In 1994, Henry Kissinger published the book Diplomacy. He was a renowned scholar and diplomat who served as the United States National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. His book provides an extensive sweep of the history of foreign affairs and the art of diplomacy, with a particular focus on the 20th century and the Western World. Kissinger, known for his alignment with the realist school of international relations, inquires into the concepts of the balance of power, raison d’État, and Realpolitik across different eras.
His work has been widely praised for its scope and intricate detail. Yet, it has also faced criticism for its focus on individuals over structural forces, and for presenting a reductive view of history. Also, critics have also pointed out that the book focuses excessively on Kissinger’s individual role in events, potentially overstating his impact. In any case, his ideas are worthy of consideration.
This article presents a summary of Kissinger’s ideas in the thirtieth chapter of his book, called “The End of the Cold War: Reagan and Gorbachev”.
You can find all available summaries of this book, or you can read the summary from the previous chapter of the book, by clicking these links.
The Cold War emerged when the United States expected an era of peace and ended just as the country was bracing for another prolonged period of conflict. The Soviet empire collapsed as rapidly as it had expanded, prompting the U.S. to shift from hostility to friendship with Russia almost overnight. This dramatic transformation occurred under two unlikely leaders—Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan came into power seeking to reaffirm American exceptionalism, while Gorbachev aimed to revitalize what he believed was a superior Soviet ideology. Both were convinced of their respective systems’ ultimate triumph. However, Reagan understood his society’s strengths and tapped into its energy, while Gorbachev, disconnected from his people’s realities, pushed reforms that ultimately dismantled the Soviet system.
In the years before this shift, U.S. foreign policy had suffered setbacks. The fall of Indochina in 1975 led to American retreat in Angola and other regions, coinciding with Soviet expansionism. Cuban forces moved from Angola to Ethiopia with Soviet backing, Vietnam dominated Cambodia with Soviet support, and over 100,000 Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iran’s pro-Western government fell, replaced by a radical anti-American regime that took 52 American hostages. The geopolitical landscape seemed bleak, with communism on the march. Yet, just as it appeared unstoppable, the Soviet system began to unravel. Within a decade, the Eastern European bloc dissolved, and the Soviet empire disintegrated, surrendering nearly all its territorial acquisitions since the time of Peter the Great. Never before had a major world power collapsed so quickly without a war.
The Soviet Union’s downfall stemmed largely from its overreach. The state had defied the odds to survive civil war, isolation, and ruthless leadership, eventually emerging as a global superpower. Soviet expansion, initially focused on neighboring regions, later extended across continents. Rapid missile growth led some U.S. analysts to fear impending Soviet strategic dominance. American leaders viewed Soviet influence as ever-expanding, much like 19th-century Britain’s concerns about Russia. However, Soviet leaders miscalculated their system’s ability to sustain such an empire. They overestimated their military and economic strength while challenging nearly every major power. Crucially, they failed to acknowledge their system’s deep flaws—it stifled initiative and creativity, leaving the Soviet Union stagnant despite its military might. The Politburo’s rise to power had rewarded ideological rigidity over innovation, making it incapable of sustaining the global conflict it had initiated.
Ultimately, the Soviet Union lacked the strength and dynamism to fulfill the role its leaders envisioned. Stalin may have sensed this imbalance when he responded to America’s military buildup during the Korean War with his 1952 Peace Note. His successors, however, misread their ability to survive unchallenged as proof of Western weakness. They were emboldened by perceived Soviet successes in the developing world. Leaders like Khrushchev abandoned Stalin’s strategy of dividing the capitalist bloc and instead sought to defeat it outright—through brinkmanship over Berlin, missile deployments in Cuba, and military adventurism. But these efforts far exceeded Soviet capabilities, leading to stagnation and, ultimately, collapse.
By Reagan’s second term, Soviet decline was unmistakable. Though earlier U.S. administrations and Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, played crucial roles, Reagan’s presidency marked the decisive turning point. His leadership baffled academics, as he lacked deep historical knowledge and often distorted facts to fit his views. He saw biblical prophecies as political forecasts and sometimes made bizarre historical comparisons—once likening Gorbachev to Bismarck, an analogy so flawed that an adviser hesitated to correct him for fear of reinforcing the idea. Reagan showed little interest in foreign policy details, focusing instead on a few core beliefs: the dangers of appeasement, the evil of communism, and the greatness of America. Despite his lack of expertise, he exhibited an uncanny ability to maintain a coherent and impactful foreign policy.
Reagan’s presidency demonstrated that leadership depends more on conviction and a clear sense of direction than on intellectual depth. Though critics claimed his speechwriters shaped his ideas, he personally selected those who crafted his messages and delivered them with remarkable conviction. His administration developed a foreign policy doctrine of impressive coherence, rooted in his intuitive grasp of American ideals and his correct perception of Soviet fragility—an insight that even many conservatives failed to grasp.
Reagan’s ability to unify Americans was remarkable. His affable nature made it difficult even for his critics to hold grudges. He was both friendly and distant, an actor who used charm as a shield. Those who thought they were close to him often realized that he was, in fact, a loner. His geniality ensured that no one had special influence over him. Beneath the cheerful demeanor lay a deeply self-contained individual.
Despite Reagan’s earlier criticism of Nixon and Ford, their foreign policy goals were largely aligned: all three administrations sought to counter Soviet expansion. The difference lay in their tactics and rhetoric. Nixon, scarred by Vietnam-era divisions, believed that demonstrating a commitment to peace was necessary before confronting Soviet aggression. Reagan, by contrast, led a country eager to reclaim global leadership and embraced a confrontational stance. His strategy mirrored Woodrow Wilson’s approach: appealing to America’s belief in its moral mission rather than relying on pure geopolitical reasoning. If Nixon was akin to Theodore Roosevelt—pragmatic and strategic—Reagan resembled Wilson, driven by grand ideals rather than intricate diplomacy.
Reagan’s vision of American exceptionalism was not unique, but he applied it with unusual literalism, shaping everyday foreign policy around it. Unlike past presidents who invoked American values to support specific initiatives like the Marshall Plan, Reagan used them as weapons in the ideological struggle against communism. He rejected the moral uncertainty of the Carter administration and championed America as the world’s greatest force for peace. He labeled the Soviet Union a deceitful outlaw state, setting the stage for his famous “evil empire” speech. His rhetoric abandoned the goal of détente in favor of outright ideological confrontation.
Reagan’s approach marked the end of an era of cautious engagement with the Soviet Union. He framed the Cold War as a battle of good versus evil, with an inevitable outcome. This perspective, combined with the Soviet Union’s internal decay, made his strategy extraordinarily effective. In a 1982 speech to the British Parliament, he argued that Marxism was collapsing under its own contradictions—not in the capitalist West, but in its birthplace, the Soviet Union. His words echoed Nixon’s earlier warnings about Soviet decline, though conservatives had once resisted such an analysis when it was linked to détente. Now, however, Reagan’s rhetoric gave them a rallying cry for confrontation rather than compromise.
Reagan believed that the key to improving U.S.-Soviet relations lay in making the Kremlin share his fear of nuclear catastrophe. His goal was to force Soviet leaders to recognize the risks of their expansionist ambitions. A decade earlier, such rhetoric might have led to domestic unrest or a direct confrontation with a confident Soviet Union, and a decade later, it would have seemed outdated. But in the 1980s, it laid the groundwork for an unprecedented period of dialogue between East and West.
Reagan’s harsh rhetoric drew immediate criticism from intellectuals and the media. The New Republic called his description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” simplistic and apocalyptic, while commentators in The New York Times and Harvard scholars dismissed his language as crude nationalism and outdated machismo. Critics feared that such confrontational language would derail serious negotiations. However, the opposite occurred. Reagan’s second term saw the most intense East-West negotiations since Nixon’s détente era—this time with public support and even conservative backing.
Reagan’s ideological approach to the Cold War echoed American utopianism. Though he framed the struggle in moral terms, he did not see it as a permanent battle. Instead, he believed that communists persisted not out of inherent malice but due to misunderstanding. Reagan was convinced that, once Soviet leaders truly grasped America’s intentions, they would abandon their ideology. This belief led him to personally reach out to Soviet leaders, including a handwritten letter to Brezhnev in 1981, in which he tried to reassure him that the United States had no imperialist ambitions. Reagan seemed to think that decades of communist suspicion could be dispelled with a personal note—an approach reminiscent of Truman’s failed attempt to reassure Stalin after World War II.
Reagan continued this outreach after Brezhnev’s death, writing another letter to his successor, Yuri Andropov, reaffirming America’s peaceful intentions. When Andropov died and was replaced by the aging Konstantin Chernenko, Reagan expressed in his diary a desire to speak with him directly, convinced that a personal conversation could bring about a breakthrough. In a 1984 meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Reagan once again voiced his hope that direct engagement would ease Soviet suspicions of the U.S. His unwavering belief in the power of personal diplomacy reflected a deeply American conviction: that hostility between nations was not inevitable, that trust could be built through goodwill, and that deep ideological conflicts could be resolved through dialogue.
When Reagan finally met Gorbachev in 1985, he described his anticipation in terms reminiscent of Carter rather than Nixon. He saw their meeting as an opportunity to resolve decades of conflict, believing that top leaders could cut through bureaucratic obstacles and strike an agreement on their own. This belief, while idealistic, gave Reagan and his administration remarkable tactical flexibility. They were not bound by traditional balance-of-power thinking but instead pursued a final, decisive resolution to the Cold War.
Reagan even envisioned taking Gorbachev on a tour of America, showing him middle-class neighborhoods and factory workers’ homes to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism. He imagined Gorbachev knocking on doors and hearing firsthand about the prosperity of ordinary Americans—an almost cinematic fantasy that underscored his belief in the inevitable triumph of democracy. Reagan saw it as his duty to help Soviet leaders realize their errors, believing that once they understood America’s true nature, ideological reconciliation would follow.
Despite this optimism, Reagan was committed to achieving his vision through relentless confrontation. Unlike past presidents who prioritized diplomatic atmospheres and incremental progress, Reagan pursued ideological and strategic offensives simultaneously. His administration sought to halt Soviet expansion, reverse its geopolitical advances, and launch a military buildup that would turn Soviet strategic ambitions into liabilities. The Soviet Union had not faced such a challenge since John Foster Dulles, but unlike Dulles, Reagan was the president, and his commitment to opposing communism was unwavering.
One of Reagan’s key ideological tools was the issue of human rights. While previous administrations had used human rights selectively—Nixon to pressure the Soviet Union on emigration, Ford in the Helsinki Accords, and Carter as a broad moral appeal—Reagan weaponized it as a direct challenge to communism itself. He framed human rights as the key to global peace, famously stating that governments accountable to their people do not wage war on their neighbors. He called for strengthening democratic institutions worldwide, urging free nations to support independent press, unions, and political parties as a foundation for democracy.
Reagan took Wilsonian principles to their ultimate conclusion: America would not merely defend itself from threats or wait for democratic change to emerge naturally. Instead, it would actively promote democracy worldwide, rewarding governments that upheld its ideals and pressuring those that did not, even if they posed no direct threat to U.S. security. His administration pressured both right-wing and left-wing autocratic regimes—pushing Chile’s Pinochet toward free elections and helping to topple the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
However, this aggressive push for democracy raised difficult questions that would become even more relevant in the post-Cold War era. How could this global crusade be reconciled with America’s long-standing doctrine of nonintervention? To what extent should national security take precedence over promoting democratic values? How much was the U.S. willing to sacrifice to spread its ideals? These dilemmas, which first emerged under Reagan, would shape the challenges of the world that followed.
When Reagan assumed office, his immediate concern was not theoretical ambiguities but how to stop the relentless Soviet expansion of the previous decade. His strategy was clear: make the Soviets realize they had overextended themselves. Rejecting the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that communist gains were irreversible, Reagan was determined not just to contain communism but to roll it back. He pushed for the repeal of the Clark Amendment, which had prohibited U.S. aid to anti-communist forces in Angola, increased support for Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviets, and backed anti-communist insurgencies in Central America. Even in Cambodia, his administration provided humanitarian assistance to counter Soviet influence. In an extraordinary turnaround, just five years after the Vietnam debacle, America, under a resolute leader, was successfully challenging Soviet expansion on multiple fronts.
The Soviet geopolitical position began to deteriorate. Though some of these setbacks did not fully materialize until the Bush administration, the tide had turned. By 1990, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia, leading to democratic elections in 1993. Cuban troops left Angola by 1991, the communist-backed Ethiopian government collapsed, and in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas agreed to free elections in 1990—something no communist regime had ever risked before. Most significantly, the Soviet military withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. These developments shattered communist ideological confidence. As Soviet influence crumbled across the developing world, reformers within the Soviet Union began citing Brezhnev’s costly foreign interventions as proof of their system’s failure. The rigid, secretive style of Soviet decision-making was now seen as a fundamental weakness.
The Reagan Doctrine formalized this aggressive approach. The United States would actively support anti-communist insurgencies in Soviet-aligned states. This meant supplying arms to the Afghan mujahideen, funding the Nicaraguan Contras, and aiding resistance movements in Angola and Ethiopia. For decades, the Soviet Union had backed communist revolutions against U.S.-friendly regimes. Now, America was using the same tactics against them. In a 1985 speech, Secretary of State George Shultz articulated this shift, arguing that the Soviet empire was weakening under its own weight and that abandoning democratic movements around the world would be a betrayal of both American values and global freedom.
The rhetoric of democracy and freedom was accompanied by a more pragmatic, almost Machiavellian realism. The Reagan administration did not hesitate to support allies who had little in common with American ideals—Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, right-wing militias in Central America, and tribal warlords in Africa. This approach, similar to Cardinal Richelieu’s strategy of aligning with the Ottoman Empire to counter Habsburg Spain, was based on the principle that national interest, not ideological purity, dictated alliances. The strategy hastened communism’s collapse but also left America with difficult questions about the long-term consequences of its choices. It was the timeless dilemma of statesmanship: what ends justify which means?
The most profound challenge Reagan posed to the Soviet Union, however, was his military buildup. Throughout his campaigns, he had warned of America’s weakening defense posture and the growing Soviet military threat. While his assessment of Soviet military superiority was an oversimplification, his stance galvanized conservative support far more effectively than Nixon’s geopolitical arguments ever had. Critics had long claimed that any U.S. arms buildup would be matched by the Soviets, rendering it futile. But the scale and speed of Reagan’s military expansion shattered this assumption. With their economy already strained by failures in Afghanistan and Africa, Soviet leaders were now forced to confront a new reality: they could not afford to keep up.
Reagan reinstated weapons programs that had been scrapped by the Carter administration, including the B-1 bomber, and pushed forward with the deployment of the MX missile, the first new American land-based intercontinental missile in a decade. The most pivotal strategic moves, however, were the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The decision to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe had been made under Carter, largely as a political response to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s frustration over the U.S. cancellation of the neutron bomb, which he had supported. These missiles were intended to counter the Soviet SS-20s, which could strike any target in Europe from deep within Soviet territory. The deployment was less about military necessity and more about strategic signaling. Western European leaders had long feared that, in a limited Soviet attack on Europe, the U.S. might hesitate to use its nuclear arsenal if American cities were not directly threatened. By placing American missiles on European soil, Washington reassured its allies that their security was directly tied to U.S. nuclear strategy.
This strategy, known as “coupling,” aimed to strengthen the transatlantic alliance by making it clear that any Soviet attack on Europe would inevitably draw the U.S. into the conflict. However, it also revived anxieties about German neutralism, particularly in France. After Schmidt’s fall in 1982, elements within the German Social Democratic Party advocated for greater neutrality, with some, like Oskar Lafontaine, even suggesting Germany should leave NATO’s integrated command. Soviet leaders saw an opportunity to exploit these divisions. Brezhnev and later Andropov made stopping the missile deployment their top foreign policy priority. Moscow’s propaganda campaign fueled massive anti-nuclear protests across Western Europe. Gromyko warned that if West Germany accepted the missiles, it would become a primary target in any future conflict.
France, concerned about German neutralism, took a surprising turn under President François Mitterrand, who strongly backed the missile deployment. Mitterrand understood that preventing a Soviet foothold in Germany was more important than maintaining ideological unity with his fellow European socialists. Addressing the German Bundestag, he warned that any attempt to separate Europe’s defense from America’s would destabilize the balance of power and risk global security.
Reagan countered Soviet opposition with a bold diplomatic move—offering to trade all U.S. intermediate-range missiles for the Soviet SS-20s. Since the SS-20s had been more of an excuse than a real justification for U.S. missile deployment, this proposal was strategically brilliant. It framed the U.S. position as reasonable while forcing the Soviets into a dilemma. When the Soviet leadership, overestimating its leverage, refused to negotiate, Reagan’s “zero option” made it easier for European leaders to proceed with the missile deployment. The failure of the Soviet diplomatic offensive exposed their growing inability to intimidate Western Europe.
While the missile deployment strengthened deterrence, Reagan’s most groundbreaking move came on March 23, 1983, when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), calling on American scientists to develop a defense system that would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” This announcement sent shockwaves through the Kremlin. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was the foundation of its superpower status. For two decades, achieving nuclear parity with the U.S. had been the core of Soviet military policy. Now, Reagan was proposing a technological leap that could nullify everything the Soviets had sacrificed to achieve.
If SDI succeeded, the U.S. would gain a decisive strategic advantage. The Soviets feared that, in a crisis, an American first strike might become feasible if a missile defense system could intercept the surviving Soviet response. At the very least, SDI signaled that the arms race would no longer be confined to offense; the U.S. was shifting the battlefield to space-based defense.
Reagan’s proposal reignited the debate over nuclear strategy. During the early Cold War, strategists had argued about how best to deter a nuclear conflict. Traditional military experts had been sidelined in favor of scientists and academics, many of whom were deeply uncomfortable with nuclear weapons. This new class of experts had shaped the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which maintained that the best way to prevent war was to ensure that any nuclear conflict would result in total annihilation.
MAD’s logic was deeply counterintuitive—it relied on both sides accepting the suicidal nature of war. This doctrine granted a psychological advantage to the Soviets, who had superior conventional forces and could launch aggressive actions with little fear of direct retaliation. Reagan’s SDI challenged this status quo, appealing to those who sought an alternative to the grim choice between nuclear war and surrender.
Despite widespread skepticism from defense analysts and European allies, Reagan pushed forward. Critics warned that SDI was technologically unfeasible, prohibitively expensive, and would undermine arms control agreements like the 1972 ABM Treaty. British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe cautioned against attempting to build a “Maginot Line in space,” warning that years of instability could follow. Yet, at its core, the opposition to SDI was philosophical—many experts had become so committed to the MAD doctrine that they viewed any attempt at defense as destabilizing.
Reagan’s confidence in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) stemmed less from technical feasibility than from a fundamental political truth: leaders who make no effort to protect their people from nuclear threats—whether from accidents, irrational adversaries, or nuclear proliferation—would be condemned by history if catastrophe ever struck. Critics argued that missile defense could always be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but this ignored the reality that deterrence does not function in a straight line. Even if SDI were only partially effective, it would still raise the cost and uncertainty of launching a nuclear attack, strengthening deterrence. Additionally, while SDI might not completely neutralize a Soviet assault, it would be far more effective against smaller nuclear threats from emerging powers.
Reagan remained largely unmoved by technical critiques because he never saw SDI primarily as a strategic initiative. He framed it instead as a moral and humanitarian cause—the ultimate goal being a world free of nuclear weapons. He was the most pro-military, pro-nuclear president in modern history, yet he simultaneously championed a vision of complete nuclear disarmament. His oft-repeated statement that “a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought” echoed the rhetoric of his most radical critics. Yet Reagan was deeply sincere in both his military buildup and his desire for a nuclear-free world. In his memoirs, he described nuclear war as unwinnable and expressed his dream of total nuclear abolition, a stance that was reinforced by his personal belief in biblical prophecy, particularly the apocalyptic vision of Armageddon.
Reagan’s abhorrence of nuclear war was evident in his speeches. When announcing the deployment of MX missiles in 1983, he expressed his hope that nuclear weapons could eventually be eliminated. He feared that as long as nuclear arms existed, some accident or irrational leader could trigger a catastrophe. His language, passionate and unfiltered, reflected his belief in American scientific ingenuity. If negotiations took too long, he argued, the U.S. would simply develop SDI and unilaterally make nuclear weapons obsolete.
Soviet leaders dismissed Reagan’s moral appeals but were forced to take America’s technological potential seriously. Just as Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) proposals had driven Moscow to the negotiating table, SDI had a similar effect. Contrary to arms control advocates’ predictions, it accelerated, rather than hindered, arms negotiations. Faced with the possibility of an unwinnable technological race, the Soviets returned to arms control talks, which they had abandoned over the issue of intermediate-range missiles.
Reagan’s sweeping vision of eliminating nuclear weapons was sometimes misinterpreted as a cynical ploy to justify military expansion, but his sincerity was undeniable. He embodied the quintessential American optimism that what is necessary is also achievable. He often made his most radical statements about nuclear abolition spontaneously, reinforcing the paradox of his presidency: the same man who modernized America’s nuclear arsenal also played a central role in delegitimizing it. His repeated insistence that nuclear war must never be fought raised questions about the credibility of the very deterrent strategy upon which U.S. security depended. But by the time these doubts might have been tested, the Soviet Union had already begun to crumble, and America’s allies, despite some misgivings, followed Reagan’s lead.
Reagan’s sincerity was most evident at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit with Gorbachev, where he pursued his dream of a nuclear-free world with remarkable enthusiasm. In a dramatic 48-hour negotiation, the two leaders nearly reached a groundbreaking agreement to cut strategic forces by 50% in five years and eliminate all ballistic missiles within a decade. At one point, Reagan even came close to accepting a Soviet proposal to abolish nuclear weapons entirely. This extraordinary moment alarmed U.S. allies, who had long feared a Soviet-American pact that could sideline their interests. If Britain, France, and China refused to follow suit, they risked international isolation; if they complied, they would be forced to dismantle their nuclear deterrents—something Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, and China’s leaders were unwilling to consider.
Reykjavik ultimately collapsed due to a miscalculation by Gorbachev. He overplayed his hand by demanding that SDI testing be banned for ten years as a condition for eliminating nuclear missiles. He failed to anticipate Reagan’s response: rather than compromise, Reagan simply walked out. Years later, a senior Soviet adviser admitted they had never considered the possibility that Reagan might leave the room. Had Gorbachev settled for what was already on the table, he could have created a major crisis within NATO and undermined U.S. relations with China. But by pressing too hard, he reinforced Reagan’s resolve.
Despite Reykjavik’s failure, Reagan’s vision of nuclear abolition remained influential. Secretary of State George Shultz later articulated why it was in the West’s interest, though his cautious wording—emphasizing a “less nuclear world” rather than full disarmament—reflected ongoing concerns among America’s allies. The immediate legacy of Reykjavik was the implementation of partial agreements, including a 50% reduction in strategic forces and the elimination of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe. Unlike previous disarmament efforts, this agreement did not affect British and French nuclear forces, preventing another intra-alliance dispute. However, it did initiate the denuclearization of Germany, raising long-term questions about its role in NATO. If Germany moved toward a “no first use” policy, it would directly conflict with NATO’s strategic doctrine and challenge American military commitments in Europe. Margaret Thatcher, wary of such trends, feared that arms control negotiations could inadvertently weaken the transatlantic alliance.
Reagan’s approach transformed the Cold War from a slow-moving stalemate into a high-stakes sprint. His willingness to take risks, challenge diplomatic conventions, and push the Soviet Union to its breaking point might have been dangerous in an earlier era when Moscow was more confident and aggressive. A similar strategy in the 1950s could have sparked a major crisis, as Churchill had learned when he proposed a bold settlement after Stalin’s death. But by the 1980s, Soviet stagnation made Reagan’s offensive viable. Whether Reagan fully understood the extent of Soviet decline or simply acted on instinct, the result was the same: the Cold War did not continue.
By the end of Reagan’s presidency, U.S.-Soviet relations had returned to a pattern reminiscent of détente. Arms control was once again at the center of diplomacy, though now with an emphasis on actual reductions rather than mere limitations. Soviet influence in the developing world had collapsed, and its ability to destabilize regions was severely diminished. With security concerns fading, nationalism rose on both sides of the Atlantic. America increasingly relied on its own military capabilities, while European nations sought to expand their diplomatic influence with the Eastern Bloc. These emerging tensions, which could have reshaped global politics, were ultimately overshadowed by the rapid collapse of communism.
What changed most dramatically under Reagan was the way the Cold War was framed for the American public. He masterfully blended tough strategic policies with a compelling ideological narrative. His administration appealed to both major strands of American foreign policy thinking: the missionary idealism that saw America as a force for global good, and the isolationist impulse that sought to end foreign entanglements. His rhetoric balanced Cold War confrontation with utopian visions of peace, allowing him to be simultaneously hawkish and idealistic.
In practice, Reagan adhered more closely to traditional American foreign policy than Nixon. Nixon would never have labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” but he also would not have proposed eliminating all nuclear weapons or believed in resolving the Cold War through a single personal summit. Reagan’s ideological approach shielded him from criticism that would have been devastating for a liberal president advocating similar policies. His pivot toward diplomacy in his second term, combined with the undeniable success of his confrontational first term, softened the impact of his earlier hardline rhetoric.
Had the Soviet Union remained a formidable competitor, Reagan’s balancing act might have been difficult to sustain. However, the timing of his presidency aligned with the beginning of the Soviet collapse—a process that his policies accelerated.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the seventh leader in a direct line from Lenin, inherited a Soviet Union that had reached the height of its global power but was internally crumbling. When he took office in 1985, he led a nuclear superpower in deep economic and social decline. By the time he was removed from power in 1991, the Soviet army had sided with Boris Yeltsin, the Communist Party had been outlawed, and the vast empire that Russian rulers had built since Peter the Great had fallen apart.
In 1985, few could have imagined such a collapse. Like his predecessors, Gorbachev inspired both fear and hope—fear, because he led an opaque and powerful superstate; hope, because many in the West were eager to believe that he might finally bring about a lasting peace. Unlike past Soviet leaders, Gorbachev was intelligent, polished, and free of the Stalinist brutality that had shaped earlier generations. He combined cosmopolitan sophistication with a provincial political mindset—perceptive but ultimately blind to his central dilemma.
For a time, Gorbachev was seen as the West’s best hope for transforming the Soviet Union. In Washington, he was viewed as indispensable to forging a new world order. President George H.W. Bush even gave a speech in the Ukrainian Parliament urging the Soviet Union’s survival—an extraordinary sign of how much Western leaders saw Gorbachev as a stabilizing force. During the failed coup against him in August 1991, democratic leaders rallied in defense of the very Soviet constitution that had once put him in power.
However, high politics is unforgiving of weakness. Gorbachev was most admired when he appeared as the reasonable face of an adversarial, nuclear-armed superpower. But as his policies floundered and his leadership wavered, his influence faded. Five months after the coup attempt, he resigned, replaced by Yeltsin through methods as legally dubious as those that had once been condemned. The same Western leaders who had recently championed Gorbachev now supported Yeltsin, using arguments that had only months earlier been used to defend the Soviet leader. Gorbachev, once celebrated, was quickly forgotten, a leader undone by ambitions beyond his ability to achieve.
Yet Gorbachev had unintentionally led one of the greatest revolutions of his time. He dismantled the Communist Party, an institution designed to seize and maintain power, and left behind an empire shattered into independent states. These new nations, many still wary of Russia, struggled with internal divisions caused by the ethnic and political legacies of Soviet rule. Gorbachev never intended these outcomes. He sought modernization, not democracy, and aimed to make communism viable on the world stage. Instead, he oversaw the destruction of the very system that had shaped him and elevated him to power.
At home, Gorbachev was blamed for the Soviet collapse. Abroad, he was forgotten. In truth, he neither deserved the adulation nor the condemnation he received. He had inherited nearly impossible challenges. By the time he took office, it was becoming clear just how dire the Soviet situation was. After 40 years of Cold War, nearly all industrialized nations were aligned against Moscow. China, once a communist ally, had effectively joined the Western camp. The Soviet Union’s only remaining partners were the Eastern European satellites, which were more of a burden than an asset. Costly interventions in the Third World were proving disastrous—Afghanistan had become a Soviet Vietnam, and Moscow’s support for leftist movements from Angola to Nicaragua was being countered by an increasingly assertive United States. Reagan’s military buildup, particularly the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), posed a technological challenge the stagnant Soviet economy could not hope to match. As the West embraced the digital revolution, the Soviet Union was sliding further into technological backwardness.
Despite his ultimate failure, Gorbachev at least recognized the severity of the crisis. Initially, he believed that by reforming the Communist Party and introducing some market elements into the economy, he could revitalize the system. While he underestimated the scale of domestic problems, he understood that he needed international stability to focus on internal reforms. In this, he echoed earlier post-Stalin leaders, but unlike Khrushchev—who had once boasted that the Soviet economy would surpass the capitalist world—Gorbachev accepted that such a goal was far beyond reach.
To buy time for his reforms, Gorbachev pursued a dramatic shift in Soviet foreign policy. At the 1986 Party Congress, Marxist-Leninist ideology was almost entirely discarded. Previous periods of “peaceful coexistence” had been seen as temporary, strategic pauses in the broader class struggle. Gorbachev, however, abandoned this premise altogether. He declared coexistence to be a permanent necessity, no longer framed as a means to a future communist victory, but as a universal good for all humanity.
In his book Perestroika, Gorbachev articulated his new vision, claiming that distinctions will remain between the Soviets and the Americans, but that it would be better if both set aside their differences for the sake of mankind. Gorbachev had hinted at this shift even earlier, during a 1985 press conference following his first summit with Reagan.
Many Cold War veterans struggled to grasp the depth of Gorbachev’s transformation. In early 1987, during a meeting in Moscow, Anatoly Dobrynin, then head of the International Department of the Communist Party, made scathing remarks about the Afghan government—a Soviet puppet regime. When asked if the Brezhnev Doctrine still applied, Dobrynin retorted, “What makes you think the Kabul government is communist?” When this remark was relayed to Washington, skepticism prevailed. The assumption was that Dobrynin was merely being polite to an old acquaintance. But the truth was that Gorbachev’s foreign policy doctrine was evolving in ways that even seasoned Soviet bureaucrats struggled to comprehend.
For years, Soviet officials had spoken of “depriving the West of an enemy image” as a tactical maneuver to weaken NATO unity. Gorbachev initially framed his new approach in similar terms. In a 1987 speech, he stated that his “new thinking” was breaking down the stereotypes of anti-Sovietism and suspicion.
At first, this seemed like a continuation of past Soviet strategies—promoting détente while maintaining underlying military and ideological goals. However, as time passed, it became clear that Gorbachev was going much further than his predecessors. His “new thinking” did not merely adapt Soviet policy; it completely dismantled its ideological foundations. By replacing class struggle with Wilsonian notions of global interdependence, Gorbachev overturned Leninist doctrine and Soviet foreign policy’s historical rationale.
This ideological collapse only deepened the Soviet Union’s challenges. By the mid-1980s, Soviet leaders faced a crisis on multiple fronts—strained relations with the West, tensions with China, instability in Eastern Europe, an unwinnable arms race, and a stagnating domestic economy. Any one of these issues would have been difficult to address, but together they proved insurmountable.
Initially, Gorbachev followed the standard Soviet playbook—reducing tensions with diplomatic gestures. In a 1985 Time magazine interview, he outlined his approach, claiming that Soviets and Americans had their survivals linked, whether they liked it or not. For him, the key question was whether we were ready to recognize that peace is the only way forward.
Gorbachev’s rhetoric was more than just diplomatic maneuvering. He genuinely sought to reframe the Cold War as a shared struggle for survival rather than an ideological contest. This shift was difficult for many in the West to fully grasp. While past Soviet leaders had spoken of détente as a temporary phase in the broader struggle, Gorbachev viewed coexistence as a permanent state—one in which ideological differences no longer justified confrontation.
The challenge for Gorbachev was that foreign policy, like a massive tanker, cannot turn quickly. Soviet bureaucracies had spent decades operating under rigid ideological principles, and even when official doctrine changed, policy adjustments lagged behind. Leaders may set the direction, but it is bureaucrats who implement policies, often through their own interpretations. As a result, even after Gorbachev’s doctrinal shift, many in the Soviet system continued to act according to older patterns.
But over time, Gorbachev’s new vision became undeniable. He had not simply adjusted Soviet foreign policy—he had fundamentally rewritten it. His belief in a world of shared interests was a radical break from Soviet orthodoxy. However, this ideological retreat removed the foundation of Soviet power. Without its guiding ideology, the Soviet state lost both its internal coherence and its ability to justify its dominance. It was a transformation that, once begun, could not be controlled.
Gorbachev faced a dilemma: his rhetoric was interpreted through the lens of past Soviet leaders like Malenkov and Khrushchev, making it difficult for the West to determine if his words signaled real change. At the same time, his statements were often too vague to prompt a concrete response. Without a clear proposal for political reform, he became trapped in the long-established framework of East-West diplomacy, which had been defined primarily by arms control negotiations.
The arms control process had become a complex and slow-moving enterprise, bogged down by intricate technical details and verification measures. But what the Soviet Union needed was immediate relief—not just from political tensions but from the crushing economic burden of the arms race. The years-long process of negotiating weapons reductions could not provide the quick results necessary to rescue the faltering Soviet economy. Ironically, rather than easing pressure on Moscow, arms control negotiations increasingly served as a tool to expose and deepen Soviet weaknesses, even though they had never been intended for that purpose.
Gorbachev’s last real chance to bring the arms race to a rapid halt, or at least to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its NATO allies, came at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit. But like Khrushchev during the Berlin crisis, he found himself caught between hardliners and reformers. He likely recognized America’s vulnerabilities in the negotiations and understood the urgency of his own position. However, his military advisors feared that dismantling Soviet missiles while the U.S. continued developing SDI would leave a future American administration with a decisive strategic advantage. While technically true, this concern overlooked a critical reality: had the Reykjavik deal been finalized, Congress would likely have cut SDI funding, and the plan would have sparked significant discord among America’s allies and other nuclear powers.
History often blames individuals for failures rather than the structural forces at play, but in truth, Gorbachev’s foreign policy—especially his arms control strategy—was an evolution of Soviet postwar doctrine. He nearly achieved a major breakthrough in denuclearizing Germany, which could have shifted European politics in Moscow’s favor. If Germany continued moving away from reliance on U.S. nuclear protection, it might have sought a more independent foreign policy, weakening NATO’s cohesion.
Gorbachev’s broader vision for restructuring Europe emerged in a 1989 speech to the Council of Europe, where he proposed the idea of a “Common European Home”—a loose framework stretching from North America to Russia in which all countries would be connected, effectively dissolving the notion of traditional military alliances. However, he lacked the time necessary to see such a policy take hold. After Reykjavik, he was forced back into slow, methodical arms control diplomacy, negotiating 50% reductions in strategic forces and the elimination of intermediate-range missiles. While important, these measures did not address his fundamental problem: the arms race was bleeding the Soviet economy dry.
By December 1988, realizing that he could not outlast the economic pressures of military competition, Gorbachev pivoted to unilateral disarmament. In a dramatic United Nations speech, he announced that the Soviet Union would unilaterally cut its armed forces by 500,000 troops and remove 10,000 tanks, including half of the Soviet tanks stationed in Eastern Europe. He also ordered the withdrawal of most Soviet troops from Mongolia, seeking to reassure China. He described these reductions as a unilateral gesture but added, with visible frustration, that he hoped the United States and its allies would take similar steps.
His spokesman, Gennadi Gerasimov, attempted to spin the move as a final rebuttal to the long-standing Western narrative of the “Soviet threat.” But such drastic cuts signaled not strength, but desperation. For the first time in half a century, Moscow was unilaterally disarming—a direct vindication of George Kennan’s original containment strategy, which had argued that the Soviet Union would eventually collapse under its own weight if the West remained strong.
Fortune repeatedly worked against Gorbachev. On the very day of his groundbreaking UN speech, an earthquake devastated Armenia, diverting global attention away from his attempt to reshape international security. In China, where no arms control negotiations took place, the leadership operated with a different diplomatic mindset. Beijing saw tension reduction as requiring concrete political settlements rather than vague reassurances. When Gorbachev extended an olive branch in a 1986 speech, expressing hope that the Sino-Soviet border could become “a line of peace and friendship,” the Chinese responded with three firm conditions: Vietnam must withdraw from Cambodia, the Soviets must leave Afghanistan, and Soviet troops must be removed from the Chinese border. These conditions were not minor gestures; they required fundamental shifts in Soviet policy, which took Gorbachev nearly three years to implement.
Yet again, circumstances undermined his efforts. When he finally visited Beijing in May 1989, the Tiananmen Square protests were in full swing. Instead of marking a historic diplomatic breakthrough, his visit was overshadowed by pro-democracy demonstrations against the Chinese government. Protesters’ chants could even be heard inside the Great Hall of the People, where he was meeting Chinese leaders. The world’s attention was focused not on Sino-Soviet reconciliation, but on the growing crisis in China.
The same pattern played out in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev had inherited an increasingly unstable bloc. In Poland, the Solidarity movement had re-emerged as a potent political force after being suppressed in 1981. Similar unrest was growing in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, where communist regimes were facing mounting demands for reform. The Helsinki Accords, which the Soviets had once seen as a diplomatic victory, had turned into a powerful tool for human rights activists, fueling discontent across the Eastern Bloc.
Communist leaders in Eastern Europe faced an impossible situation. They needed to embrace more nationalist policies to maintain legitimacy, which required asserting greater independence from Moscow. But because their regimes were seen as Soviet puppets, nationalism alone was not enough—they also had to introduce democratic reforms. This created a vicious cycle: the more they democratized, the stronger the opposition to communist rule became. The Communist Party, designed to monopolize power, proved incapable of surviving genuine electoral competition. Having ruled through secret police and repression, communist leaders had no idea how to govern with democratic legitimacy.
Moscow’s dilemma was even worse. The Brezhnev Doctrine dictated that the Soviet Union should intervene to crush political upheaval in Eastern Europe, as it had in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. But Gorbachev, both by temperament and by necessity, was unwilling to use military force. Cracking down on Eastern Europe would contradict his entire foreign policy agenda, alienate NATO, solidify the Sino-American alignment, and intensify the arms race he was desperately trying to end. By refusing to intervene, he allowed events to spiral beyond his control.
Gorbachev’s response was to accelerate political liberalization, hoping that controlled reform could stabilize the system. But by the late 1980s, change was moving too fast. Communist rule in Hungary collapsed, and Poland’s Jaruzelski was allowed to negotiate with Solidarity. In July 1989, Gorbachev gave a speech effectively abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine, declaring that each nation had the right to choose its own path.
In October, during a visit to Finland, his spokesman Gerasimov openly joked that Moscow had adopted the “Sinatra Doctrine”—letting each Eastern European country do things “their way.” This was the final nail in the coffin of Soviet control. Without the threat of intervention, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed in rapid succession.
When Gorbachev visited East Berlin that same month to mark the 40th anniversary of East Germany’s founding, he urged its hardline leader, Erich Honecker, to adopt reforms. He could not have imagined that there would never be another such anniversary. In his speech, he dismissed calls for tearing down the Berlin Wall, warning that previous Western efforts to redraw Europe’s map had only led to instability. Yet, only four weeks later, the Wall fell, and within a year, Germany was unified under NATO.
By then, every communist regime in Eastern Europe had been overthrown. The Warsaw Pact had disintegrated, and the geopolitical balance established at Yalta had been reversed. Khrushchev’s boast that communism would bury capitalism had been exposed as a fantasy. The Soviet Union, after decades of trying to subvert the West, now found itself pleading for Western aid.
Gorbachev had placed all his bets on two assumptions: that liberalization would modernize the Soviet Union and that a reformed Soviet Union could maintain its status as a global superpower. Both assumptions proved wrong. Liberalization did not save the Soviet economy, and the empire that had once projected Soviet power around the world collapsed. With no domestic support left, Gorbachev soon suffered the same fate as the regimes he had once tried to reform.
Gorbachev, like many revolutionaries before him, failed to grasp that once a system begins to unravel, there are no stable points from which to exert control. He believed that by reforming the Communist Party, he could modernize Soviet society. However, he never accepted that communism itself was the root of the problem. For two generations, the Communist Party had suppressed individual initiative and critical thought. By 1990, central planning had completely stagnated, and the bureaucratic machinery designed to enforce control had instead become complicit in the very inefficiencies it was meant to regulate. What had once been a system of strict discipline had turned into a network of corruption and routine deception. Gorbachev’s efforts to introduce reform only destabilized the fragile balance that held everything together.
His first challenge was attempting to improve economic productivity by introducing limited market mechanisms. However, the Soviet system lacked the basic accountability needed for an efficient economy. Stalinist ideology had long insisted on central planning, but in practice, the so-called “plan” was nothing more than an elaborate charade. Ministries, production managers, and planners all operated in a vacuum, with no way to measure actual demand. Instead, they set minimal targets and covered shortfalls by cutting secret deals with each other, bypassing the central authorities. The entire Soviet economy functioned as a massive confidence trick, concealing its own inefficiencies behind bureaucratic layers. Since prices were heavily subsidized—accounting for at least a quarter of the national budget—there was no real standard for measuring efficiency, and corruption became the only true expression of market forces.
Gorbachev understood the extent of this stagnation but lacked the vision or skill to dismantle its rigid structures. The Communist Party, originally a revolutionary force, had transformed into a privileged ruling class that clung to power but had no real function beyond self-preservation. It supervised a system it no longer understood, and instead of enforcing discipline, it colluded with those it was supposed to control. Gorbachev attempted to revitalize the Party with two major reforms: perestroika (economic restructuring) to gain support from technocrats and glasnost (political liberalization) to win over the intelligentsia. But these reforms clashed. There were no democratic institutions to channel free debate, so glasnost led to uncontrolled dissent rather than constructive reform. Meanwhile, perestroika failed to improve living conditions because all available resources were still funneled into the military. As a result, Gorbachev alienated the old establishment without securing popular support.
Even within the state security apparatus, the only part of the government that fully grasped the extent of Soviet decline, there was no clear solution. The KGB, through its intelligence operations, understood how far the Soviet Union had fallen behind the West technologically. The military, likewise, had a professional interest in assessing U.S. capabilities. But recognizing the problem did not mean they had an answer. The KGB supported glasnost only as long as it didn’t lead to loss of control, while the military backed perestroika only so long as it didn’t threaten their budgets. Gorbachev was trapped between factions unwilling to embrace true reform but equally aware that the system was failing.
His first instinct—to reform the Communist Party from within—failed due to entrenched interests. His next move, weakening the Party while trying to preserve its rule, proved even more disastrous. He attempted to shift power from the Party to the government, assuming that the bureaucratic state could function independently. However, Soviet governance had always been designed as an extension of Party control. Ambitious and capable figures had long gravitated toward the Communist hierarchy, while the government bureaucracy was left to career administrators with no real influence over policymaking. By shifting power to the government, Gorbachev effectively handed his revolution to a group of uninspired clerks, ensuring its failure.
At the same time, Gorbachev encouraged greater regional autonomy, hoping to decentralize governance without dismantling the Soviet state. But this only accelerated its collapse. He wanted to create a popular alternative to communism without fully trusting the people’s will. As a result, he allowed local and regional elections but banned national political parties other than the Communist Party. For the first time in Russian history, non-Russian republics gained some degree of self-rule. However, centuries of imperial domination had left deep ethnic and nationalist tensions unresolved. As soon as local leaders were elected, they began asserting independence from Moscow. Nearly half of the Soviet population lived in non-Russian republics, and their demands for autonomy quickly turned into movements for full sovereignty.
Gorbachev had no solid political base. He alienated the Party elite, but his reforms did not go far enough to satisfy reformists. He understood his country’s problems but refused to embrace the necessary solutions, leaving him isolated. His predicament was like that of a man trapped in a glass room—able to see the world outside but unable to break free. The longer his reforms continued, the weaker his position became. When I first met him in 1987, he was confident, believing that his adjustments would restore Soviet strength. A year later, his certainty had faded. By 1989, he openly admitted that he had long known the system needed radical change but had struggled to determine how. “Knowing what was wrong was easy,” he said. “Knowing what was right was the hard part.”
By his final year in power, Gorbachev was like a man trapped in a nightmare—seeing disaster approaching but unable to stop it. Concessions are usually meant to create a buffer to preserve something essential, but his half-measures only accelerated the collapse. Each reform set the stage for the next, and each compromise weakened his authority. By 1990, the Baltic states had declared independence, and the Soviet Union was visibly fracturing.
In the ultimate irony, Gorbachev’s chief rival, Boris Yeltsin, used this process to destroy him. As President of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin declared Russia’s independence from the Soviet Union, making the dissolution of the USSR inevitable. With Russia itself separating from the Soviet Union, the other republics quickly followed. In effect, Yeltsin abolished the Soviet Union by stripping it of its core—the Russian state—thereby eliminating Gorbachev’s position as President of the USSR.
Gorbachev had correctly diagnosed his country’s problems but miscalculated at every turn. He acted too fast for the Party establishment to tolerate and too slowly to stop the accelerating collapse.
By the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union needed time to recover from years of economic and strategic strain. Reagan’s policies revitalized America, unleashing economic and political energy, while Gorbachev’s reforms only exposed the deep dysfunction of the Soviet system. The U.S. was able to adjust its policies to improve its standing, but in the Soviet Union, attempts at reform only accelerated the collapse of the entire system.
By 1991, the Cold War had ended with a decisive victory for the democracies. Yet, just as this historic triumph was achieved, old debates resurfaced. Had the Soviet Union ever truly posed a serious threat? Would it have collapsed on its own without the decades of Cold War tensions? Some argued that the Cold War was simply a construct of overly anxious policymakers who had disrupted what could have been a naturally harmonious world order.
In January 1990, Time magazine named Gorbachev “Man of the Decade” and published an article claiming that Cold War skeptics had been right all along. The article suggested that the Soviet Union had never been an existential threat, that American policies had been either unnecessary or counterproductive, and that the eventual Soviet collapse had occurred independently of U.S. actions. According to this view, the four decades of Cold War containment had been a waste of effort. If true, this meant that no lessons needed to be drawn from the fall of the Soviet empire—especially not ones that justified American leadership in shaping a new world order. The argument echoed the traditional isolationist sentiment that the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War on its own, and that American intervention had been unnecessary.
Another version of this revisionist perspective acknowledged that the Cold War had been real and that it had ended in victory, but credited the triumph solely to the spread of democracy rather than to military and geopolitical strategy. This interpretation suggested that democratic ideals had inevitably prevailed over communism, independent of the West’s strategic efforts. While the appeal of democracy had certainly played a role—especially in Eastern Europe—it was not enough on its own to explain the rapid collapse of the communist world. The governing elites of the Soviet Union and its satellites knew their system was losing the struggle, both economically and politically. The failure of communist foreign policy and the deep stagnation of Soviet society were just as important as the power of democratic ideals in bringing about the end of the Cold War.
Marxist analysts, who traditionally focused on the “correlation of forces” in international relations, had an easier time accepting the reality of the Soviet collapse than some American observers. In 1989, Fred Halliday, a Marxist professor at the London School of Economics, acknowledged that the global balance of power had shifted in America’s favor. Though he saw this as a tragedy, he did not deny that U.S. actions—particularly during the Reagan years—had increased the costs of Soviet expansion. In his analysis, the pressure exerted by the U.S. had forced Gorbachev’s leadership into a defensive position, making his policy of “new thinking” more about survival than genuine ideological transformation.
Even Soviet sources admitted that Western policies had played a critical role in their downfall. From 1988 onward, Soviet intellectuals began revising their own history, acknowledging that their government had provoked the crisis that ultimately destroyed the system. They recognized that détente had originally been a way for the United States to prevent the Soviet Union from upending the global balance of power. By taking advantage of détente to pursue unilateral gains—such as military expansion in Africa and Afghanistan—the Brezhnev leadership had triggered the more aggressive U.S. response of the 1980s, a response the Soviet Union could not afford to match.
One of the first Soviet scholars to publicly analyze this failure was Vyacheslav Dashichev, a professor at the Institute for the Economy of the World Socialist System. In a 1988 article, he admitted that the Soviet leadership’s miscalculations had united all major world powers against it, leading to an arms race that bankrupted the Soviet economy. He acknowledged that the West had perceived Soviet expansionism as a clear attempt to use détente as a cover for military buildup, forcing the U.S. to respond after Vietnam had initially paralyzed its foreign policy. As a result, the Soviet Union found itself diplomatically isolated and economically overextended, unable to compete with a coalition of stronger nations.
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze echoed these conclusions in a 1988 speech, listing a series of Soviet strategic mistakes, including the invasion of Afghanistan, hostility toward China, underestimation of the European Community, and the arms race. He openly criticized nearly every major Soviet policy of the past 25 years, effectively admitting that the West’s containment strategy had succeeded in applying unbearable pressure on the Soviet system. If the Soviet Union had paid no price for its aggressive policies, there would have been no reason for such a dramatic reassessment.
The collapse of the Soviet Union aligned with the vision George Kennan had outlined in 1947 when he first proposed the strategy of containment. He had argued that, no matter how accommodating Western policy might be, the Soviet system required the existence of an external enemy to justify its harsh domestic controls and military expenditures. Once Western pressure forced the Soviet leadership to abandon this stance and embrace the idea of interdependence, the justification for domestic repression evaporated. At that point, as Kennan had predicted, the Soviet Union—long accustomed to rigid discipline—would suddenly find itself weak and vulnerable. The collapse was not just political; it was a moral and ideological breakdown as well.
Kennan himself later expressed concerns that U.S. containment had become too militarized. In reality, American policy had always swung between excessive reliance on military force and an idealistic belief in the power of diplomacy and ideological conversion. While individual policies were sometimes flawed, the overall U.S. strategy had been remarkably consistent across different administrations, and it ultimately succeeded.
Had the U.S. not resisted Soviet expansion during the Cold War, the geopolitical landscape might have been very different. Communist parties in postwar Europe—already the largest single political movements in some countries—could have gained power. The repeated crises over Berlin might have escalated further. The Kremlin, emboldened by America’s weakness after Vietnam, sent troops to Afghanistan and backed communist insurgencies in Africa. Without U.S. intervention, the Soviet Union might have become even more aggressive. Despite its internal challenges, America had maintained the global balance of power, allowing democratic societies to thrive.
The Cold War victory was not the achievement of any single U.S. administration. It was the result of 40 years of bipartisan commitment to containment, combined with 70 years of internal stagnation in the Soviet system. Reagan’s presidency represented a critical turning point, where his combination of ideological militancy and diplomatic flexibility proved decisive. A decade earlier, he would have been dismissed as too extreme; a decade later, his policies might have seemed outdated. But in the moment of Soviet weakness and self-doubt, his approach was exactly what was needed.
However, the Reagan era marked the conclusion of a familiar geopolitical struggle, not the beginning of a new order. The Cold War had been an ideal challenge for American strategic thinking. It presented a clear ideological enemy, making universal principles—however simplistic—applicable to most global conflicts. The threat was well-defined, and U.S. policies were shaped around countering a single, unified adversary. Even so, America still faced difficulties when trying to apply its broad principles to complex, local conflicts, as seen in Vietnam.
The post-Cold War world presented an entirely different challenge. There was no single dominant ideological rival, nor was there a clear-cut geostrategic confrontation. Every conflict became a unique case, requiring a more nuanced approach. The exceptionalism that had guided U.S. foreign policy through the Cold War had been an asset, giving the nation the conviction needed to prevail. But in the new multipolar world of the 21st century, America would need to apply its values with far greater subtlety. The country could no longer rely solely on its identity as a beacon of democracy or a global crusader—it would have to define its national interest in a way it had long avoided. The Cold War had provided a clear framework for action, but the world that followed required a deeper understanding of power, diplomacy, and the limits of ideology in shaping international affairs.
Leave a Reply