V o L u m e I : a d

States and thus was less able to bear the burden of this expense. Certainly

the heavy claim of defense spending played a role in the ultimate collapse of

the Soviet Union, but it is by no means clear that this alone brought an end

to the Cold War.

Détente led to a tremendous increase in trade between Western nations

and the Soviet bloc and greatly aided the communist bloc economies. West

European nations and Japan gave extensive loans to the Soviet Union and

its  dependencies, most of which were used to prop up these communist

regimes with short-term spending on consumer goods rather than to invest

in long-term economic solutions. Much Western technology also flowed to

the Soviet Union. The hope of those supporting détente was that improved

trade and economic dependence on the West would discourage aggressive

actions by the communist states.

While direct diplomatic confrontation between the Soviet Union and

United States decreased in the period of the 1970s, both sides pursued the

same goals by supporting proxy states, especially in the Middle East and in

Africa, the scene of a number of civil wars, including one in Namibia. The

late 1970s saw not only an Angolan civil war fueled by support from both the

Soviets and from the West but also the actual intervention of Cuban troops

in that African nation. The Soviets also benefited from the overthrow of key

American ally Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1979. Soon the new

Iranian regime had seized as hostages U.S. embassy personnel, beginning a

protracted standoff with the United States.

Although President Carter met with Brezhnev in Moscow to approve yet

another strategic arms reduction agreement (SALT II) in June 1979, Soviet

leaders sent troops into Afghanistan to protect the pro-Moscow communist

government there only five months later, sending U.S.-Soviet relations plum-

meting. Ultimately the Soviets dispatched to Afghanistan some 150,000 men

as well as substantial numbers of aircraft and tanks.

Instead of rolling to victory, however, the Soviets came up against tough

Afghan guerrilla fighters, the mujahideen, who received aid from the United

States through Pakistan. The most important U.S. assistance was probably in

the form of Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that neutralized Soviet

ground-support aircraft and helicopters. It seemed a close parallel with Viet-

nam, where the Soviets kept an insurgency going against the United States

and its allies for more than two decades with only a modest outlay of its own.

Relations between the two superpowers suffered further when, to punish

the Soviet Union for its actions in Afghanistan, President Carter imposed a

boycott on U.S. participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics and then began

a substantial U.S. military buildup that was continued under his successor.

The cost of globalism for the Soviet Union was high too, as it turned out.

With the strain of Afghanistan, international aid commitments, and massive

defense spending brought on by the large U.S. buildup and the Strategic

Defense Initiative (SDI, Star Wars) initiated by President Ronald Reagan,

the Soviets simply could not keep up. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev,

who took power in March 1985, therefore had to deal with the consequences

of decades of economic mismanagement.

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

45

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A committed communist, Gorbachev nonetheless be-

lieved that the Soviet Union would have to reform itself if

it was to compete with the West. His programs of glasnost

(openness) and perestroika (transformation) were designed

to rebuild the Soviet economy while maintaining commu-

nist control over the political life of the state. Unfortunately,

his economic reforms produced scant improvement, and

his moves to ease censorship often led to civil unrest and

ethnic strife within the Soviet Union as well as national

and regional independence movements.

Even as the Soviet Union slid toward chaos domesti-

cally, however, Gorbachev scored successes in foreign

policy. In the course of two summit meetings with Reagan,

he offered concessions and proposed sometimes striking

solutions in a manner that led to improved U.S.-Soviet rela-

tions and agreements on the reduction of nuclear weapons,

including the first agreement in history to eliminate an

entire class of nuclear weapons. In 1988, Gorbachev ordered

the unilateral withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghan-

istan. He also promised publicly to refrain from military

intervention in Eastern Europe, and he encouraged open

elections in the states of the Soviet empire in Central and

Eastern Europe.

After the surprising collapse of the government of East

Germany and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in the

autumn of 1989, Gorbachev also agreed to the reunification

of Germany and the inclusion in NATO of the new united

Germany. Most observers credit Gorbachev, who was

awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, with being the

driving force behind the end of the Cold War.

Although the Soviet leader’s foreign policy was widely hailed abroad, the

situation within the Soviet Union continued to deteriorate. Old-line com-

munists considered Gorbachev’s policies equivalent to treason. In 1990 sev-

eral Soviet republics, including the Russian Soviet Federal Republic led by

Boris Yeltsin, declared their independence. Gorbachev tried to stem this tide

and preserve the Soviet Union, but he was unsuccessful. Talks between

Soviet authorities and the break-away republics resulted in the creation of a

new Russian federation (or confederation) in August 1991.

Also in August 1991, a number of high-ranking officials representing the

rightist faction in the Communist Party—including the chief of the Komitet

Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB), the defense minister, the prime

minister, and the vice president—placed Gorbachev under house arrest and

attempted to seize power. Faced with Yeltsin’s personal and courageous inter-

vention on behalf of opposition groups, the coup collapsed after two days.

Gorbachev returned to Moscow but was now dependent on Yeltsin, who

banned the Communist Party from the new Russian republic. Gorbachev

resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party in August 1991.

46

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President

Mikhail Gorbachev in Red Square in Moscow, 31 May

1988. (Ronald Reagan Library)

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