historical record is fairly clear in suggesting that the initiative in the conflict typically
was taken by Moscow, albeit often probably for defensive reasons. So what were these
major failures?
- Stalin failed to consolidate the Soviet security zone, or barrier, in Eastern Europe
without alarming the West. He triggered the beginning of an organized political and
economic resistance led by the United States. - Stalin failed to secure the real prize in Central Europe: the whole of Germany.
Instead, with his blockade of Berlin in 1948–9, he galvanized Western resistance,
inadvertently stilled much Western criticism of the creation of a new Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany), and greatly facilitated American member-
ship in and leadership of the novel NATO Alliance. - By permitting Kim Il-sung to invade South Korea, Stalin led, or misled, the United
States to redefine the conflict in far more military terms than it had before. The
Korean adventure both failed in and of itself, and triggered a threefold jump in
American defence expenditure. That jump enabled the United States to fund a new
generation of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, bombers and eventually missiles,
and to expand its nuclear arsenal exponentially. - Khrushchev’s missile diplomacy in its several forms was a complete and embar-
rassing failure. The Soviet Union derived no benefit from its missile threats, and it
appeared irresponsibly adventurous in its dangerous failure over Cuba in October
1962. - The Soviet forward policy in Africa and Asia in the 1970s under Brezhnev was an
expensive failure that helped bankrupt the state. - Gorbachev’s well-intentioned efforts, initially to reform the Soviet system and then
to transform it rapidly into a capitalist-model economic system, failed in almost all
respects. The Soviet system could not be reformed and nor could it be transformed
from above by officials who did not understand how a capitalist economy functioned.
The result, as history records (unambiguously for once), was Gorbachev’s ouster and
the demise of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991.
Why it was so difficult for the West to make peace with the Soviet Union? Why did
the Cold War endure for more than forty years? One could cite geopolitical rivalry, the
key roles of individuals, and contingency, but pride of place needs to be accorded to
ideology. The evidence suggests strongly that the Cold War could not end until the Soviet
Union abandoned a state ideology which mandated definition of capitalist powers as
enemies. When Gorbachev retired the ideology, the Cold War was over. Unfortunately
for him, though, the abrupt retirement of Marxism to the dustbin of history also removed
the basis for the legitimacy of the Soviet state.
The story now must turn to consider explicitly the meaning of the nuclear discovery
and the implications of the subsequent strategic revolution.
Cold War: politics and ideology 203