Topic - Who Ended the Cold War

Who Ended the Cold War?

Ronal Regan didn’t win the cold war

1.     Flawed claim that Regan’s confrontational first term and large military build up was important in undermining the Soviet economy

• Although defense spending was a large share of Soviet economy, but this pre-dated Regan presidency
• Soviet economy began to stagnate by 1975
• By Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, many Soviet leadership knew their economy was beset by long term problems
• Eroding work discipline, rising alcoholism, wasteful investment, and Soviet’s failure to integrate computer technology into production owed nothing to Regan military build-up which began 1981

2.     Untrue that Regan’s policies prompted beleaguered Soviet hardliners to promote the reformist Gorbachev as Communist party leader

·       Gorbechev’s rise to power was unrelated to Regan administration’s hostility to Soviets

·       Only Gorbachev's premature ascension to power and extraordinary departure from prior Soviet leadership patterns allowed for the stunning breakthroughs of the late 1980s

·       Gorbachev's ideas, including his belief in the need to fundamentally reform the Soviet economy and to pull the superpowers away from the nuclear brink were not influenced by Reagan's stridency

·       Gorbachev and his key ideological ally, Alexander Yakovlev, had recognized the fundamental weaknesses in the Soviet system years before

·       European social democratic thought and universal humanism, the latter embodied by dissident nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, most shaped Gorbachev's "new thinking."

·       Gorbachev's political mentor, the former KGB head Yuri Andropov, who was acutely aware of the bottlenecks, breakdowns and discontent in the Soviet system, also influenced Gorbachev's understanding of the need for significant internal change.

3.     Star Wars was not a significant factor

·       Soviet leadership was initially nervous about SDI

·       However, under Andropov (Brezhnev's immediate successor), Star Wars merely prompted a further chill in US-Soviet relations

·       Only when Gorbachev came to power did the two sides decisively alter their relationship

·       This happened first at Reyjkavik in 1986, when Reagan and Gorbachev nearly agreed to scrap their entire nuclear stockpiles

·       The sticking point, it turns out, was Gorbachev's insistence that Reagan confine Star Wars research to the laboratory

·       Reagan's refusal to do contributed to the collapse of those negotiations

·       In fact, the first major arms reduction agreement between the two sides -- the 1987 treaty eliminating Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) in Europe -- became possible once Gorbachev dropped his objection to Reagan's continued pursuit of SDI

·       Once Gorbachev's key scientific advisor told him that SDI was not viable, Gorbachev saw no point in making it a bone of contention

·       So, when the Soviets took SDI seriously, as Reagan had hoped, Gorbachev was more resistant to deal-making. Once Gorbachev stopped worrying about SDI, significant arms reduction ensued

Conclusion

·       The subsequent Soviet collapse was almost entirely an internal affair

·       Gorbachev's far-reaching reforms unleashed long-suppressed nationalist currents and other opportunistic political elements

·       End of the Soviet empire does not owe itself to Reagan's tough anti-communism.

·       Owed to Gorbachev's arrival on the world scene and Reagan's recognition that he was now sitting across the table from a truly transformative world leader