Who ended the Cold War?
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Who ended the Cold War?
By Paul C. Demakis
November 5, 2009
MONDAY WILL mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
an event that heralded the end of the Cold War. American conservatives
give credit for the Cold War’s end to Ronald Reagan, but both Reagan
and Gorbachev played big roles in ending the Cold War.
Gorbachev was the fourth Soviet leader during Reagan’s presidency.
Relations between the two countries were extremely tense before he
assumed power in 1985. By then, Reagan was a lame-duck president. As
the 1988 presidential election approached, the Democrats’ prospects of
winning were considered good. If Gorbachev wanted to continue the Cold
War, he would have waited until the presidential election to see if
American policy might change before capitulating to any pressure
generated by Reagan’s military buildup.
Instead Gorbachev - and Reagan - pursued a different course. In
Reykjavik in 1986, they nearly agreed to eliminate their countries’
nuclear arsenals. Then, in 1987, they signed the historic intermediate-
range Nuclear Forces Treaty - the superpowers’ first agreement to
reduce nuclear weapons.
As for Reagan’s challenge to Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall,
it received relatively minor media coverage at the time. Gorbachev’s
role in the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination in
1989 was far more consequential. Early on, he hinted that he would no
longer apply the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which the Soviets had
used to justify military intervention in satellite countries.
Then, in a speech at the UN in December 1988, Gorbachev left no doubt.
He abandoned the concept of “international class struggle’’ that had
underpinned Soviet foreign policy, discarded the Brezhnev Doctrine,
and renounced the use or threat of force to resolve conflicts.
Gorbachev announced unilateral measures to reduce the country’s armed
forces by 500,000 troops and to withdraw 50,000 soldiers from Eastern
Europe. In the words of Soviet scholar Archie Brown, he thus
effectively “willed the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe.’’
Once the dramatic changes began to unfold, Gorbachev abided by his new
policy and let them run their course without interference. Restraint
was not as easy politically as it now seems. As Brown has noted, the
Soviet foreign-policy and military establishments had always “viewed
their hegemony over Eastern Europe as non-negotiable.’’
Why did Gorbachev radically transform Soviet foreign policy? Unlike
his predecessors, Gorbachev understood that the Soviet Union could
never advance economically if it continued to devote 20 percent of
gross national product and 40 percent of its deficit-ridden budget to
military spending.
Reagan’s contribution to ending the Cold War was also important - but
not in the way conservatives would have us believe. Negotiations - not
military confrontation - constituted the core of his strategy for
dealing with the Soviets, and he relentlessly pursued them throughout
his presidency. Indeed, his military buildup was intended to create
incentives for the Soviets to negotiate significant arms reductions by
eliminating or reducing their advantage in various weapons categories.
When Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to engage him directly,
Reagan cast aside his overheated rhetoric about “the evil empire’’ and
engaged Gorbachev with respect.
Both leaders were products of a bitter, decades-long enmity stemming
from the very core of their national identities, yet the two men
looked beyond their expected roles in preserving the adversarial
relationship between the two superpowers and their polarized
ideologies and took giant steps toward peace and cooperation for the
sake of their own people and the world.
They both deserve admiration for their historic achievement -and leave
relevant lessons on how to confront today’s difficult challenges.
Paul C. Demakis, a former state representative, recently received a
masters’ degree in international relations from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University.