and U.S.-Soviet arms reduction talks collapsed when
Gorbachev tied Soviet arms reductions to the aban-
donment of the U.S. SDI project.
Reagan’s Second Term Gradually, meetings be-
tween the two world leaders became more cordial, as
it became clear that Gorbachev was sincere in his ef-
forts toward reform. The communist leader intro-
duced programs to restructure the Soviet Union’s
command economy (perestroika) and open public
discourse (glasnost). More important, by the end of
Reagan’s second term in office, U.S.-Soviet relations
had moved rapidly from confrontational policies
and rhetoric, through a return to détente—includ-
ing cordial summit meetings in Washington (1987)
and Moscow (1988)—to cooperation in that most
sensitive of areas, arms control.
In December of 1987, the two superpowers nego
Forces (INF) Treaty. Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Treaty, an arms-limitation treaty calling for the dis-
mantling of short- and medium-range offensive mis-
siles and the establishment of an international in-
spection system to police the process. Such a treaty
would have been unthinkable only two and one-half
years earlier, when Gorbachev came to power at one
of the lowest points in U.S.-Soviet relations.
The Bush Presidency and the Soviet Collapse Rea-
Bush, George H. W.
preside over the winding down of the Cold War,
maintaining the relationship of personal trust with
Gorbachev that Reagan had developed by the end of
his term. In 1991, Bush concluded negotiations that
had been begun by Reagan in 1982, when he signed
the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I),
which placed limits on long-range nuclear weapons.
He signed a second treaty, START II, in January,
1993, the same month his presidency ended.
By then, the Soviet Union had lost its empire in a
series of popular uprisings against Eastern Euro-
pean communist regimes during the summer and
fall of 1989, and it had itself dissolved following a
failed military coup against Gorbachev during the
summer of 1991, which unleashed dissident forces
in the Soviet Union’s non-Russian republics that
Gorbachev was never able to overcome. With the dis-
solution of the Soviet Union, the United States de-
clared itself the victor in the Cold War.
Impact The fall of the Soviet Union triggered a de-
bate, all too often shaped by partisan considerations,
regarding the impact of Reagan’s policies on the col-
lapse of communism there and throughout Eastern
Europe. The more laudatory analyses of Reagan’s in-
fluence hold that, in standing up to Soviet aggres-
siveness in the 1980’s, President Reagan forced
Gorbachev to reform at home, setting into motion
the series of events that culminated not only in the
Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in Feb-
ruary of 1989 but also the U.S. victory in the Cold
War.
Detractors argue that the Soviet Union was al-
ready mortally damaged, largely by self-inflicted
wounds, when Reagan assumed the presidency. This
argument stresses the Soviet Union’s prior unwill-
ingness to decentralize its inefficient command
economy during the 1970’s, which resulted in the
widespread domestic economic dissatisfaction that
Gorbachev inherited in the mid-1980’s. It also fo-
cuses on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which
further strained an economy already overtaxed by
the Soviet Union’s need to subsidize the equally inef-
ficient economic systems of its clients in Eastern Eu-
rope. Viewed from this perspective, Reagan is occa-
sionally reduced to being the man who happened to
be in the White House when a modernizing leader
assumed power in the Kremlin, loosened the reins of
control on both the Soviet economy and cultural
and political discourse, and engaged in a by-then-
unavoidable scaling back of Soviet international ad-
venturism.
The truth probably lies somewhere between
these two arguments. While the often infirm old
guard continued to rule in the Kremlin during the
early 1980’s (Leonid Brezhnev until 1982, Yuri
Andropov from October, 1982 to February, 1984,
and Konstantin Chernenko from February, 1984, to
March, 1985),Reagan’s revival of an arms race raised
the costs of continuing Cold War competition with
the United States to levels the Soviet economy could
no longer bear. The same arms buildup also added
massive deficits to the federal budget in the United
States, but the latter had a larger economy and—
even in the global recessionary years of the mid-
1980’s—one better able to withstand the strain in
the short term. It is therefore likely that Gorbachev
was forced to move faster in liberalizing policies at
home than he might otherwise have done and that
the Politburo was pressured to go along with these
policies. It is equally likely that he was pushed into
arms reduction agreements by these economic reali-226 Cold War The Eighties in America