WHY DID THE COLD WAR END?

( This essay was assessed as part of my university degree)

Mainstream International Relations theorists have faced a heavy backlash for failing to predict the peaceful end of the East-West stand-off. For some scholars, this predictive failure exemplifies a deficient understanding of the ‘complexities’ of global politics and the national development of the USSR by International Relations scholars. (Hopf and Gaddis 1993, p. 202). Even while scholars have now devoted time to explaining the Cold War’s end, there is no consensus amongst them as to what factor is most important. Realist scholars, who are the most criticised, placed the Cold War’s end in the context of the changing balance of power. Liberals, however, opine that it was indeed the liberal reforms in the USSR that precipitated it. Social constructivists, from the intersubjective context, explain how Gorbachev leadership ended the Cold War. This essay, then, draws upon these theories to explain why the protracted East-West conflict of the 20th century came to an abrupt end. It argues that Gorbachev’s leadership was the decisive factor. An explanation of the liberal view on the end of the Cold War is followed by the realists’ submission on the same issue. This essay then proceeds to counter the realist submission, maintaining that Gorbachev’s Leadership was, indeed, the critical factor. The last part of the essay expands on the Social Constructivist argument to conclude that Gorbachev’s revolution in domestic and foreign policy ended the East-West confrontation.

For liberals such as Michael W. Doyle in Lebow and Risse-Kappen’s (1995) International Relations Theories and the End of the Cold War, the Cold War ended as a result of the ‘democratic politics’ that took place in the USSR. Lebow and Risse-Kappen (1995, p.94). Gorbachev had assumed the post of the General Secretary with a form of ‘new thinking’. In the search for national development, Gorbachev’s leadership had adopted the policy of perestroika. However, as Ellman and Kontorovich (1998) contend, following the first wave of perestroika, the need for ‘political reorganisation’, without which the reformation of the USSR would be ineffective, became apparent.( Ellman and Kontorovish 1998, p. 7). Indeed, the period of glasnost featured a greater degree of democratic reforms and civil rights. Gorbachev at the nineteenth party congress in 1988 had openly abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine and recognised the rights of Eastern Europe to national self-determination. (Brown 2007, p.4). There was a reconstruction of the domestic politics of the East European countries in order to permit dissident groups. These reforms ultimately created the conditions conducive for nationalism, that pressed the government for peace, to develop. As Lundestad (2018) explains, between the 1970s and 1980s, nationalism and mass demonstrations had started to challenge the communist structure in Eastern Europe. The progenitor of such movement was Poland. Events in Poland greatly influenced the rise of nationalism in other countries in Eastern Europe. Free elections and democratic concessions in Poland gave impetus to dissents in other countries. In the strategically important East Germany, protest agitating for German reunification had erupted. Therefore, by the end of 1989, the Soviet influence had already begun to wane as the former communist states began democratic transitions. (Lundestad 2018, p. 204).

Doyle while acknowledging the importance of these ‘pressures from below, coming from dissident groups in Europe’, stresses leadership decision as a critical factor in the end of the Cold War. (Lebow and Kappen 1995, p.12). Indeed, as he argues, before the 1980s, there were a series of uprisings in Eastern Europe ‘that were not allowed to play themselves out nationally.’ However, the 1980s protests were instrumental in ending the Cold War because ‘Gorbachev and his associates had arrived at a willingness to abandon the Soviet empire, thus allowing national development to proceed’. (Lebow and Kappen 1995, p.94). It is, therefore, logical to argue that the Cold War ended largely as a result of Gorbachev’s decision to recognise the rights of Soviets Sphere of Influence in East and Central Europe to national self-determination.

For realists such as William Wohlforth (1994), the Cold War ended, not as a result of the liberalisation process of the USSR, but as a result of the USSR’s decline vis-à-vis the United States. It was this Soviet decline that forced Gorbachev to embark on the democratic reforms. To make sense of the realists’ contention, it is necessary first of all to consider the argument of the triumphalism school of thought which, according to Deudney and Ikenberry (1992), stresses ‘Reagan’s military and ideological assertiveness’ as a factor in the end of the Cold War. (Deudney and Ikenberry 1992, p.124). Western triumphalists such as Andrew Busch (1997) hold that between 1954 and 1979, the Soviet Union was in a better strategic position to the United States. With the massive build-up of Soviet offensive military capability, the USSR had surpassed the US in the arms race and Soviets expansionism in the Third World, had in fact, been aided by the US foreign policy fiasco in Vietnam. Thus, Soviet leaders were convinced that ‘the correlation of forces had shifted in their favour’. (Busch 1997, p. 451). However, when Reagan became the president, America’s strength was reasserted through Reagan’s initiative that restored ‘the vigour of the policy of containment and the military strength needed to deter further Soviet expansionism.’ (Busch 1997, p. 452). He notes that Reagan’s commitment to defensive policies featured military spending that doubled that of Carter administration and the enlargement of the US conventional forces. The administration espoused a mixture of strategic and ideological counteroffensive. Ideologically, Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union an inherently aggressive ‘evil empire’ whose vilification the US could no longer tolerate. (Busch 1997, p. 455). Strategically, Reagan introduced, in 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative. The SDI involved the development of the ‘ballistic missile defence system that could end the stand-off of Mutually Assured Destruction’. Busch contends that the ‘SDI fundamentally altered the strategic context in favour of the United States’. The inherent technological and economic weaknesses of the Soviet Union meant such program was unattainable. Thus, ‘the Soviets were prodded by SDI into seeking greater modernisation of their society — which could only be achieved by liberalisation.’ (Busch 1997, p. 456).

The Realists’ discussion on the end of the Cold War is premised on the triumphalism school assumption. They agree that the end of the Cold War was as a result of the USSR’s retrenchment, which was a response to the significant shift in the balance of power. Wohlforth argues that Gorbachev’s policies and the incentives for reform cannot be understood ‘without reference to the interconnected problems of perceived relative decline and overextension.’ (Wohlforth 1994, p. 111). The Soviet Union was declining economically relative to the West, and the West’s ‘scientific-technical revolution’ was overtaking socialism. The Soviets’ unilateral reformation of domestic politics was deemed too costly. Thus, for Wohlforth, Soviet leadership were forced to retrench peacefully and seek rapprochement with the international community in order to revitalise the economy. Gorbachev and the other Soviet leadership were not keen to embrace liberalisation, ‘give up socialism and make endless concessions to the West’. The relative decline of Soviets’ capability necessitated this, thereby serving as a precursor to the end of the Cold War. (Wohlforth 1994, P., 115).

Moreover, Lundestad (2000), in his article Imperial Overstretch, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War, from another perspective, explains the end of the Cold War. Imperial overstretch, for Lundestad, prompted Soviet’s rapprochement with the West and that eased the Cold War confrontation. He maintains that by the time Gorbachev assumed Soviet leadership, the Soviet economy was static. Amidst the crippling economy, Soviets imperial expenses consumed about 40 per cent of the GNP. The war in Afghanistan and other military spendings further dealt a big blow to the Soviet economy. Thus, in a bid to resuscitate the crumbling economy, Gorbachev decided to cut military spending, starting with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Lundestad (2000, p. 5). Lundestad’s argument, although not explicitly, reiterates the importance of Gorbachev. It could be inferred that Gorbachev’s disarmament ideas served as a progenitor of the Cold War’s end. Echoing this sentiment, Lundestad states that Gorbachev had a distinct attitude from his predecessors and his orientation laid the ground for considerable foreign policy change; ‘he was much more open to new idea and to dialogue with Western politicians.’ (Lundestad 2000, p. 6).

However, the realist dictum on Gorbachev’s leadership is faulty. As Richard Ned Lebow explains, realists overestimate the USSR’s economic downturn, because the US was also a declining power vis-à-vis Japan and the European Economic Community. The USSR’s economy, had in fact, witnessed a sharp decrease as a consequence of Gorbachev’s reform. Hence, Lebow, while quoting Waltz (1990), holds that ‘the realist contention that Gorbachev’s domestic reforms were an ‘externally imposed necessity’ is conceptually and empirically flawed’. (Lebow and Risse-Kappen 1995, p. 40). Worthy of note, according to him, is that Gorbachev had options in responding to decline which could involve ‘a more aggressive foreign policy’ and consenting to ‘domestic change in the Eastern Europe’ with a condition that post-communist governments should remain in the Warsaw Pact. Lebow contends that putting the Soviet security interests into consideration, the West would have welcomed this. However, Gorbachev, who was a reformer, did not go along this path but rather chose to dismantle the Warsaw pact. He obliged East Europeans to ‘reform their own political systems’ and did not suppress ‘the resulting mass protests when they threatened the survival of the region’s communist regime’. (Lebow and Risse-Kappen 1995, p. 40)

Moreover, the social constructivists’ paradigm provides a strong argument on how Gorbachev’s accommodationist policies eased the East-West relation. Constructivists such as Koslowski and Kratochwil (1994) maintain that Soviet’s endogenous transformation accelerated the transformation of the international structure and that explains the Cold War’s end. Indeed, Stalin’s construction of Soviet’s security interests — ‘his revolutionary imperial paradigm’– had induced the Cold War. Subsequent attempts to reconstruct the national interests fell through as ‘Stalin’s subjection of Eastern Europe had become institutionalised’. Over time, Stalin’s initiative ‘of conquest by subversion’ became ‘a constitutive norm’ of the bipolar politics and was strengthened by the West’s policy of containment and the partition of Europe. Neither Khrushchev nor Brezhnev was willing to give up Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and it became even more consolidated by the Brezhnev Doctrine. (Koslowski and Kratochwil 1994: p 232–233). However, as Kolowski and Kratochwil continue, from 1989, Gorbachev began to reconstruct the Soviets’ security interests, notably in the renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine. ‘As Gorbachev ended the imperial relationship with Eastern Europe, new norms of superpower relations emerged’. Therefore, American public opinion towards the Soviet Union changed and the US was forced to reciprocate by engaging in negotiations. It is, therefore, rational to argue that the post-war bipolar politics ended because Gorbachev’s reformation of the domestic structure engendered a change in the international structure.

Similarly, Kimikazu Shigemasa (2011) confutes the realist’s ‘peace-through-strength’ assumption. Instead, he explicitly argues that it was indeed Gorbachev’s reorientation of the foreign policy ‘that brought about a series of initiatives known as peace offensive in the fields of arms control’. Gorbachev’s cabinet was made up of new thinkers who were sympathetic to the West’s conception of security and were convinced that collective security was attainable. This, then, contributed significantly to the success of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Shigemasa (2011, 242). Ikenberry and Deundney (1992) take this argument further by eloquently stating that the Western triumphalist ‘overstate the overall impact of American and Western policy on the Soviet Union in the 1980s’. (Ikenberry and Deundney 1992, p.128). For them, the Cold War ended because of the perception of ‘mutual nuclear vulnerability.’ The Soviet, under Brezhnev, had initially responded to the West’s strategic build-up by increasing the production of strategic and conventional offensive weapons. However, with the ascendance of Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership, there was an assessment of US intention. Both Reagan and Gorbachev began to reach a point where they saw the nuclear build-up as a threat to both US and Soviet’s security interests. Therefore, both actors began to engage in ‘extraordinary convergence’. Ikenberry and Deundney’s intersubjective approach concludes that ‘mutual vulnerability’, rather than West containment, was instrumental in the end of the Cold War. The accumulation of nuclear weapons impelled America and the USSR ‘to eschew war and the serious threats of war as tools of diplomacy and created imperatives for cooperative regulation of nuclear capability’. (Ikenberry and Deudney 1992, p. 131).

In conclusion, Reagan’s policies, as many scholars claim, did not end the Cold War. Gorbachev’s new thinking laid the ground for a peaceful relation between the East and the West. Gorbachev’s liberalisation of the Soviet’s domestic politics, the renunciation of the Brezhnev doctrine and the decision to grant political autonomy to the Soviet’s Spheres of Influence had a noteworthy consequence on the East-West conflict. In foreign policy, Gorbachev and his associates saw the need for the balancing of interests. Their new thinking engendered massive concessions to the West. Thus, as the century progressed, the West began to reconstruct their perception of the USSR. The Western view of the USSR as an inherently aggressive state was broken, largely as a result of Gorbachev’s revolution. This was indeed why the Cold War ended.

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