What best explains a reason for the end of the cold war in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

Ambassador Jack F. Matlock, former Special Assistant to the President for the Soviet Union during the Reagan Administration and the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, told a packed audience that the reason he decided to write this book were the many misconceptions held as truths about how and when the Cold War ended. Too many comments distorted the events, Matlock said, at least the way he, as an insider in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, saw and understood them. Suggestions that the US "won" the Cold War, or that the Reagan administration "did the Soviets in" were anathema to the way the administration actually saw the issue. The Cold War ended, Matlock suggested, earlier than the collapse of the Soviet Union and even earlier than the collapse of communist rule. A clear picture of the past is necessary in order to correctly judge events later on, Matlock argued.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, three great convulsions shook the international system. The end of the Cold War was just one of them, and it occurred because of the cooperation between the leaders of the Western alliance with Gorbachev, Matlock continued. Reagan and Gorbachev were the two central players in this, and the absence of one or both would have dramatically changed the process. The end of Communist rule in the Soviet Union was a much different matter from the end of the Cold War. Maybe it would not have happened without the end of the Cold War, Matlock pondered, but it did not predispose it. Western policy, he continued, certainly did not have that goal in mind. In the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union was due to internal factors, not western policy. Gorbachev's reforms, which the West encouraged, together with the end of the Cold War, removed the lid from the simmering pot of the Soviet Union. Reagan himself never thought in terms of a zero sum game with the Soviets—irrespective of what some of the members of his administration thought. Rather, he believed that democracy won against totalitarianism, and US policy sought to achieve its goals without doing undue harm to a peaceful Soviet Union.

The book describes the process as it occurred, sometimes at a very fast pace, and, in Matlock's opinion, driven by essentially two people: Reagan and Gorbachev. Was it not for them, the Cold War would not have ended when it did, nor as peacefully as it did. Even if the Soviet economy was suffering, had Gorbachev not weaken the Communist grip on power, the system would have survived, and might even be present today, Matlock concluded. It was because of their respective political skill, and their ability to get their respective administrations behind the decisions they made together, that allowed for things to evolve the way they did. The book is a narrative of how the events evolved and how decisions were made, primarily from the US side, but includes some of the emerging evidence from the Soviet archives. It also relied heavily on the available documentary record.
The book adds new insights on Reagan's understanding of the Cold War and on his relations with Gorbachev, on his methods, and on what Reagan wanted to accomplish from some of his meetings with Gorbachev. Prior to the meeting in Geneva, Matlock told the audience, Reagan dictated to his secretary his goals. At the end, he added that "whatever we accomplish, we must not call it victory, since [the Soviets] must understand they are doing this in their own interest," Matlock paraphrased the president. Other new evidence deals with the meeting in Reykjavik, which at the time was considered a failure, only to be better understood later. Gorbachev, for example, considered the meeting in Reykjavik the turning point in the relations with the US and his relations with Reagan. Followed by Reagan's visit to Moscow, relations between the too leaders really took off.

The Cold War really ended by December 1988, Matlock suggested; what happened after that was "clean-up diplomacy." It was important, and the George H. W. Bush Administration deftly carried it out, but nevertheless, it was no longer Cold War diplomacy.

Commenting on the book, National Security Archive's director Thomas S. Blanton suggested that the book shows once again that the end of the Cold War was in itself a miracle. Jack Matlock, Blanton said, combines the "supply and demand" historians depend on, that of documents and eyewitness; Reagan and Gorbachev is an example of just such work. The book is a success in terms of creating an interactive history—bringing in his former interlocutors and taking them seriously, both then and now. Yet, ever the diplomat, Matlock was always too uncritical to some of his peers, Blanton told the audience. The reader, he concluded, is left wanting more of the inside details, of the conflicts and the turf-wars within the Administration.

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The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World War II. This hostility between the two superpowers was first given its name by George Orwell in an article published in 1945. Orwell understood it as a nuclear stalemate between “super-states”: each possessed weapons of mass destruction and was capable of annihilating the other.

The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the uneasy alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other started to fall apart. The Soviet Union began to establish left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe, determined to safeguard against a possible renewed threat from Germany. The Americans and the British worried that Soviet domination in eastern Europe might be permanent. The Cold War was solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid had brought certain Western countries under American influence and the Soviets had established openly communist regimes. Nevertheless, there was very little use of weapons on battlefields during the Cold War. It was waged mainly on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and lasted until 1991.

The Cold War came to a close gradually. The unity in the communist bloc was unraveling throughout the 1960s and ’70s as a split occurred between China and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Japan and certain Western countries were becoming more economically independent. Increasingly complex international relationships developed as a result, and smaller countries became more resistant to superpower cajoling.

The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev, who changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. Communist regimes began to collapse in eastern Europe, and democratic governments rose in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, followed by the reunification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices. Gorbachev’s reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including a Russia with an anticommunist leader.

In the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The conflict showed that both superpowers were wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other for fear of mutual atomic annihilation. The signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty followed in 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. Still, after the crisis, the Soviets were determined not to be humiliated by their military inferiority again, and they began a buildup of conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947.

A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations.

Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.

The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953.

From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958–62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets’ determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

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Soviet invasion of Prague

Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule (see Vietnam War).