Prominent causes for the ending of the cold war - Assignment Example

PROMINENT CAUSES FOR THE ENDING OF THE COLD WAR by of the of the Introduction The Cold War was the economic, ideological, and geopolitical conflict between two global powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, which began in 1946 after the end of the World War II and lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Cold War era, the constant power struggle between the two former WWII allies, the USSR and the US, ranged from insidious spying in the metropolitan cities to violent indirect armed conflict in third world countries, like Vietnam and Afghanistan. The rivalry spanned from nuclear arms race, global geopolitics, and global trade market to the fields of arts, sports, culture, and science (Theodoros 2013). In the early 1980s, during the period of Reagan administration, the bitter rivalry reached to such a height that majority of political experts and international relations theorists claimed the possibility of nuclear war between the two superpowers in the nearest future (The Collapse of Communism 2014). On contrary, with the unification of Germany in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War between the global powers ended even before the end of the 20th century. Such a decisive, dramatic, and unusually peaceful end of the Cold War was a surprising outcome from the perspective of modern political science and international relations theories, triggering numerous studies, researches, and theories that speculated various factors and causes that might have led the end of the Cold War (Pravda 2010, p. 513). Leaderships of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, democratic and liberal ideologies, and economic factors have all been given as reasons for the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s. The primary international relations theories, liberalism and realism, possess contrasting views about the major causes for the ending of the Cold War, ranging from the US’ dominant military power to the Gorbachev’s liberal policies. In reality, the economic stagnation of the Soviet economic in the late 1970s and early 1980s mainly caused the early end of the Cold War (Forsberg 1999, p. 605-606). Certainly, leaderships, ideologies, democratization movements in the Eastern Europe, globalization, nuclear weapon control treaties, and cooperative foreign policies did play their role in preventing the escalation of the Cold War, but it is necessary to understand that these factors were indirectly reaction to the economic decline of the Soviet Union. Without economic stability and sufficient resources, it was merely impossible for the Soviet Union to continue the Cold War. Even during the early days of the Cold War, i.e. in 1948, when both the powers were almost equal and dominant, John Gaddis, a well-known political expert, predicted that there was an 80% chance of the peaceful end of the Cold War in favor of the US (Sykes 2010). Also, when asked whether the USSR was forced out of the Cold War, the last Soviet military Marshal Dmitry Yazav replied, “definitely there was no doubt about it. Simply, we lacked the required economic and military power to withstand all the combined NATO powers, i.e., the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. We were forced to adopt alternative policies to the arms race. We had to continuously reduce, negotiate, compromise, and cut the expenses on military, especially the most advanced and expensive technologies and weaponry” (Discussion 2014). Such assertions signify the crucial role of economic power in the Cold War. The present research paper investigates leading significant causes that led the end of the Cold War. This exploration is divided into two parts. First, the paper briefly summarizes the concept of the Cold War and its overall timeline. Second, the paper explores major causes for ending of the Cold War on the basis of realist and liberalist theories and results of various researches and reports. Cold War: Brief Overview The Concept The Cold War was one of the most threatening and distressing wars in the modern history. Unlike regular wars, the Cold War was not associated with direct violent confrontation between the rivals; rather, it was a period of tense suspicion and hostility between the two superpowers at the time. This unique characteristic made this war so different and complex (Thadani 2011). The Cold War between the US and the USSR was mainly characterized as the ideological clashes between the Western democracy and the Eastern communism. There wasn’t direct hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States. Instead, the confrontation took place in the form of traditional and nuclear arms race, geopolitics, economic sanctions and embargos, espionage, propaganda, and proxy wars in third world and developing countries. Among all, the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s was the most threatening direct face-off, together with a series of clashes over the Berlin Wall and the Berlin Blockade (Cold war 2013). Korean War, the Greek Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the Afghan War as well as the conflicts in Nicaragua, Angola, and El Salvador were some the major civil wars which were influenced by the Cold War. During the Cold War, especially during its peak in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, there was a serious concern that the conflict would escalate into devastating nuclear war; however, both powers developed diplomatic and cooperative policies in later years that prevented the issue from escalating beyond the control (Cold war 2013). Brief Timeline After the end of the WWII in 1945, tension between the West and the East over the future of Europe became apparent. After the Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri in 1946 where he accused the Soviet Union as an imperialist state, comparing it with the Nazi Germany and arguing for ending any kind of compromise with the Soviet Union and asking for a solid Anglo-American ties. This was a major setback to the Yalta Conference’s success and Roosevelt’s policy of establishing cooperative relation with the Soviet Union (Todd 2010, p. 69-71). As the Soviet Union expanded its influence all over the Eastern Europe, the Western leaders became more anxious and felt the threat of spreading communism all over Europe, leading indirect confrontation between the West and the East. In other words, the Cold War was the aftermath of the power vacuum in Europe which was emerged after the end of the WWII. In the 1950s, both the superpowers were engaged in nuclear arm race, threatening the global peace and security (Todd 2010, p. 69-73). The construction of the Berlin Wall by the USSR in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and proxy wars in Vietnam in the 1970s and in Afghanistan in the 1980s highlighted the severity of the Cold War. During the 1980s, the flawed political and economic structures of the USSR became widely apparent (Theodoros 2013). In the mid-1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of Soviet Union, the state was already suffering from massive economic issues. Furthermore, the prolonged Afghan War put further pressure on already crumbling Soviet economy. All these factors collectively led to the rapid decline of communist ideology in Soviet satellite states, the unification of the Berlin Wall, and eventually, collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War in the early 1990s (Theodoros 2013). The End of the Cold War: Prominent Causes Since the last two decades numerous scholarly researches have been conducted on the consequences and causes of the end of the Cold War. Scholars of different theoretical mindset, mainly realist and liberalist, have presented various influencing factors responsible for the sudden end of the clash of superpowers. Yet there is not universal agreement among the scholars on one core issue, i.e., the sources of the USSR’s adoption of a “liberal new thinking” in foreign policies and its unexpected retreat from the Cold War (English 2002, p. 70). It is mainly because similar to the characteristics of the Cold War the nature of the triggering factors for the ending of the Cold War is complex and interrelated. Even though there are various factors that have speed up the end of the Cold War, the economic decline of the Soviet Union can be identified as the root cause of the collapse of the confrontation. Factors such as, downfall of the communist ideology in the Eastern Europe, liberal policies of Gorbachev, nuclear arms control, and collapse of the Soviet Union in the Eastern Europe can be characterized as the outcome of the economic stagnation of the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In this case, compare to liberalism, a theory of realism justifies the reasoning of the end of the Cold War more effectively. The classical realism theory as explained by Wohlforth (2011, p. 445) states that each states pursues on self-interest and in order to survive in an anarchic global system, they constantly strengthen their military power and attempt to surpass the rival states. In the Cold War between the US and the USSR, both the states were engaged in extreme arms race, allocating the maximum quota of national budget for the defense sector. However, the difference was the Soviet impaired economy’s inability to cope up with the US’s strong economy in long run, putting the odds against the USSR in the Cold War. As concluded by Wohlforth, the Cold War ended mainly due to the Soviet Union’s lack of financial ability to continue. Further, as claimed by Stephen Sestanovych in 1989, Gorbachev’s “liberal new thinking” policy was “diplomacy of downfall” in response to the country’s economic stagnation rather than willingness to establish peace with the rivals (Wohlforth 2011 p. 447-450). Overall, the major factor responsible for the ending of the Cold War and other secondary, but, important factors that speed up the end can be analyzed as follows: Major Factor The Economic Decline of the Soviet Union. The realist or materialist explanation and the major factor for demising of the Cold War is the stagnation of the Soviet economy in the late 1980s. There are several reasons for the drastic economic decline of the Soviet Union. One of the fundamental reasons is an intense arms race with the US (Tyan 2012, p. 1). By the time the Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, the economic and political policies of the Soviet Union were in a serious crisis. Under Brezhnev’s leadership, the Soviet Union spent tremendous resources on the arms race with the US. During the Brezhnev’s era, the Soviet Union gained equal power status in the nuclear field, and even surpassed the US in some areas. But, the Soviet economy paid a high price to achieve it (Pravda 2010, p. 213). Between 1971 and 1975, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of the Soviet Union dropped to an average of 3.8% per year (Smitha 2014, p. 2). On contrary, the global production and the US GDP growth rate was growing rapidly at an average rate of 6.3% per year at that time. The Economic analysis of both the countries showed that when the US was spending around 5-6% of its GDP on arms, the Soviet Union had to spend over 52% of its GDP on arms production to survive in the arms race (Smitha 2014, p. 2). Certainly, it was impossible to maintain such a drastic ratio in the long run. After coming to power in 1985, Gorbachev himself admitted that if the second phase of arms race began, there would be immense pressure on the state economy (Tyan 2012, p. 1). The Soviet economy failed during the arms race with US because of its outdated and rigid ‘command economic structure’ from the Stalin’s era. The traditional economic system was falling behind advanced technology, causing significant decline in the agricultural and industrial production of the state. Also, there was a serious lack of investing not only in production of consumer goods, but in the entire domestic economy (Pravda 2010, p. 213). According to the Soviet economic study, by the late 1980s, hardly 8% of Soviet industries were competitive according to the global standards (Nye 2010). For example, in the late 1980s, there were merely 410,000 computers in the Soviet Union compare to almost 41 million in the US. It was almost impossible to maintain superpower status to the Soviet Union when almost 92% of national industries were not competitive at global level (Nye 2010). On the other hand, implementation of modern technology and flexibility of economic structure allowed stable economic growth in the US and Western Europe throughout the 2nd half of the 20th century. This economic stability allowed the US to increase its military budget and further encouraged West Germany and Japan to follow the US approach for economic development (Tyan 2012, p. 1-2). Due to the constant decline in agriculture and industrial production, a massive number of the farmers and labors lived below poverty line in the Soviet Union and grain was mainly imported from the West. Low-class workers had hardly any motivation to produce better goods or work harder. Overall moral of the Soviet society was low with high rates of addiction and absenteeism (Pravda 2010, p. 213). Furthermore, prolonged Afghan war caused significant pressure on the overall economic of the Soviet Union. Even though the Afghanistan war initially was anticipated by the Soviet Union as a small-scale military operation, it escalated into a decade-long devastating war involving over 1.5 millions Soviet soldiers, consisting more than 30,000 causalities (Directorate of Intelligence 2000, p. 489-90). Also, a dollar valuation of the Soviet operations in Afghan between 1980 and 1987 is over $50 billion in 1985 prices. Annual expenses were estimated around $8 billion, which were tremendously high at that time, putting excessive burden on the Soviet economy (Directorate of Intelligence 2000, p. 493). When Gorbachev took over the leadership; he inherited an economy which was on the verge of breakdown. Therefore, it could be evaluated that Gorbachev was forced to take the steps such as, internal reforming and compromises with the West, which he wouldn’t unless the financial bankruptcy. In other words, it can be argued that the economic stagnation of the Soviet Union played a major role in early end of the Cold War (Pravda 2010, p. 213). Secondary Factors Leaderships of Regan and Gorbachev. The Regan period can be characterized as the crucial period that turned the course of the Cold War in favour of the US and marked the downfall of the Soviet Union. According to the realist approach, Regan’s aggressive policies towards the Soviet Union proved to be pivotal for ending the Cold War far earlier than predicted (Sykes 2010). After coming to power in 1980, Ronald Regan gave a glimpse of his strategic approach to the Cold War through two remarkable developments. One, right after becoming the President, Regan began to openly attack the Soviet Union by denunciating it as an ‘evil empire’ (Roberts 2010, p. 523). Second, he started the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), popularly known as the Star Wars program, in 1983 as a research program focused on development of an advanced long-range missile technology (Podvig 2014). It was easy to ignore these actions as predictable politics and following the law of action-reaction, but both caused significant impact in the Soviet Union, spreading the feeling of insecurity and fear of modern Western military technologies in the Soviet sphere (Roberts 2010, p. 523-525). The concept of the SDI gave the US technical and psychological advantage over the Soviet Union. The project threatened to prove all of the Soviet weaponry inefficient and due to lack of development and research in the field of advanced technology and the weak economy, it was highly impossible for the Soviet regime to invest anything as high as the SDI in defence field without its citizens greater suffering. This critical advantage allowed the United States to force the Soviet Union to change its policies from participating in arms races to arms-control and most likely forced Gorbachev to adopt his “new thinking” policies of building cooperative relation with the West and demolishing the ‘Iron Curtain’ (ideological and physical barrier between the East and the West) as it gave Ronald Regan the power to negotiate with the Soviet leaders from an advantageous and strong position (Sykes 2010). Besides, Regan’s policy of challenging Soviet regional influence by supporting rebel militants in various conflicts from Angola to Nicaragua and Iran to Afghanistan severely damaged the geopolitical and economic power of the Soviet Union by the late 1980s (Hoffman 2004). As quoted by John Diggins, a Reagan’s biographer, Reagan was the only president in the US political history to resolve a deadly, prolonged international conflict without engaging in a direct combat (Roberts 2010, p. 523). Even though compare to Regan, Gorbachev’s policies were the response to the economic weakness of the Soviet Union, they also played a significant role in triggering the end of the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985. In order to prevent further decline of the state economy and to initiate much needed political and economic reforming of the outdated Soviet system, Gorbachev introduced 2 major policies, i.e., perestroika (rebuilding) for reforming of flawed economic structure and glasnost (open-mindedness) which was the liberal approach towards the west, media, globalization, and civil rights. Gorbachev’s insistence on nuclear arms control was not only influenced by the incapability of the Soviet economy to cope up in the arms race with the US but also the Chernobyl nuclear disaster made him realize the devastating effects of nuclear power (Pravda 2010, p. 210-211). Besides economic stagnation, the roots of economic and political reformation in the Soviet Union can be traced in the character and personality of Gorbachev. He was highly inspired by Khrushchev’s ideology of restructuring communism. Also, compare to the previous Soviet leaders, Gorbachev was much younger and willing to seek alternatives to achieve the economic stability in the state. Also, a company of liberal and intellectual experts such as, the Director of the Institute of the Global Economy and International Relations, A. Yakovlev as a finance minister, Y. Premakov and E. Shevarnodze as foreign policy advisors, played a crucial role in notifying Gorbachev new understanding of global security and order and liberal alternatives of economic and political stability in the state (Tyan 2012, p. 2). An Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty of 1987 between the US and USSR on abolishing short and intermediate ranges missiles was the outcome of Gorbachev’s consistent efforts for arms control and first step towards beginning of new cooperative relations between both the powers, initiating the end of the cold war (Pravda 2010, p. 210-211). Gorbachev policies of openness and cooperation and courageous attempt to change persistent and never-changing Soviet mentality of global domination and typical nature of the Soviet regime played a crucial role in the peaceful ending of the Cold War and it can’t ignored regardless of hidden or actual motives of those policies (Roberts 2010, p. 523-526). Downfall of the Communist Ideology and Spread of Nationalism in the Eastern Europe. Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) policy gave the Eastern European their first taste of political freedom and civil rights. For the first time, they could compare own lifestyle and living standards with the Western world. The western economic success and spread of liberal ideas caused rapid downfall of communist ideology in the Eastern Europe (Nye 2010). The withdrawal of the Soviet Union from the Afghan War in 1988 was seen as the defeat of communism in most of the Soviet regions. In the late 1980s, nationalist revolutions began to revive in majority of the Soviet satellite states. The causes of these movements were a combination of the Gorbachev’s liberal policies, the continued decline of living standards, and the USSR’s constant negligence towards the internal issues of these states (Pravda 2010, p. 214). As the Gorbachev declared his unwillingness to use armed forces to oppress the movements, the nationalist movements spread throughout Eastern Europe like a wildfire (Theodoros 2013). Thus, by the early 1989, Eastern Europe’s communist regimes collapsed one after another. Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania declared their independence from the Soviet Union (Cold war 2013). Also, the growing nationalist movements and the famous visit of Gorbachev in 1989 to the Berlin wall where he advocated freedom and civil rights triggered the revolution in the East Germany, leading the demolition of the Berlin Wall in the late 1989 (Theodoros 2013). The unification of Germany was marked as the major setback to the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War was officially marked as over (Pravda 2010, p. 218). Conclusion The Cold War between two superpowers, the US and the USSR is marked as one of the most threatening and hostile conflicts in the human history. In the early 1980s when the War was at its peak, majority of scholars were predicting the potential threat of nuclear war. However, surprisingly, the War ended peacefully within next 9 years, well prior to its anticipation. There are numerous factors responsible for the sudden end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. However, the research and available facts showed that the economic stagnation of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s was the root cause of the end of the Cold War. The economic decline led to political, social, and economic instability in the Soviet empire. Also, it became difficult for the Soviet leaders to engage in geopolitical and arms race with the US, forcing them to adopt liberal and cooperative policies. Overall, incapability of the Soviet economy to continue power game with the West caused the sudden ending of the Cold War in the late 1980s. Reference List Cold war. (2013). New World Encyclopaedia [online]. [Accessed 26 June 2015]. Available from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cold_War Directorate of Intelligence. (2000). The Costs of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. CIA Special Collections [online],p. 480-905. [Accessed 26 June 2015]. Available from http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000499320.pdf Discussion: International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War. (2014). desaxx [online]. [Accessed 26 June 2015]. Available from http://desaxx.blogspot.com/2014/04/discussion-international-relations.html English, RD. (2002). 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