The end of the Cold War was a greater historical transformation than 9/11, but controversy persists about its causes. An article by Steven Erlanger in Monday's New York Times quotes the neo-conservative commentator Robert Kagan as saying that "the standard narrative is Reagan." But the standard narrative is misleading.
A greater portion of the cause belongs to Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev wanted to reform communism, not replace it. However, his reform snowballed into a revolution driven from below rather than controlled from above. When he first came to power in 1985, Gorbachev tried to discipline the Soviet people as a way to overcome the existing economic stagnation. When discipline was not enough to solve the problem, he launched the idea of perestroika, or "restructuring," but the bureaucrats kept thwarting his orders. To light a fire under the bureaucrats, he used a strategy of glasnost, or open discussion and democratization. But once glasnost let people say what they were thinking, many people said, "We want out." By the summer of 1989, Eastern Europeans were given more degrees of freedom. Gorbachev refused to use force to put down demonstrations. By November, the Berlin Wall was pierced.
But there were also deeper causes. One was the soft power of liberal ideas. The growth of transnational communications and contacts helped spread liberal ideas, and the demonstration effect of Western economic success gave them additional appeal. In addition, the enormous Soviet defense budget began to affect other aspects of Soviet society. Health care declined and the mortality rate in the Soviet Union increased (the only developed country where that occurred). Eventually even the military became aware of the tremendous burden caused by imperial overstretch.
Ultimately the deepest causes of Soviet collapse were the decline of communist ideology and the failure of the Soviet economy. This would have happened even without Gorbachev. In the early Cold War, communism and the Soviet Union had a good deal of soft power. Many communists had led the resistance against fascism in Europe, and many people believed that communism was the wave of the future. But Soviet soft power was undercut by the de-Stalinization in 1956 that exposed his crimes, by the repressions in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Poland in 1981, and by the growing transnational communication of liberal ideas. Although in theory communism aimed to instill a system of class justice, Lenin's heirs maintained domestic power through a brutal state security system involving lethal purges, gulags, broad censorship, and the use of informants. The net effect of these repressive measures was a general loss of faith in the system.
Behind this, there was also the decline in the Soviet economy, reflecting the diminished ability of the Soviet central planning system to respond to change in the global economy. Stalin had created a system of centralized economic direction that emphasized heavy metal and smokestack industries. It was very inflexible--all thumbs and no fingers. As the economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, capitalism is creative destruction, a way of responding flexibly to major waves of technological change. At the end of the twentieth century, the major technological change of the third industrial revolution was the growing role of information as the scarcest resource in an economy. The Soviet system was particularly inept at handling information. The deep secrecy of its political system meant that the flow of information was slow and cumbersome.
Economic globalization created turmoil in the world economy at the end of the twentieth century, but the Western economies using market systems were able to transfer labor to services, to reorganize their heavy industries and to switch to computers. The Soviet Union could not keep up. For instance, when Gorbachev came to power in 1985, there were 50,000 personal computers in the Soviet Union; in the United States there were 30 million. Four years later, there were about 400,000 personal computers in the Soviet Union, and 40 million in the United States. According to one Soviet economist, by the late 1980s, only eight percent of Soviet industry was competitive at world standards. It is difficult to remain a superpower when 92 percent of industry is not competitive.
The lessons for November 9 are clear. While military power remains important, and Reagan's rhetoric played some role, it is a mistake for any country to discount the role of economic power and soft power.
Queen Rania of Jordan: Another Divisive Wall
For me, and for so many other people around the world, the anniversary is bittersweet. As the people of Germany celebrate a wall coming down, the people of Palestine are overwrought by a wall going up.
But seriously - North Korea IS competitive. There are not many competitors selling nuclear and missle technology to their "customers". And that is their major - if not sole - trading commodity.
If Reagan hadn't been in charge, would the Soviet Union have imploded? Sooner or later.
But it's really hard to overestimate the role that these leaders had in the unfolding of history. It was really the fortuitous meeting of circumstances and personalities.
From his incredibly moving gesture of humility in the Warsaw Ghetto to his (at the time) highly controversial “Ostpolitik” diplomacy towards the Eastern Bloc… he cut the first little hole in the wall during the Cold War.
Obama seems to be charting a similar course in international diplomacy, and taking just as much flak. (Brandt was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before his first term in office was even up… perhaps for similar reasons)
During the Reagan years, I suffered from trickle down economics as many Americans did. The U.S. & U.S.S.R. were diverting much of their economy into military expenditures and citizens of both nation's suffered because of it. I never liked Reagan, but I see know that he truly believed that we had to win the Cold War. The MIC loved him for that, but when the Cold War finally did end they probably thought he went too far.
Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. Then, almost magically, they became good capitalists , nearly overnight. It was the economy that ended the U.S.S.R. and that's what may end the U.S. When a nation's citizens are unemployed and starving, the populace begins to take matters into their own hands and their government becomes almost irrelevant.
I agree with him that it took both Reagan and his policies and Gorby and his policies to make it happen. They both fed off each other although neither was doing it intentionally.
If Obama was smart, he would start drilling in the US today and drive the price of oil down to drown the Middle East. Of course this will never happen.
Apparently our elected officials want us to be safe from every conceivable threat. Except, of course, our own health care system.
I do not hope the united states will deintegrate as well due to the crisis.
One of those economists claimed that the Saudis, who supported the Afghanistan Mujahideen against the Soviets, helped keep oil prices low to starve the Soviet war machine out of their Baku export profits.
But both of them answered Prof. Nye's question with a resounding - Paul Volker! As Fed chairman Volker purposefully caused the 81-84 recession to end stagflation by breaking OPEC's back - and succeeded. When Opec collapsed in 83 oil prices fell from today's equivalent of $120 a barrel to $25 a barrel. From there is slowly declined to the low of $10.70 in 1997.
One of them even made the argument that Reagan's star wars gamble to bankrupt the Soviets was laughable when you measured it against the effect that Lee Iacocca's K cars had on Soviet oil prices (Which is a take-off on Nye's excellent point that our economy can dance to the tune being played while the Soviets were stuck dancing to big band tunes right up until the end)
I wish I could remember who they were - but I have trouble remembering 20 character names that only have 2 vowels....
But, in reply to your post billy -
We're about the same age. Until it happened, if someone had suggested that the Soviet Union would one day just fall down and not be able to get back up, we'd have thought them crazy - right? And yet it happened. Where else in history has an empire fell so suddenly, yet so gracefully? I don't think there is a parallel.
A: The Beatles
It's only becoming clear now. Seriously. Look at this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcmusic/2009/09/how_the_beatles_rocked_the_kre.html