The Ash Heap of History | The End of the Cold War
It began with a return of fear and ended in a triumph of hope, an unusual trajectory for great historical upheavals. It could easily have been otherwise: the world spent the last half of the 20th century having its deepest anxieties not confirmed. The binoculars of a distant future will confirm this, for had the Cold War taken a different course there might have been no one left to look back through them.
— John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History —
The office was lavish by any standards, filled with the finest furniture and decorations. At its center was a beautiful desk, behind which sat the president of the world’s largest nation. Before he stood a bank of cameras, and behind the cameras were journalists and technicians— including 27 Americans from the Cable News Network. The president had come to power promising openness and reform, and his people had embraced his message. He had clashed with the hardliners in his government, faced quiet resistance and open rebellion. Now, his journey was at an end. He placed a call to his greatest rival on earth, then handed over a locked briefcase to his political rival, and then looked into the cameras. After a ten-minute speech to his countrymen, he reached for an exquisite felt-tip pen in a holder on the desk. Drawing it out, his hand hovered for a moment over the documents he was to sign. His mind raced at that moment, feeling bitterness at what he perceived as the treachery which had brought him to this point. Drawing a long breath, his eyes steeled but his heart heavy, he touched the pen’s tip to the paper.
46 years earlier, one of the president’s predecessors sat with other world leaders and their translators in a lavish palace recently restored to its prewar glory. The city nearby was a burned-out ruin, but here, great men spoke of the future, of a world made free from the worst tyranny humanity had ever witnessed. Perceived masters of the globe, they divided up the prostrate nation of Germany between them. Mankind hoped that this would be the end of the war, but these hopes were soon dashed. Within four years, tensions between the free and communist worlds would rise to such a high level that a “cold war” developed between the two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. Those who witnessed the origins of the Cold War could never have dreamed that its outcome would be so peaceful. They feared an end in fire, that humanity’s extinction was just over the horizon, or else that for all time the world would be divided and its people would live in terror.
The World in 1979
Thirty years into the Cold War, the United States seemed to be losing the struggle. The Vietnam War had ended in tragedy and defeat, the country was reeling from economic woes, and the nation’s capital had seen one president resign in disgrace, another’s paralyzed by political bickering, and a third crippled by economic malaise and crises overseas. In the Soviet Union, all seemed to be going well. The Soviet empire had repaired its relations with Red China to some degree, weathered recent uprisings in Eastern Europe, and helped its client states in Africa and North America to spread the gospel of Karl Marx to non-aligned nations. Looking at a map of the world, the leaders of the Soviet Union believed victory was near—outside the American-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization, only nineteen nations still suffered from the diseases of democracy and capitalism. Worldwide revolution and the longed-for “end of history” was near at hand.
How had this come about? A decade earlier, America had won the “Space Race” and seemed on the verge of victory in its struggle with the Vietnamese communists, while the Soviet Union was locked in conflict with Red China and facing revolts at home and in the imperial possessions beyond its borders. Historians differ on the causes of Soviet success, but most agree that the free world’s failures in this decade were the result of poor American leadership. 1969 saw the election of Richard Nixon, the ardent anti-communist who had pursued Soviet agents as a member of Congress during the “Red Scare” of the 1940s and served as Vice President of the United States under Dwight Eisenhower at a time when America’s nuclear and diplomatic might was unchallenged by the Soviets. But Nixon’s presidency was one of weakness in the eyes of Soviet leaders. His only major foreign policy success was establishing diplomatic relations with the Chinese (a serious blow to the cause of communist solidarity worldwide), but his eagerness to pursue disarmament and arms control with the Soviets demonstrated—in Moscow’s eyes— that he was unwilling to continue the American policy of “containment” which had thwarted Soviet expansion for years. Thus, Leonid Brezhnev and his acolytes pursued a triple strategy of negotiating with the Americans on disarmament, secretly building more atomic weapons and new delivery systems in direct violation of arms control agreements, and increasing support for pro-communist groups in Western Europe. This strategy was aided, unintentionally, by Nixon’s chief foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger, who believed that America was in decline and that it needed to achieve détente with the Soviet Union, an understanding and a sharing of power equally around the world.
When Nixon’s presidency was ended by the Watergate scandal, his successor Gerald Ford could not negotiate from a position of strength because of domestic opposition and the calamitous end of the Vietnam War in 1973-75. When Jimmy Carter became president, he latched onto détente and pursued a policy of humanitarianism, asking the Soviets to improve the living conditions of their own people in exchange for concessions on arms and not criticizing Soviet expansion worldwide. The Soviets pushed Carter too far in 1979 when they invaded Afghanistan, but even then the American response was not sanctions or threats of military intervention, but a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. (Carter did send some aid to anti-communist groups in Afghanistan, which did help but was not seen as a particularly strong statement). America’s perceived weakness was further demonstrated when Iranian religious fundamentalists took 52 hostages from the Tehran embassy, beginning a crisis that would last for 444 days. As a new decade approached, the Soviets looked toward it with a sense of optimism.
The World in 1989
Forty years into the Cold War, the Soviet Union was on the brink of losing everything. It had lost a war on its own borders for the first time in its history. Its client states outside Europe had suffered major reversals of fortune and were now looking toward the United States for economic and military aid. A revitalized America and its European allies had built up their military strength in Europe and were now reaching into the captive nations of the east, spreading their dangerous ideas of liberty and self-government. At home, people were murmuring against the doctrines of communism, flush with new Western goods like blue jeans, microwave ovens, and Walkman radios. The decade which had opened with such prospects of success had turned into a disaster.
What had happened? In the West, three leaders had emerged during the closing years of the 1970s with messages of strength and renewal. In Rome, the new Pope John Paul II had brought about a spiritual revival in the hearts of a billion Catholics worldwide with his simple message, “Be not afraid.” As a native of Soviet-occupied Poland, he had reminded his people and others within the captive nations that God was with them even in the darkest of hours, and he had inspired them to reclaim the freedom which was their birthright. In London, after a decade of socialism under the Labour Party, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had turned the United Kingdom around and lifted its economy, its military, and its national psyche to new heights (though many of her policies were, and still are, subject to intense criticism from the left). And in Washington, DC, an actor-turned-governor named Ronald Reagan had been elected President of the United States with a simple message that it was “morning in America.” He pledged to bring America out of the economic and political malaise of the Carter years, to restore the US military to its once-proud status as the world’s mightiest fighting force, and to challenge tyranny wherever it reared its head. Like Thatcher, Reagan continues to be a controversial figure in American historiography, but his role at the end of the Cold War cannot be doubted.
America’s campaign to end the Cold War by destroying the Soviet Union began with Reagan’s 1981 budget, in which he doubled defense spending and revived several Carter-era programs to modernize the Armed Forces. At the same time, his proposed tax cuts injected fresh money into the economy that, while enriching the wealthy and corporate interests immediately, did eventually “trickle-down” to middle- and working-class Americans (though their impact is debatable). More importantly, it created new revenue for the federal government, which Reagan used to further increase defense spending and to aid anti-communist groups like the Contras in Nicaragua and the mujahideen in Afghanistan. For Reagan, the central truth which guided his anti-Soviet program was that the Soviet Union was a third-world country with a first-world military; if the United States could force Moscow to spend more money on its military and on supporting its puppet states around the world, it would have to cut domestic spending and, ultimately, face a rebellious population desperate for change. Thus, Reagan sent billions of dollars abroad, deployed fresh military units and new missiles to Europe, and orchestrated a controversial scientific/propaganda campaign called the Strategic Defense Initiative that could, in theory, destroy Soviet ballistic missiles in flight. If successful, SDI—or “Star Wars,” as it was derisively called by Reagan’s opponents—would remove the Soviets’ ultimate weapon that it had used for over three decades to intimidate and frighten the world.
By 1984, hardliners in Moscow were preparing war plans against the United States and NATO, believing that they would have to use their nuclear missiles before SDI could be brought to bear against them. The leadership of the Soviet Union was in a state of flux; Leonid Brezhnev had died in 1981, his successor Yuri Andropov two years later, and Konstantin Chernenko only eleven months after that. The country needed fresh blood at its head, and in March 1985 the Communist Party chose the 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev as the new leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was a committed communist but, like Lenin before him, he was willing to accept temporary free-market reforms in order to strengthen the nation’s economy and better prepare it for the final conflict with capitalism.
Gorbachev’s response to the American-led assault on Soviet interests was multi-faceted and, in theory, quite impressive for a Marxist. Abroad, he dumped more money into propping up proSoviet regimes in the Third World and into scientific and military spending to counter America’s defense buildup and the SDI program. When he met with Reagan in 1986 at Reykjavik, Iceland, 3 The Ash Heap of History | The End of the Cold War By Jon Streeter he tried his hardest to get the American president to give up on SDI, promising major arms reductions in exchange. But Reagan, who had learned the lesson of Nixon, insisted on verification of disarmament (to which Gorbachev agreed) and absolutely refused to stop work on SDI. When Gorbachev insisted, Reagan abruptly ended the summit. At home, Gorbachev instituted two new policies: glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost, or “openness,” meant greater transparency in how the Soviet Union was governed. He allowed Western reporters and tourists into the country, and for Soviet citizens to visit family or on holiday in the West. More importantly, the government allowed certain Western-made goods like clothing and consumer electronics to be sold at certain Soviet shops. Perestroika, or “reform,” led to some Soviet citizens being permitted to own their own businesses (which were heavily-taxed) and thus to create a slow growth of private capital in the Soviet Union. Citizens walking the streets of Moscow or Leningrad saw their neighbors wearing blue jeans. Workers in factories borrowed their coworkers’ Walkman radios and were amazed at being able to listen to music or the news outside their homes. Wives in shops marveled at the tales of a friend’s microwave oven, which prepared food quickly and at the turn of a knob. These consumer goods drove the Soviet people to want more, to work hard to earn enough to buy one at the local GUM department store and to realize that their system had been far surpassed by the free economies of the West. Soviet state socialism simply could not provide luxuries to match those of market capitalism or even the basic necessities of life. Once the people had had a taste of economic freedom, they wanted more.
The World in 1991
In 1689, Great Britain saw a mostly-peaceful transition of power from the House of Stuart to the House of Orange when James II abdicated the throne in favor of William III. In 1789, France began its revolutionary process that would see a constitutional monarchy created, then overthrown by bloodthirsty Jacobins, and ultimately devolve into an imperial dictatorship.
In 1989, the world watched in wonder as the captive nations of Eastern Europe hurled off the shackles of the Red Army, restored freedom and democracy within their borders, and then waited to see what Moscow’s response would be. In April 1989, the Polish government allowed the democratic Solidarity Party to enter government; five months later, Solidarity won a majority in Poland’s first free election since before the Second World War, and its dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski resigned in favor of Lech Walesa the following December. In May 1989, Hungary dismantled its border fortifications along the Austrian border, the first cracks in the “Iron Curtain” which had divided Europe since the 1940s. Hungary’s communist government fell in October, and the Red Army withdrew from the country in June 1990. By September 1989, more than thirty thousand East Germans had escaped the country from Hungary, and the government was desperate to stop this outflow. However, its government could not fully grasp the situation it faced, and after months of trying anything it could to keep East Germans in the country, the Cabinet resigned on November 7th. Two days later, the Berlin Wall was opened (two years after President Reagan had urged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”). Weeks later, the government of Czechoslovakia was dissolved and free elections were scheduled. As the year ended, the Bulgarian and Romanian governments also collapsed. Only in the last country, Romania, was their serious violence as its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, tried to hold onto power until his televised execution on Christmas Day. The Albanian communists’ loss of power in March 1991 completed this peaceful revolution that had transformed Eastern Europe.
As Mikhail Gorbachev watched his empire dissolve before his eyes, he chose not to act. He could have invoked the “Brezhnev Doctrine” of 1968 and crushed the revolutions by force. But Gorbachev had already repudiated this doctrine in 1980 when he allowed Solidarity to organize in Poland and begin its campaign for democracy rather than shed Polish blood en masse. Communist hardliners urged him to act, but Gorbachev was determined to keep the peace. He knew that he had failed. In August 1991, the military tried to overthrow his government, but action by Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, ended the coup before it could succeed. Yeltsin and Gorbachev hated each other, but the Soviet ruler knew that the future of Russia belonged to Yeltsin. Over the next few months, seeing the weakness of the central government in Moscow, the various republics which made up the Soviet Union began to declare their independence. Again, Gorbachev refused to use force to hold his empire together. He instead opened negotiations with Yeltsin and the other leaders of the republics, and he signed the Belovezha Accords on December 8, 1991, giving his formal assent to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev sat in his office before a bank of cameras on Christmas Day, 1991. He gave his speech, in which he announced his resignation as president and that the Supreme Soviet would meet six days hence to formally dissolve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He then reached for the shining, gilded felt pen on his desk and prepared to sign the documents that would end his presidency. The pen scratched against the paper, but no ink flowed. He tried again, but the pen was empty. For a brief moment, he wondered what to do. A man approached the desk and handed him something. It was a West German-made Mont Blanc pen owned by Tom Jacobson, president of CNN. A Marxist dictator used a pen made by a capitalist company and owned by the head of a private company to sign the order dissolving the world’s most powerful communist country.
Turning Point: “New Threats for Old”
In 1996, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, MO, on the fiftieth anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” address. Her message, titled “New Threats for Old,” was a prescient warning to Western leaders about the turning point the world had witnessed five years earlier with the collapse of the Soviet Union. She outlined three potential dangers facing humanity, and her words seem almost prophetic given the events of the subsequent 24 years.
First, she said that the end of the Soviet Union was also the end of its restraining influence on rogue states like Syria, Iraq, and Libya and that this would likely result in those nations (and others) taking actions to destabilize the post-Cold War world for their own benefit. The subsequent quarter-century has been a catalog of rogue states attempting—sometimes successfully—to overturn the status quo in their own regions, often with tragic effects and longlasting consequences.
Second, Thatcher warned of the dangers of nuclear proliferation and specifically mentioned North Korea’s missile program, which was then in its infancy. It is easy with the benefit of hindsight to critique world leaders’ efforts in the 1990s to curb this program, but events have proven the former prime minister correct, and nuclear proliferation remains one of the most dangerous threats to face our world today.
Finally, Thatcher stated quite plainly that the Cold War’s end discredited secular regimes in majority-Islamic nations and contributed to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism (though this process had begun in Iran before the collapse of the Soviet Union). The victory of the Islamist mujahideen in Afghanistan—with American help—had legitimized radical religious doctrines in the eyes of many followers of the prophet Muhammad, and the former prime minister believed that this would lead to further radicalism within the Muslim world. This warning was brought home on a beautiful Tuesday morning in September 2001 in the skies over New York and Washington, DC.
None of these statements are meant as criticisms of the post-Cold War leadership in America, the West, or the wider world. The benefits of hindsight make it easy to scrutinize past leaders, but this is unfair to those who were in power. Rather, as Margaret Thatcher made clear in subsequent statements throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, these are warnings to those in power not to become complacent and to those who have the awesome power to elect their leaders to consider how they view the world, their countries’ places in it, and the consequences of their votes.
