree, he argues, that “a conjunction of internal difficulties and external pressures made some kind of major alteration of great-power politics almost unavoidable.” Both “personal will” and “propitious circumstances” were required to end the conflict.

The debate over the exact weight of the role played by individuals and larger social, economic, and ideological forces, as well as the motivations underlying the alterations in the international system, will continue well into the future. It would be a mistake, however, to privilege key individuals over broader forces in explanations of this important historical moment. Each contains important truths; together they move us closer to a fuller picture. At the same time, as this essay has tried to demonstrate, a more comprehensive understanding of the end of the Cold War hinges on a multinational approach that encapsulates political, cultural, military, intellectual, and economic history. With such daunting parameters, it is no surprise that this extraordinary development remains incompletely understood. That knowledge alone should temper ideologues as well as policymakers—on all sides of the political spectrum—who attempt to reap political advantage from the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

Cited Sources and Selected other References

English, Robert. Russia and the Ideas of the West Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War. New York : Columbia University Press, 2000.

Fischer, Beth. The Reagan Reversal : Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War. Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1997.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War : Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gaddis, John Lewis. “Hanging Tough Paid Off,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 45, No.1 (January/February 1989), pp.11–14.

Garthoff, Raymond. The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution, 1994.

Garthoff, Raymond. Detente and confrontation : American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution, 1994.

Hixson, Walter. Parting the Curtain : Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Hogan, Michael, ed. The End of the Cold War : Its Meaning and Implications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Ikenberry, John and Deudney, Daniel. “Who Won the Cold War?” Foreign Policy, no. 87 (Summer 1992), pp. 123-138.

Lebow, Richard Ned, and Stein, Janice Gross. We All Lost the Cold War. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Oberdorfer, Don. The Turn : From the Cold War to a New Era, 1983-1990 : The United States & the Soviet Union. New York : Poseidon Press, 1991.

Richmond, Yale. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.

Schrecker, Ellen, ed. Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History after the Fall of Communism. New York : New Press, 2004.

Schweizer, Peter. Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union. New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994.

Schweizer, Peter. Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism. New York : Doubleday, 2002

Shultz, George. Turmoil and Triumph : My Years as Secretary of State. New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993.

Suri, Jeremi. “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2002), pp. 60-92.

Talbott, Strobe, and Beschloss, Michael. At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. New York: Litte, Brown and Company, 1994.

Wittner, Lawrence. The Struggle Against the Bomb, Volume 3: Toward Nuclear Abolition, a History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Zelikow, Philip, and Rice, Condoleezza. Germany Unified and Europe Transformed : A Study in Statecraft. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1995.

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