The American Presidential Election of 1892

Causes of World War Two (Drake's "Hotline Bling" Parody)

Why did the Cold War REALLY end?

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Many often use those six famous words by Ronald Reagan to conveniently summarize an oversimplified version of how the Cold War ended. Those words harken the assumption that the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union are to credit for leading its peaceful demise. True, both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev deserve much credit for helping the world get past this conflict that shaped much of the twentieth century, but historians have consistently debated why the Cold War really ended ever since. There is no definitive consensus.

John Tirman articulates three main schools of thought regarding why the Cold War ended, each neatly fitting into three political ideological camps of right, center and left. In the conservative camp, Tirman describes the interpretation that the aggressive policies of Reagan, with his strong language and militaristic expansion, intimidated Moscow so much that it bankrupt itself. The centrist view contends that the Cold War started to end almost right after it began, during the Truman administration. This interpretation argues that the decades-long policies of containment‒whether it be through the nuclear race, proxy wars, or foreign aid to the Third World‒ultimately led to the Soviet demise. The third perspective, according to Tirman, is that the massive militarism and imperialism of the United States during the Cold War caused the American public to revolt. Fed up, they pressured their leaders for a more peaceful end to the strained relationship. This narrative is usually associated with the New Left intellectuals who emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Tirman favors this narrative, calling this revolt “one of the great achievements of the twentieth century.” Indeed, in 1981, about one-third of Americans wanted all nuclear weapons destroyed. By 1983, that number was about four out of five. Reagan himself shocked many Americans when he announced his goal of eliminating nuclear missiles. However, Tirman acknowledges that narrative isn’t entirely complete.

Most people who lived during the height of the Cold War, even during its later years, simply did not see the Soviet empire collapsing so abruptly. Even in 1989, Kenneth Waltz wrote, “(The Cold War) is firmly rooted in the structure of postwar international politics, and will last as long as that structure endures.” Michael Cox writes, “For over 40 years careers had been made, journals produced, books written, budgets justified and international conferences organized on the assumption that something would continue to exist: the Soviet Union.” According to Cox, an ignorant understanding of the Soviet Union caused a widespread failure to anticipate the end of the Cold War. Many Americans assumed the Soviet Union was stronger than it actually was. Cox argues it was so weak that it is amazing it lasted as long it did. The Cold War, therefore, ended not because any side “won,” but because of one side’s inevitable collapse. Still, historians continue to debate what caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Did external factors outweigh internal or vice versa? Is the abruptness of its collapse evidence for why it did? Was its collapse really as abrupt as it seemed? By examining the following sources hopefully answers to these questions will become clearer.

In The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis claims that George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev had no clue how monumental of a year 1989 would be. “Calculated challenges to the status quo, of the kind John Paul II, Deng, Thatcher, Reagan, and Gorbachev himself had mounted over the past decade, had so softened the status quo that it now lay vulnerable to less predictable assaults from little-known leaders, even from unknown individuals.” Despite the token acknowledge of “unknown individuals,” Gaddis still seems to lend much of his narrative of how the Cold War ended to the Great Man theory. His heroic illustrations of John Paul II, Deng, Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev and others can downplay the grassroots nature of the fall of the Soviet Union. Sure, it is easier for historians to write a narrative by connecting major, influential characters, but much is lost between those connections, and often those characters are just reacting to events beyond their control.

Timothy Garton Ash did have a clue how monumental year 1989 would be. He is a British historian who witnessed firsthand how Eastern Europe was transforming. He was there for the establishment of Solidarity in 1980, and watched events evolve throughout the decade. In places like Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, he recalled how relatively peaceful the revolution was, comparing it to the Revolutions of 1848. While he credits John Paul II for sparking the changes and pays tribute to the hands off approach of Gorbachev, ultimately Ash credits the most the same revolutionary conditions Alexis de Tocqueville described in France in the 1840s and 1850s. The rulers no longer believed in their right to rule. “In fact the ruling elites, and their armed servants, distinguished themselves by their comprehensive unreadiness to stand up in any way for the things in which they had so long claimed to believe, and their almost indecent haste to embrace the things they had so long denounced as ‘capitalism’ and ‘bourgeois democracy.’”

The Eastern Europeans freed themselves, and Gorbachev let them, but often it’s not him getting the credit. Ronald Reagan often gets the credit. According to Victor Sebestyen, it’s often for the wrong reasons. “The classic narrative is that the toughness of Ronald Reagan brought down the evil empire of the Soviet Union. But Reagan was misunderstood...It was only after Gorbachev emerged and Reagan tried a new, more conciliatory approach that a process began which ended the Cold War.” In his book, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, James Mann goes much more in depth about Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War, and reaches the same conclusion. Mann argues that Reagan’s military buildup and tough talk during his first term did not end the Cold War‒his decision to work with Gorbachev his second term did. “If Reagan had not been responsive, then events might have taken a different course during the crucial period from 1985 to 1989.” Travis Cram claims Reagan’s pragmaticism and principles do not have to be at odds with each other. “Reagan’s strong opinion of the Soviets, when coupled with his pragmatic hope for dialogue, sometimes threw up barriers as it simultaneously created opportunities.” To some, this seems reckless, but Cram, Mann, and several others still credit Reagan more than all others to helping end the Cold War.

And yet, Gorbachev risked so much more than Reagan did, to a point where his own people turned against him. As Conor O’Clery points out in Moscow, December 25, 1991, as the rest of the world adored Gorbachev as evidenced by his Nobel Peace Prize, Russians resented him due to their perception that he weakened the nation. Gorbachev was a principled man who stood firm on issues when a growing number of people hated him and supported his political rival, Boris Yeltsin. O’Clery writes of Ted Koppel’s interview of Gorbachev on December 25, 1991. “Koppel asks if Gorbachev could retain power if he wanted, given that he is still head of the Soviet armed forces. ‘There are people who change their positions to make sure they keep power,’ replies Gorbachev coyly. ‘To me that is unacceptable. If what is happening didn’t matter to me and if I wanted to remain in government more than anything else, then that would be not too difficult to achieve.’” Gorbachev knew there would be pain for Russians, and probably knew his reforms would take years if not decades to truly improve his country, yet he held firm on his policies. Reagan lost fans, too, but he didn’t have to risk his country’s standing in the world like Gorbachev did.

Much like his entire country, Deng Xiaoping seems to get less attention from Western historians regarding his prominent role with ending the Cold War. Gaddis writes of Deng’s role transforming China from a command economy into a market economy, but he spends less than two pages doing so. David Barboza writes, “Historians have largely focused on Mao, the revolutionary commander-philosopher who led the Communist takeover in 1949. But scholars have begun to conclude that it was Deng, Mao’s diminutive and long-suffering lieutenant, who deserves credit for truly reshaping China after Mao’s death.” If the Cold War was mostly about free markets versus controlled markets, and if its historiography relies on Great Man theory, then Deng should be included as someone who helped end it. Deng ended communism and embraced capitalism (albeit without explicitly admitting it), and he did so long before the Soviet Union collapsed. Admittingly, Deng’s role could be diminished due to his reactions to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.

Paul Krugman writes that capitalism ended the Cold War. He discounts the role of technological change and globalization because despite those two developments the Soviet economy still worsened. “The market does not require people to believe in it; but the centrally planned economies that live inside a market economy, known as corporations, do...Luckily, under capitalism an individual company can fail without taking the whole society down with it - or it can be reformed without a bloody revolution.” He adds that the Soviet Union succeeded during World War Two because it successfully managed a huge amount of production.

Some argue that consumer capitalism, in particular, ended the Cold War. Emily Rosenberg writes, “Communist promises of future consumer abundance seemed increasingly hollow. West European and Japanese citizens embraced consumerist lifestyles beyond the dreams of those in Communist systems.” After calling for “modernization” in China, Xiaoping established an open-door policy toward the West and Japan. Consumerism swept through the country with breaktaking speed. The “Roaring Twenties” of the United States were the “Roaring Eighties” of China, as household savings between 1978 and 1990 went from $1.85 billion to $62.5 billion. Although there were tighter controls compared to China, by the 1980s more than 90 percent of Soviet households had a television and received programming from the West.

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch write about the impact of the television show Dallas on Romania. It was one of the few Western shows allowed by President Nicolae Ceausescu because he was convinced that it was against capitalism. However, that decision backfired tremendously. While Ceausescu's people faced widespread poverty under his Communist regime, the characters of Dallas seemed to benefit greatly from the fruits of capitalism. “In demystifying wealth production‒and pouring enough sex, scandal and whiskey to drown communism here and abroad‒"Dallas" arguably stimulated our domestic political economy every bit as much as the Reagan-era tax cuts.” Unlikely figures like David Hasselhoff and household names like the Beatles and Pink Floyd also helped bust through the Iron Curtain, thanks to outlets like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. In reality, capitalism created an environment for consumers to desire Western culture, and consumers in the Eastern bloc seemed to want it more than everybody else. “One need go no further than to visit any of these countries and be bombarded with offers to buy the visitors’ shoes, blue jeans, even the shirt off one’s back, to perceive the hunger for things Western in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.”

The American government knew how influential music could be defeating Communism. In fact, the Carter administration helped the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band become the first American band to tour in the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Soviet government was worried about the influence of American music. Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB officer, writes in his memoir, “(Rock culture) was believed to present a danger to Communist ideology, and the Party bosses wanted the KGB to stamp out these insidious influences.” In the Soviet Union during the 1960s, rock and roll records could not be sold or played on the radio. Despite the fact that Communist governments aggressively tried to ban rock music, the underground movements in the Eastern bloc just grew more rapidly and sophisticated. Fans used x-ray film to create recordings that could only play a few times before wearing out and they made electric guitars from whatever scraps on the street they could find.

The effort to undermine Soviet control through music grew in the 1970s as more and more bands produced songs in their native languages. In Czechoslovakia, authorities arrested a band called The Plastic People of the Universe for “disturbance of the peace.” In reality, they were arrested for what they represented‒open rebellion against the Communist regime. This action directly inspired dissidents like Václav Havel to create the text of Charter 77. During the late 1980s, Western artists like David Bowie and Michael Jackson performed in West Berlin and pointed the speakers over the Berlin Wall into East Berlin. In each instance, East German authorities tried to break up the crowds only to create riots and chants of “tear down the wall!” Rock and roll was more of a political force in Communist countries than it was arguably anywhere else.

Scholar Adam Roberts describes three additional causes to the end of the Cold War that have yet to be mentioned. First of all, he argues that a stable international system made it possible for people to take political risks. The United Nations played an active role with helping with the Soviet Union implement new policies. In addition, there were no major regional conflicts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Western powers, through detente and other measures, were no longer seen as a terrible threat to Soviet security. Interestingly, Gaddis argues that detente was ultimately ineffective and just systematized. “For just as the Cold War had frozen the results of World War II in place, so detente sought to freeze the Cold War in place. Its purpose was not to end that conflict...but rather to establish rules by which it would be conducted.”

Related to detente is the second cause to which Roberts attributes ending the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords. Roberts argues the Helsinki process helped establish a basis for human rights within the Eastern bloc and reinforced the idea that diverse states could compromise and cooperate.  Journalist Thanassis Cambanis echoes this sentiment. “The importance of Principle Seven (of the Helsinki Final Act),” he writes, “became evident almost before the ink was dry. Civic groups sprung up across the Eastern Bloc, determined to exercise their right to monitor their own governments’ compliance with Helsinki.” Cambanis argues the Helsinki Final Act represented an enormous paradigm shift. Without it, perhaps Charter 77, Solidarity, and the Moscow Helsinki Group wouldn’t even exist.

Political scientist Brian Frederking goes further, arguing that a series of “assertions, directives, and commitments” all led to the end of the Cold War. These “speech acts” represent the shift from the brinkmanship of the 1950s and 1960s to the pragmatic diplomacy of detente in the 1970s. They also represent the commitment to ideals by both sides in the Soviet Union. Ultimately, one’s side commitment proved to be delusional, and the other side proved to be inspirational.

Adam Roberts argues that nationalism is another major cause of the end of the Cold War, arguing that nearly all political developments which occurred between 1989 and 1991 involved it in some way. Just like Austria-Hungary before, the Soviet Union could barely hold on to its many different ethnic minorities. “The Soviet government’s responses, and sometimes non-responses, were shaped by a growing awareness both of the costs of maintaining a vast empire and of the failure of the Communist dream of overcoming national divisions within a new classless society.”

The nationalism of Afghanistan deserves special attention. According to Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash, the Soviet-Afghan War was a major factor for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Afghanistan consists of three major ethnic groups: Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. Both Tajiks and Uzbeks also resided within the Soviet Union, so there were many protests in this areas about an unjust war against people of the same ethnicity. Additionally, Reuveny and Prakash argue the war increased the perception that the Soviet Union was an evil empire. The original mission was to quell an uprising by unfriendly rebels, but as the years passed, the mission became unclear, and the media portrayed the Mujaheddin as helpless victims against an unjust superpower that committed horrible atrocities. After 1986, however, it was clear they were not helpless, as the United States had supplied them with plenty of missiles to defend themselves. Reuveny and Parkash argue the war demonstrated that the Red Army was weak and that the Soviet government had lost control over them. What started out as a small skirmish turned into a ten-year boondoggle. More than one million Red Army soldiers fought is this conflict, and tens of thousands were injured. Finally, Reuveny and Prakash claim that the Soviet-Afghan War led to an increase in glasnost, or an open discussion of political and social issues. The media had felt less restraints from the Communist Party, so they had reported more openly about how the war was really going, and this helped fuel its increasingly negative image. Reuveny and Parkash conclude, “It is only dramatic and significant events that cause empires to collapse, not ongoing standoffs—and the only event that fits this bill is the Afghan war, perhaps one of the most over-studied but underestimated military conflicts in the history of the twentieth century; one that analysts of the end of the Cold War continue to ignore at their peril.”

While most did not see the end of the Cold War coming, perhaps it’s important to evaluate someone who did. Herb Meyer, a former special assistant to the C.I.A. director, wrote a secret memo that predicted the end of the Cold War in 1983. He wrote, “The Soviet Union has failed utterly to become a country. After sixty-six years of communist rule, the Soviet Union remains a nineteenth-century-style empire, comprised of more than 100 nationality groups and dominated by the Russians.” He added that only half the country could even speak Russian, and that the Soviet economy was on the brink of disaster. “The East European satellites are becoming more and more difficult to control.” In other words, the Soviet Empire was a relic just barely holding on.

“The West had not won the Cold War; the Soviet side had lost it,” writes Brian Cozier. Cozier probably does best at summarizing a complex narrative. The evidence that gives credit to those who for ending the Cold War usually falls short. Perhaps historians waste their time examining why the Cold War ended‒ they should be examining why the Soviet Union failed. It’s almost cliche to argue that freedom was an undercurrent to every explanation why the superpower fell. However, the leaders who influenced its destruction, the developments within the United States, the triumph of capitalism over communism, the rise of consumerism and decline of tightly-controlled production, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, and multilateralism all revolved around a decline of totalitarianism. It took several decades for much of the world to discover that the less governments got involved with everything other than the general welfare, the better off everyone was. Sure, self interest still drives many decisions, but self determination has given more people a chance at a better quality of life. It’s no coincidence that the Cold War ended when overwhelmingly more people demanded this.

The American Presidential Election of 1888