What Factors Contributed to the End of the Cold War

¶ … Cold War

What were the important events and factors that led to the end of the Cold War? There are several theories and explanations, and this paper reviews those theories and explanations.

First of all, it should be noted that not all scholars accept that the Cold War began after WWII. Professor Jack Matlock of Princeton University -- who served as ambassador to the U.S.S.R. -- writes in the peer-reviewed Harvard International Review that if the Cold War began in 1945 or 1946, it "…must have ended around 1990" because that was when the "Iron Curtain" in Eastern Europe came down and the military confrontation between the East (Soviets) and West (U.S.) slowed to a standstill (Matlock, 2001, p. 1). But, on the other hand, if the Cold War began in 1917, when the Bolsheviks won control of Russia, then it ended at a different time than 1990, Matlock asserts.

Matlock cites several scholars that believe the Cold War actually began in 1917 and ended in 1960, including D.J. Fleming, a Vanderbilt University professor, whose two-volume scholarship (The Cold War and Its Origins: 1917-1960) placed the responsibility for the start of the Cold War on the U.S. because America attempted to contain communism "…by military force rather than peaceful means" (Matlock, 1).

For his part, Matlock believes the Cold War did indeed begin in 1917, took a "more threatening form of direct military and geopolitical competition in 1945 and 1946," and he says it ended "in principle in December 1988…" once the "ideological basis for the Cold War was removed" (Matlock, 2). When all the international issues were removed, and both sides expressed similar views about Europe (that it should not be divided and should be free), the Cold War ended, Matlock explains (2).

Meanwhile, major factors contributing to the end of the Cold War (according to Professor Frederic Bozo of the University of Paris) include the fact that Germany had been unified and that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev rejected communist ideology and instituted reforms. Bozo explains that most accounts of the end of the Cold War give the U.S. role a major amount of credit to the United States. This common scenario posits that the U.S. "victory" came because the U.S. was strategically and economically superior to the U.S.S.R. (Bozo, 2009). One reason that the U.S. economic and strategic potency is given as a major factor is because of "…the overwhelming influence of U.S. scholarship in shaping of the narrative" (i.e., American scholars published most of the narrative as to the end of the Cold War).

Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University explains that despite the fact that many conservatives give credit to President Ronald Reagan -- who built up the American military and famously urged Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall" (the Berlin Wall) -- but Nye explains that "a greater portion of the cause belongs to Gorbachev" (Nye, 2009). When Gorbachev began the reforms to make Russia more democratic, it "snowballed into a revolution driven from below rather than controlled from above," Nye continues. The professor recalls that Gorbachev met with resistance when he tried to bring economic discipline to Russia, so he "launched the idea of perestroika (restructuring)." The bureaucrats in Russia also resisted that, so he used a strategy of "glasnost" (open discussion and democratization), and once glasnost got people opening saying what they were thinking, in the summer of 1989, they demanded, "We want out" (Nye, p. 1).