IB History notes: Ending of the Cold War

Taken from: International Relations; Politics and Economics in the 21st Century by William Nester, 2001.

Why Did the Cold War End?

Starting with the Berlin Wall's fall in 1989, George Kennan's predictions proved cor­rect. From 1989 through 1992, the two Germanys were reunited, Eastern Europe was liberated, the Soviet Union broke up, and communist dictatorships were over­thrown almost everywhere.
For 72 years (1917-1991), the Soviet Union's system remained intact. For at least 47 years (1947-1991), the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold war. Then in 1991, the communist system collapsed. Why?

There are two long-term reasons and one short-term reason. George Kennan had been right all along. America's containment policies eventually helped topple the Soviet empire and communism. Containment and communism's fatal flaws were the two long-term reasons for the cold war's end. Gorbachev was the short-­term catalyst.

THE FAILURE OF COMMUNISM

The most important long-term reason was communism's inability to achieve any­thing other than a totalitarian system that supported repression, exploitation, and often murder or imprisonment of the people by a tiny well-organized elite that en­joyed what little wealth and privilege the system produced. At worst, as in the Soviet Union, China, and Kampuchea, to name a few, communism resulted in genocide. State ownership and planning of the entire economy failed, often tragi­cally, to achieve sustained economic development. The massive industrialization efforts of communist states contributed little to development or wealth. Central planning failed to create dynamic, profitable industries, infrastructure, or agricul­ture. Instead, what happened in every communist country was a tremendous mis­allocation or waste of human, natural, technology, and financial resources. Soviet statistics about becoming the world's largest producers of steel, for example, were often grossly inflated and actual production often grossly misallocated. Russia ac­tually produces less grain today than before the revolution. Virtually none of the former Soviet Union's industries are competitive with foreign industries. By em­phasizing the distribution rather than the creation of income and wealth, the com­munists have merely succeeded in making more people poor. Although the communist systems did achieve significant gains in literacy, health care, and safety, these gains could not balance the system's economic failings. Meanwhile the dem­ocratic industrial nations forged further ahead economically.
Although communism's collapse was inevitable, the rulers remained largely blind to their system's vast inadequacies. At the 1962 Communist Party congress, Khrushchev confidently predicted that the Soviet Union would economically surpass the United States by 1970 and achieve full-fledged communism (elimina­tion of private property and equal distribution of goods) by 1980! Khrushchev had this in mind when he arrogantly declared at the United Nations in 1962 that he would "bury the United States."

Communism's collapse was accelerated by America's containment policy. If Soviet-backed communist parties had taken power in the industrial powerhouses of western Europe and Japan, communism's demise would have been delayed im­measurably as those geo-economically strategic regions became communist, rather than liberal democratic, showcases.

GORBACHEV'S REFORMS

The short-term reason for the democratic revolutions that swept eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev. He understood that central plan­ning had failed to achieve prosperity or equality. By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union could no longer afford to maintain its eastern European empire, its mili­tary buildup, and operate a centrally planned economy. Gorbachev chose to give up the empire and military buildup, in a desperate attempt to concentrate all re­sources to reform and revive the Soviet economy. In February 1986, Gorbachev denounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, which justified a Soviet invasion of any commu­nist country that was threatened by a democratic revolution. Instead, Gorbachev called for radical reforms in the Soviet Union, which would be achieved by glasnost or open information and discussion, perestroika or institutional restructuring, and democracy. Political prisoners were released, Jews and others were allowed freely to emigrate, labor unions were given the right to bargain and strike, religions were allowed freely to worship, and the mass media was allowed to investigate and publish freely. In March 1989, Gorbachev allowed competitive elections for the national People's Congress, and many reformist communists won seats from hard-line communists. In March 1990, Gorbachev announced that the Communist party would no longer monopolize political power. In 1990, Russia held democratic elections for the first time in 1,000 years of history. The people elected representatives to the Russian parliament, which in turn elected Boris Yeltsin as president.

THE COLLAPSE OF EMPIRE

Although Gorbachev intended to reform the Soviet Union and Communist party, the political changes that he enacted proved so revolutionary that they eventu­ally destroyed both the Soviet empire and communism. Ironically, the domino ef­fect of revolution that American policymakers feared so much throughout the cold war occurred only in Eastern Europe. The democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 were largely the result of peaceful mass demon­strations that convinced the communists to allow free elections. Only Romania experienced a violent revolution, in which the communist dictator Ceausescu and other members of his government were executed. Elections brought democratic parties to power in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and re­formist communist governments to power in Romania and Bulgaria. Gorbachev's policy of allowing each eastern European country, and eventually each of the 15 Soviet republics, to choose its own system, even if it meant the end of commu­nism, was popularly known as the "my way" doctrine.

The only significant resistance to the democratic revolution was in the Soviet Union itself. On August 19, 1991, the day before Soviet President Gorbachev would have signed a treaty allowing the Soviet republics to become independent, hard-line communists attempted to overthrow him. For three days between August 19 and August 21, the conspirators held Gorbachev hostage at his Crimean home and attempted to besiege Russian President Yeltsin with his supporters inside the Russian parliament. Over 50,000 Russians rallied around the Russian parliament building, putting their bodies in front of the Soviet tanks and troops loyal to the communists. As increased numbers of Russian troops defected to Yeltsin, the coup leaders gave up and released Gorbachev, who returned to Moscow. The coup lead­ers were arrested and tried for treason.
The failed coup accelerated the destruction of communism and the Soviet em­pire. During the coup, Latvia and Ukraine declared their independence, and stat­ues of Lenin were toppled in Estonia and Lithuania. On August 24, Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist party and recommended that its central com­mittee be disbanded. On August 29, Yeltsin and Gorbachev appeared before the Russia parliament. Over Gorbachev's protests, Yeltsin dramatically issued a de­cree abolishing the Communist party across Russia. On September 2, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies approved a plan to reduce the Kremlin's authority and allow a looser federation of the Soviet republics. On September 6, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. On October 18, Gorbachev and presidents of eight other Soviet republics agreed to join an eco­nomic union; the Ukraine joined on November 4. On December 4, 1991, Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus declared the Soviet Union dead but agreed to form a commonwealth. Communism and the Soviet empire had all but vanished.
How did the Bush White House respond to all this? Ironically, throughout the course of these revolutionary events of August and September 1991, President George Bush's response was either passive or actually seemed to favor retaining the communist and Soviet status quo and avoided any support of Yeltsin. In September, Bush flew to Kiev to stand beside Gorbachev and actually implored the Ukrainians not to break away from the Soviet Union. Yeltsin proved of sterner stuff; he shoveled communism's remnants into the gutter of history.

CONTAINMENT AND THE REAGAN MILITARY BUILDUP

During the Republican national convention in August 1992, speaker after speaker claimed that the Reagan and Bush military buildup had won the cold war. These claims were continued throughout the 1992 elections and have been echoed ever since. Did Reagan and Bush really win the cold war?

The founder of the containment policy, George Kennan, dismissed the Republican victory claims as "ridiculous" and went on to argue that "Nobody, ­no country, no party, no person, 'won' the cold war. It was a long and costly po­litical rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party."'8 Kennan, of course, had predicted in the late 1940s that the collapse of the Soviet empire and communism was in­evitable, given the historic tendency of all empires eventually to collapse and the inability of communism to satisfy even the most basic needs of the people. Containment was a bipartisan policy that was started by a democratic president and continued by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

There is no evidence that the Reagan military buildup contributed to, let alone caused, the Soviet economy's collapse. Moscow did not significantly increase mil­itary spending to keep up with that of the Reagan administration. The Soviet economy would have collapsed regardless of American policy. Soviet Marshall Nikolai Ogarkov admitted in 1983 that the cold war had essentially ended with the West's victory. Ogarkov argued that "we will never be able to catch up . . . in modern arms until we have an economic revolution. And the question is whether we can have an economic revolution without a political revolution."'9 In other words, communism failed.

The Reagan buildup may have actually propped up rather than undermined the Soviet empire.'o After Gorbachev took power in 1985, Kremlin hard-liners pointed to the Reagan buildup and argued that reforms were dangerous and should not be attempted. Gorbachev complains that Reagan's policies ironically prevented him from implementing his reforms sooner and more comprehen­sively. Reagan led the United States into an arms race against itself. By tripling America's national debt during the 1980s, the Reagan administration undermined American rather than Soviet power.

The Reagan and Bush policies reflected the flaws of the global containment strategy. As Kennan pointed out, the extreme militarization of American discussion and policy, as promoted by hard-line circles. . . consistently strengthened comparable hard-liners in the Soviet Union. The more America's political leaders were seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate mili­tary rather than political resolution of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the greater the breaking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime. Thus the general effect of cold war extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s."

The Post-Cold-War Relationship

- Although the cold war is over, many problems remain, including the reduction of nuclear and conventional forces and political and economic development in Russia and the other former communist countries. The collapse of the Soviet em­pire and communism has allowed the United States and its allies an enormous peace dividend. Some of the savings have been invested in Russia and the other newly independent states to help them reconstruct their economies. Whereas the eastern European economies have managed to transform themselves from com­munism into managed market economies, Russia's economy continues to teeter on the brink of collapse. In 1998, President Yeltsin admitted that Russia could not meet payments on its immense debts to international financiers and Western gov­ernments. President Clinton helped engineer a $25 billion bailout of the Russian economy that combined government and IMF loans. But will the Russians invest those funds any less recklessly than previous infusions from the West?

Why has Russia failed to transform its economy? In contrast to the revolu­tionary impact of Gorbachev's political reforms, his economic reforms failed to re­vive the fossilized Soviet economy. He allowed for some limited privatization, less controls on foreign investment, and leasing of land to farmers. But all this was too little, too late. After Russia seceded from the Soviet Union, Yeltsin dismantled central planning, privatized many industries, and allowed entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The result has been the worst excesses of capitalism, with ever worsening corruption, organized crime, unemployment, inflation, poverty for most, and vast riches for the elite.

More than any other reason, the legacy of communism explains Russia's fail­ure to transform its economy. With communism's collapse, many former Soviet citizens are experiencing a deep ideological void. Throughout their lives, Soviets were socialized to believe in communism as a religion that contained eter­nal truths and Marx and Lenin as gods. Now those gods and that religion have been all but destroyed. A fierce nationalism has filled the void for many former Soviets. One of communism's worst legacies is the destruction of entrepreneurial instincts in people. The saying "The state pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work" was mostly true. Communism was synonymous with shoddy workmanship.