SUPERPOWER RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR 1944-1990

Martin McCauley

PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE 1953-1961

The US did not grasp what the Soviets understood by peaceful coexistence. To Moscow it meant
peaceful relations between states but war between societies. This followed the Marxist worldview
that communism and capitalism could never resolve their contradictions. There would eventually be
one winner: communism. Hence capitalism was a transitory phenomenon and would collapse under
the weight of its own contradictions. Capitalism, from the American perspective, was the most
successful ideology for promoting freedom and increasing living standards. Communism would
eventually pass away. It was only from the mid-1970s that Washington could be confident that this
prognosis was correct. Between 1945 and 1975, there were many in the US administration who
were fearful that communism would eventually vanquish them. This was especially true in the 1950s
when the Soviet empire embraced one third of the globe. By the 1970s the Soviet military was so
strong that it was unbeatable. Some generals argued that Moscow could win a nuclear war.

Washington always thought that the Soviet Union and China worked in tandem. This was misguided.
Mao Zedong wanted to be the leader of world communism. Hence China would dominate the world.
Mao and Khrushchev fell out quite often with the Soviet leader exasperated at Mao’s demands.

Why was there a thaw in Cold War relations after the death of Stalin?

• Stalin regarded his subordinates as incapable of defending the interests of the country after
his death. Hence no one was trained to cope with the West apart from Molotov, the foreign
minister. Stalin never thought a lasting agreement with the West was possible. His main
concern was security. Attacked By Germany in 1914 and 1941, the Soviet Union was
hypersensitive to the threat of another invasion. Stalin thought that a war between and
among the leading capitalist powers was inevitable after 1945. The US, the leading capitalist
power, was perceived as a predatory, imperialist state.
• The concept of peaceful coexistence was floated by Malenkov in 1952, ie before the death of
Stalin in March 1953. It aroused controversy because Marxism predicted that there would
be a struggle to the death between capitalism and communism. Malenkov argued that
nuclear weapons now ensured that the Soviet Union could not be successfully attacked.
• Domestic politics took over in Moscow as leaders sought to outmanoeuvre one another.
Who would become Stalin’s successor?
• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted an immediate summit with the new
collective leadership. Far reaching decisions could have been reached, he thought. However
the Americans (Eisenhower and Dulles) did not favour a summit. It eventually took place in
February 1954 when it was too late. Malenkov and Beria favoured a united, neutral
Germany. This would have meant sacrificing the German Democratic Republic (East
Germany). Beria’s removal in June 1953 ended this possibility. Khrushchev, a rising star,
strongly opposed it.
• The Geneva summit in 1955 saw Khrushchev emerge clearly as the dominant force in Soviet
politics. He came away from Geneva convinced that the West feared war as much as the
Soviet Union. He moved into the Middle East (Egypt and Syria) and toured Burma

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 (Myanmar), Afghanistan and India. He favoured supporting states rather than the ‘people’
(Stalin’s policy). He wanted to take advantage of the anti-colonialism (especially against
Britain) which was becoming a more potent force.
• The US (Eisenhower and Dulles) never believed that an agreement with the Soviet Union was
possible. The 1950s saw the campaign to ‘roll back communism’ in Eastern Europe;
McCarthyism; and support for Taiwan to retake mainland China. Walter Robertson, under-
secretary of state for Asian affairs, 1952-59, never considered a rapprochement with Beijing.
He was also strongly anti-British.
• During the 1950s the US feared the increasing military might of the Soviet Union and China.
Washington planned for nuclear war. There was no way the West could win a conventional
(non-nuclear) war against the communists because of the huge difference in manpower.
Hence the arms race heated up.
• Hence trust between East and West was in short supply

What were the achievements of peaceful coexistence?

• There was no nuclear war

• Both sides recognised that war would be incredibly destructive. Khrushchev used the rising
military power of the Soviet Union to threaten the West; eg Berlin crises 1958-63. His goal
was to demonstrate that the Soviet Union was the military equal of the West. If the West
accepted this arms control talks could begin. Khrushchev wanted to cut military expenditure
and devote more resources to the civilian economy.
• Peaceful coexistence was undermined by the uprisings in Poland and Hungary (1956). The
Soviet Army was on the point of leaving Hungary when the Suez war broke out. Moscow
changed its policy and militarily subdued Hungary. This signalled that the West would not
intervene militarily in the Soviet sphere of influence.

Why didn’t peaceful coexistence end the Cold War?

• The Soviet Union saw itself as a rising power and was determined to promote communism
worldwide. Hence it believed that history was on its side. Khrushchev was convinced of the
eventual victory of communism in the Soviet Union (he expected full communism –
everyone’s needs would be met - to be achieved from 1980 onwards). He saw communism
spreading rapidly in the Third World.
• Due to its fear of rising Soviet power, Washington never seriously considered reaching
agreement with Moscow. It would have to concede too much. There was a lingering fear
that the West Germans could desert the Western camp and strike a deal with Moscow. The
GDR economy was developing successfully in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was only in
the late 1960s that West German politicians lost their fear of GDR communism. It was then
clear that West German capitalism was much more successful.
• Both the US and Soviet Union were ideological superpowers. Each believed its own system
would vanquish the other. Both were imperialist powers. They believed they had a mission
to bring their system to less fortunate peoples. Khrushchev was the last Soviet leader who
believed that full communism was possible in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev, Andropov,
Chernenko and Gorbachev had much more modest economic goals. Self-doubt about the

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future success of communism worldwide only begins to surface in the Soviet Union in the
early 1980s.

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DETENTE IN THE 1970s

What was China’s impact on Détente in the early 1970s?

Conflict on the Ussuri

In November 1967, there were border skirmishes between Chinese and Soviet troops and the first
Chinese fatalities were recorded in January 1968. In February 1969, the People’s Liberation Army
decided to ambush Soviet troops on Zhenbao or Damansky island. At least 31 Soviet border guards
were killed on 2 March. An unknown number of Chinese died. On 15 March the Soviets counter-
attacked but did not attain their objectives. On 21 March, Aleksei Kosygin, the Prime Minister,
attempted to speak to Mao on the telephone but the operator refused to put the call through,
cursing Kosygin as a ‘revisionist element’. However talks were arranged but petered out. In August
there was another incident on the western part of the border. The Soviet Union then asked the US
what it would do if it took out China’s nuclear installations. Moscow then thought of a conventional
attack. Hence Mao was always afraid of a Soviet attack. Zhou Enlai met Kosygin at Beijing airport in
September and they agreed to seek a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Beijing still expected a
Soviet attack on 1 October, the anniversary of the revolution. On 11 December, border talks failed
again. On 1 May 1970, Mao received the head of the Soviet border negotiation team and told him
that the two sides should only fight with words. An uneasy truce ensued (Lűthi 2008).

Nixon Arrives

The wealth showered on the world by China to promote Maoism brought a meagre reward. About 7
per cent of China’s GDP was being expended on Third World revolutionaries. Mao decided that if the
Soviet Union could have better relations with the United States, so could China. Lin Biao’s view (he
was no. 2 to Mao) was that the Soviet Union was as much an enemy as the United States. What if
China could play America off against the Soviet Union? Mao wanted President Richard Nixon to
come to Beijing but aimed to give the impression it was Nixon who had proposed the visit.
Washington had not realised that Mao was very keen to host Nixon. The American President was
also keen. He was of the opinion that 800 million angry Chinese living in isolation were a threat. He
favoured contact with them. Henry Kissinger’s Realpolitik entailed judging a state by its actions and
not by its ideology. Henry told the Kremlin that an attack on China would be a threat to world peace.

When Henry Kissinger visited Beijing to prepare the visit, he brought with him an armful of gifts. One
of these was that Washington would abandon Taiwan diplomatically and enter into full diplomatic
relations with the People’s Republic by 1975. The latter would be helped to enter the UN and take
over the seat on the UN Security Council then occupied by the Republic of China (Taiwan). Mao was
given the impression that China could swallow Taiwan at its leisure. Kissinger then offered to inform
Beijing about Washington’s discussions with Moscow. Information about Sino-American
conversations would not be passed on to the Soviets. Kissinger then stated that the United States
would withdraw its troops from Indochina and abandon its South Vietnamese ally. He even
mentioned that US troops would eventually leave South Korea. No attempt was made to extract a
quid pro quo for these startling concessions.

Mao could hardly believe his ears. When he met Nixon, in February 1972, he gave anodyne answers
to all questions, not wanting the Americans to have a record of China’s position. Mao wanted still to

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strut the world stage as the great anti-American. To ensure that there was no record of his one and
only meeting with Nixon, Mao insisted that the American President was not accompanied by his own
interpreter. Nixon, naively, gave in. As he did not speak foreign languages, he was unaware of the
fact that one needs one’s own interpreter to pick up nuances and check the official translation.
Nixon was euphoric about his trip. He regarded it as the high point of his presidency. The ‘week that
changed the world’, was his modest comment.

Mao was complimentary about Nixon to his doctor but disparaging about Kissinger. A ‘funny little
man... eaten up by nerves’, was his dismissive comment.

Zhou had repaired to Hanoi to report after Kissinger’s visit. He was given an ear bashing by the North
Vietnamese comrades who pointed out in no uncertain terms that Vietnam belonged to the
Vietnamese. The Chinese had no right to discuss their future with the Americans. Zhou went again
after Nixon’s visit and was again subjected to a torrent of criticism. Beijing tried to placate Hanoi by
increasing aid. The Sino-Vietnamese relationship was misunderstood by the Americans. Their
attitude appeared to be that Vietnam was a client state of China. Nothing could have been further
from the truth. The Vietnamese had no intention of expelling the French and Americans only to
subordinate themselves to the Chinese.

Another beneficiary of increased Chinese aid was Albania. Enver Hoxha pretended he was
scandalised by the Sino-American rapprochement. It was merely a ploy to squeeze money out of
Beijing.

Kissinger was back in Beijing again in February 1973 for talks with Zhou. He had an audience with
Mao. Kissinger was told that the world would be a better place if the Soviet Union attacked the
People’s Republic and was defeated. The level of Sino-American trade was very low. However China
had a surplus of women. Tens of thousands could be exported to America. Once there, they would
‘create disasters’. He then proposed that ten million women be sent. They would flood America and
create disaster and hold back the country’s growth. What was Kissinger to make of this example of
male chauvinism?

When Leonid Brezhnev visited Washington, in June 1973, he warned Nixon and Kissinger that if the
US and the People’s Republic concluded a military agreement, the Soviet Union would take drastic
action. Brezhnev also warned the Americans not to trust the Chinese. He related the experiences of
his brother who had been one of the Soviet specialists who had provided assistance in China. A Sin-
American alliance was Moscow’s worst nightmare. Of course, there were those in Washington who
wanted to play the two communist powers off against one another. A war between them would not
be a bad thing providing the Soviet Union did not defeat and occupy China. That would not be a
good thing.

The much desired military alliance with the United States and the transfer of high technology to
China never materialised. Mao blamed Zhou. When the latter was diagnosed with cancer he was not
permitted medical treatment until it was too late. He died in January 1976. There was no lying in
state. There were to be no memorial meetings. At the funeral Deng Xiaoping delivered the eulogy.
Jiang Qing did not remove her cap as she filed past the bier. This aroused some public hostility.

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In December 1975, Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, visited China and talked to Mao. He wanted to
normalise relations and would China be interested in an alliance which would stretch from Beijing to
Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and NATO? No, it would not. Deng was a harder nut to crack and annoyed
Kissinger. Deng used a spittoon. ‘A nasty little man’, was Henry’s assessment. Nixon, on the other
hand, was treated like royalty when he arrived for a private visit in February 1976. The meeting with
Mao was embarrassing as the Chairman could only manage a ‘series of monosyllabic grunts and
groans’.

• Instead of the two superpowers there was now a triangle: Washington, Moscow, Beijing
• This protected China from a Soviet nuclear attack
• The Americans thought they could play China off against the Soviet Union but Mao did not
play that game
• The Americans were willing to help China technologically
• The economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping after 1978 depended on US investment in the
eastern coastal cities (Special Economic Zones (SEZs))
• America was willing to open its markets to Chinese goods
• The rise of modern China (economic growth rates over the years 1979-2009 averaged
almost 10 per cent: unprecedented in world economic history) is due first and foremost to
the Sino-US rapprochement
• China after Mao’s death in 1976 became a defensive power; it concentrated on domestic
policy and eschewed foreign adventures
• It adopted a foreign policy which presented China as a friend and not a threat to any nation;
however it defended its interests in the South China Sea and elsewhere
• China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - which aimed at demoting the
party and state bureaucracies. Hence there was no coherent foreign policy at this time.

How committed were the Soviet Union and the USA to détente?

• The United States misunderstood détente. The Americans thought of it as a relaxation of

tensions between states. The Soviets accepted this but considered the class war between
capitalism and communism to be ongoing. States observed peace but there was war
between societies. This eventually scuppered détente when the US accused the Soviet Union
of betraying the whole concept due to the expansion of communist influence in Africa and
elsewhere. .
• The Soviet Union was a rising power, economically and politically, until the mid-1970s. The
oil price increases provided the country with much needed hard currency (US dollars) to buy
food, animal fodder and high technology in the West. It also produced about 500 tonnes of
gold a year most of which was sold to buy food. Soviet gold reserves in 1976 were 1,001.4
tonnes. Afterwards they continued to decline.
• Militarily the Soviet Union waxed in strength.
• The Helsinki Final Act (1975) was hailed as a breakthrough. The West managed to include
human rights in the package. This permitted the US and its allies to complain about human
rights abuses, eg persecution of religious minorities, etc.

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 • The US wanted to play China off against the Soviet Union. Watergate (Nixon resigned in
1974) and Washington lost momentum. Nixon was a great President when it came to foreign
policy. Vietnam scuppered President Johnson and President Ford was weak. President Jimmy
Carter was well meaning but regarded as giving too much away. Détente foundered under
his leadership.

Why did détente break down in the late 1970s?

• Soviet and Cuban involvement in Africa was read by Washington as imperial expansion. Cuba
was seen as Moscow’s lackey but was not.
• Moscow regarded aiding national liberation movements as legitimate
• The Soviet Union was able to play a wider world role because of the huge increase in oil
prices
• The invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was the last straw. Washington saw it as
expansionary but, in reality, it was defensive: prevent the US or China taking over. The US
interfered with Soviet signals and gave the impression the Afghans were negotiating with
them. The US saw the Soviet intervention as Moscow’s Vietnam.

Note

On 24 October 1973 US forces went over to DEF CON III, the highest state of readiness short of
nuclear war. This was in response to Soviet threats to send an airborne force to fight on the Arab
side during the Yom Kippur war. The Soviet military favoured action but Brezhnev did not accept
their advice.

On 26 September 1983 Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty in the bunker near Moscow
which monitored the Soviet Union’s Oko early warning satellite system. Suddenly, just before
midnight, the screen went red and the alarm bells would have woken the dead. A satellite showed
that the United States had fired five ballistic missiles at the Soviet Union. Just a few weeks before, on
1 September, the Soviets had shot down a South Korean civilian airliner killing 269 civilians, including
a US Congressman. They had assumed it was a military aircraft. So tension was high.

He should have passed the information on to higher command which could have set in motion a full
scale nuclear war. He decided not to do so because it struck him as odd that the Americans would
launch an attack with only five missiles. He also did not trust the newly installed launch detection
system. The ground based radars did not confirm the launch.

Later a satellite proved to be the culprit. It mistook the sun’s reflection off the tops of clouds for a
missile launch. The computer system which was supposed to filter out such information did not do
so.

Initially he was praised for his judgement but later reprimanded. He concluded that the bugs found
in the early warning system and false alarms embarrassed the top brass and scientists.

Petrov is to be commended for using his own judgement. There is no telling what would have
happened had he confirmed to the high command that the US had launched a nuclear strike.

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Needless to say, NATO was unaware of the above scare. On 2 November 1983, it launched an
exercise, codenamed Able Archer 83, covering the whole of western Europe. It simulated a conflict
escalation, culminating in a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The scale of the exercise was
interpreted by Moscow that a nuclear war was imminent. It put its nuclear forces on alert and
placed air units in Poland and East Germany on alert. The threat of nuclear war ended on 11
September when the exercise ended.

The above three cases, plus the Cuban missile crisis, could have escalated into nuclear war. As far as
one knows, they are the closest the world came to nuclear Armageddon.

What about nuclear weapons on US soil? The Defense Atomic Support Agency has revealed that
between 1958 and 1974 there were several hundred ‘Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear
Weapons’. These ranged from the ridiculous to the miraculous.

In 1960 a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was narrowly averted after a US air force computer had
identified a rising moon over Norway as a ’99.9 per cent certain’ incoming Soviet nuclear missile. In
1961 a B-52 bomber broke up over North Carolina and dropped a four megaton hydrogen bomb. It
failed to explode when it hit the ground because one switch (out of 10) remained in the safe
position.

In 1966 a B-52 bomber refuelling over Spain exploded and dropped four hydrogen bombs. They did
not explode.

In 1968 a B-52 over Greenland caught fire. The crew bailed out and the aircraft carrying four
hydrogen bombs hit the ice at 600 mph. The explosion destroyed the US AF base and scattered
plutonium over three square miles. Many bomb parts were never recovered.

Maryland, New Jersey, Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, Morocco, Japan and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk
were scenes of further miraculous escapes.

In September 1980 in Arkansas a Titan II, carrying a 9 megaton warhead with an explosive force
three times as powerful as all the bombs dropped during World War II, ignited. It shot 1000 feet into
the air but the warhead did not explode.

The source is Eric Schlosser, Command and Control, Allen Lane, 2013.

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THE END OF THE COLD WAR

Here are Gorbachev’s thoughts on the ending of the Cold War:

The Nation
November 16, 2009
Gorbachev on 1989
A wide-ranging Nation interview with the former Soviet president.
By Katrina vanden Heuvel & Stephen F. Cohen

On September 23, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, a
contributing editor, interviewed former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at his foundation in
Moscow. With the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaching, we believed that the
leader most responsible for that historic event should be heard, on his own terms, in the United
States. As readers will see, the discussion became much more wide-ranging. --The Editors

KVH/SFC: Historic events quickly generate historical myths. In the United States it is said that the fall
of the Berlin Wall and the end of a divided Europe was caused by a democratic revolution in Eastern
Europe or by American power, or both. What is your response?

MG: Those developments were the result of perestroika in the Soviet Union, where democratic
changes had reached the point by March 1989 that for the first time in Russia's history democratic,
competitive elections took place. You remember how enthusiastically people participated in those
elections for a new Soviet Congress. And as a result thirty-five regional Communist Party secretaries
were defeated. By the way, of the deputies elected, 84 percent were Communists, because there
were a lot of ordinary people in the party--workers and intellectuals. On the day after the elections, I
met with the Politburo, and said, "I congratulate you!" They were very upset. Several replied, "For
what?" I explained, "This is a victory for perestroika. We are touching the lives of people. Things are
difficult for them now, but nonetheless they voted for Communists." Suddenly one Politburo member
replied, "And what kind of Communists are they!" Those elections were very important. They meant
that movement was under way toward democracy, glasnost and pluralism. Analogous processes were
also under way in Eastern and Central Europe. On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I
had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries, and told them: "You are
independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for
ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you." And we did not intervene, not once, not
even when they later asked us to. Under the influence of perestroika, their societies began to take
action. Perestroika was a democratic transformation, which the Soviet Union needed. And my policy
of non-intervention in Central and Eastern Europe was crucial. Just imagine, in East Germany alone
there were more than 300,000 Soviet troops armed to the teeth--elite troops, specially selected! And
yet, a process of change began there, and in the other countries, too. People began to make choices,
which was their natural right. But the problem of a divided Germany remained. The German people
perceived the situation as abnormal, and I shared their attitude. Both in West and East Germany new
governments were formed and new relations between them established. I think if the East German
leader Erich Honecker had not been so stubborn--we all suffer from this illness, including the person
you are interviewing--he would have introduced democratic changes. But the East German leaders
did not initiate their own perestroika. Thus a struggle broke out in their country. The Germans are a
very capable nation. Even after what they had experienced under Hitler and later, they demonstrated
that they could build a new democratic country. If Honecker had taken advantage of his people's
capabilities, democratic and economic reforms could have been introduced that might have led to a
different outcome. I saw this myself. On October 7, 1989, I was reviewing a parade in East Germany
with Honecker and other representatives of the Warsaw Pact countries. Groups from twenty-eight
different regions of East Germany were marching by with torches, slogans on banners, shouts and
songs. The former prime minister of Poland, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, asked me if I understood German.

9
"Enough to read what's written on the banners. They're talking about perestroika. They're talking
about democracy and change. They're saying, 'Gorbachev, stay in our country!'" Then Rakowski
remarked, "If it's true that these are representatives of people from twenty-eight regions of the
country, it means the end." I said, "I think you're right."

KVH/SFC: That is, after the Soviet elections in March 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall was inevitable?

MG: Absolutely!

KVH/SFC: Did you already foresee the outcome?

MG: Everyone claims to have foreseen things. In June 1989 I met with West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl and we then held a press conference. Reporters asked if we had discussed the German
question. My answer was, "History gave rise to this problem, and history will resolve it. That is my
opinion. If you ask Chancellor Kohl, he will tell you it is a problem for the twenty-first century." I also
met with the East German Communist leaders, and told them again, "This is your affair and you have
the responsibility to decide." But I also warned them, "What does experience teach us? He who is late
loses." If they had taken the road of reform, of gradual change--if there had been some sort of
agreement or treaty between the two parts of Germany, some sort of financial agreement, some
confederation, a more gradual reunification would have been possible. But in 1989-90, all Germans,
both in the East and the West, were saying, "Do it immediately." They were afraid the opportunity
would be missed.

KVH/SFC: A closely related question: when did the cold war actually end? In the United States, there
are several answers: in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down; in 1990-91, after the reunification of
Germany; and the most popular, even orthodox, answer, is that the cold war ended only when the
Soviet Union ended, in December 1991.

MG: No. If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements
and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But
what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not
begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have
ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war
ever present. Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically
domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of
nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor. Something had to be done before
we destroyed each other. Therefore the big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had
tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to
continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we
were no longer enemies or adversaries.

KVH/SFC: So the cold war ended in December 1989?

MG: I think so.

KVH/SFC: Many people disagree, including some American historians.

MG: Let historians think what they want. But without what I have described, nothing would have
resulted. Let me tell you something. George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, came to see me two
or three years ago. We reminisced for a long time--like old soldiers recalling past battles. I have great
respect for Shultz, and I asked him: "Tell me, George, if Reagan had not been president, who could
have played his role?" Shultz thought for a while, then said: "At that time there was no one else.

10
Reagan's strength was that he had devoted his whole first term to building up America, to getting rid
of all the vacillation that had been sown like seeds. America's spirits had revived. But in order to take
these steps toward normalizing relations with the Soviet Union and toward reducing nuclear
armaments--there was no one else who could have done that then." By the way, in 1987, after my first
visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: "Reagan
is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when
he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what
Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him." By telling you this, I simply want to give
Reagan the credit he deserves. I found dealing with him very difficult. The first time we met, in 1985,
after we had talked, my people asked me what I thought of him. "A real dinosaur," I replied. And about
me Reagan said, "Gorbachev is a diehard Bolshevik!"

KVH/SFC: A dinosaur and a Bolshevik?

MG: And yet these two people came to historic agreements, because some things must be above
ideological convictions. No matter how hard it was for us and no matter how much Reagan and I
argued in Geneva in 1985, nevertheless in our appeal to the peoples of the world we wrote: "Nuclear
war is inadmissible, and in it there can be no victors." And in 1986, in Reykjavik, we even agreed that
nuclear weapons should be abolished. This conception speaks to the maturity of the leaders on both
sides, not only Reagan but people in the West generally, who reached the correct conclusion that we
had to put an end to the cold war.

KVH/SFC: So Americans who say the cold war ended only with the end of the Soviet Union are
wrong?

MG: That's because journalists, politicians and historians in your country concluded that the United
States won the cold war, but that is a mistake. If the new Soviet leadership and its new foreign policy
had not existed, nothing would have happened.

KVH/SFC: In short, Gorbachev, Reagan and the first President Bush ended the cold war?

MG: Yes, in 1989-90. It was not a single action but a process. Bush and I made the declaration at
Malta, but Reagan would have had no less grounds for saying that he played a crucial role, because
he, together with us, had a fundamental change of attitude. Therefore we were all victors: we all won
the cold war because we put a stop to spending $10 trillion on the cold war, on each side.

KVH/SFC: What was more important--the circumstances at that time or the leaders?

MG: The times work through people in history. I'll tell you something else that is very important about
what subsequently happened in your country. When people came to the conclusion that they had won
the cold war, they concluded that they didn't need to change. Let others change. That point of view is
mistaken, and it undermined what we had envisaged for Europe--mutual collective security for
everyone and a new world order. All of that was lost because of this muddled thinking in your country,
and which has now made it so difficult to work together. World leadership is now understood to mean
that America gives the orders.

In 2010, Gorbachev reflecting on the extraordinary relationship with Reagan commented (The Times
24 January 2011):

I think it was stroke of luck that history brought two such like-minded people together on
this... I am proud of what we did together because it brought us closer to abolishing nuclear

11
 weapons. And it opened the door to a new kind of co-operation in the world... We must pay
tribute to Ronald Reagan. He was a great man.

WAS GORBACHEV OR REAGAN RESPONSIBLE FOR ENDING THE COLD WAR?

• As Gorby says, the Cold War ended because of perestroika and the new Soviet foreign policy.
He also makes clear that without Reagan being of like mind, the Cold War would not have
ended. Both wanted to scale back the arms race because both sides had enough nuclear
power to destroy the other several times.
• Would Viktor Grishin, had he instead of Gorby become Party leader in March 1985 have
ended the Cold War? No. He would have adopted a more conservative approach to relations
with the US. Hence the Gorby factor is critically important.
• The US ambassador, Jack Matlock, remarked that Gorby gave the US 105 per cent of what it
asked for. Hence Gorby was a very poor negotiator.
• The Soviet Union, in 1985, could no longer sustain such a heavy defence burden. It needed
an arms agreement and then arms reductions. The US knew this. Washington increased
defence spending to force the Soviets to devote more to defence or concede the primacy of
the United States. The US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil and thus force the
world oil price down. The Soviet Union thus earned less hard currency and could not import
the high technology it needed to sustain its industries. The Soviet Union by the 1980s was
part of the world economy and needed to import food, fodder and high tech products to
develop its military and civilian industries. Hence it had become economically dependent on
the West.
• Gorbachev had to develop the domestic economy in order to meet the aspirations of the
Soviet population. This required more investment. The growth of the defence sector had to
be slowed down. In fact, there was no sharp cut in defence spending.
• The US had to be willing to meet Gorby halfway. Reagan sensed that the Soviet Union was a
declining power (the CIA and his defence establishment told him the opposite) and thought
he could reach agreement on arms.

WHAT WAS THE ROLE OF ‘PEOPLE POWER’ IN EASTERN EUROPE?

• In March 1985, Gorby told east European leaders in Moscow, that henceforth they were
responsible for their own countries. The Soviet military would not come to their aid. They
were sceptical about this because it was a reversal of the Brezhnev doctrine (the Soviet
Union has the right to intervene if it believes that communism is under threat). However
Gorby kept his word and on several occasions stated that the Brezhnev doctrine was dead.
• ‘People power’ had its greatest impact in the GDR. The authority of the regime was so low
that most people wanted the GDR to unite with the Federal Republic.
• ‘People power’ also had a dramatic effect in Romania. However the crowds were leaderless
and a communist, Ion Iliescu, seized the opportunity to effect a revolution from above.

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 • ‘People power’ also had a great impact in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This was
because there was an alternative post-communist government waiting to take over. One can
say there was a democratic transition in Hungary rather than a revolution

WAS THE COLD WAR ECONOMICALLY UNSUSTAINABLE?

• No, not for the US because it was there was a spill over from the defence to the civilian
sector of the economy: IT, lasers, etc.
• There was no spill over in the Soviet Union where about 40 per cent of top scientists and
engineers worked in the defence sector. This meant that the civil sector of the economy
lagged behind and the gap between it and the West was growing daily.
• The defence burden was a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. A rough estimate (the
Soviets did not have a composite military budget so were unaware of total defence
spending) would be that the USSR devoted about 40 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) to defence spending. The comparable figure for the US and NATO was 6.5 per cent.
One should bear in mind that Imperial Russia, in 1913, devoted 30 per cent of its state
budget to defence. Hence the country has always been obliged to devote large resources to
defence. There were two great loss making sectors of the Soviet economy: defence and
agriculture. This meant that the rest of the economy had to generate sufficient profits to
subsidise them. By the early 1980s they were failing to do this. The Soviets concentrated on
developing more and more efficient nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons. In
1982 the Typhoon class sub, the largest ever built, stationed under Arctic ice could wipe out
every major city in North America and Europe within 20 minutes of launching its nuclear
missiles. It could remain submerged for six months. The precedence given to nuclear subs
meant that the rest of the Soviet navy was starved of investment. The decline of the
economy after 1985 meant that the Soviets had a choice: increase defence spending or
increase living standards. They could not do both. They chose the latter.
• Both superpowers recognised that a nuclear war would be very destructive. The Americans
knew they would be the losers because of densely populated cities and the Soviet nuclear
sub capability. An American estimate was that the Soviet Union would suffer about the same
casualties as during the period 1941-45. The US could afford to spend more on developing
new weapons than the Soviet Union. Moscow feared that Star Wars (the Strategic Defence
Initiative to protect the US from space weapons) would lead to technological break throughs
which would place it at a disadvantage.
• The Soviet Union enjoyed a conventional superiority but the US could counter this by using
nuclear weapons.
• The Soviet Union was falling behind the West in some sectors of technology and needed to
import more and more modern machinery and equipment. A modus vivendi with America
was advisable.
• In some defence sectors the Soviets were ahead of the Americans; the Soviet economy may
have only amounted to about 40-50 per cent of the US Gross Domestic Product. This meant
that developing new weapons was a greater burden to the Soviet economy than the
American.

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LITERATURE

The best account of the Cold War is: Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, Yale University Press, New
Haven, CT, 2011

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War, Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times,
Cambridge University Press, 2005 is first class on the Third World

John Lewis Geddis, The Cold War, 2007 provides an American perspective

The best book on the Sino-Soviet conflict is: Lorenz M. Lűthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the
Communist World, Princeton University Press, 2008

See also: Bobo Lo, Axis of Convenience, Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics, Brookings
Institution Press, for Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 2008

A fine account of the 1989 evolutions in Eastern Europe is: Constantine Pleshakov, There Is No
Freedom Without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism, Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, New York, 2009

The best book on modern China is: Jonathan Fenby, China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power 1850-
2009, Penguin 2009

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