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For answer's to more Cold War and other history questions, please go to The Blog Formerly Known as Answers to Josh's Cold War Questions.

Essentially What Ended the Cold War? (Non-Rocky Variant) Part II

In part one we learned that planned/communist systems tend to stagnate an economy, while market/capitalist systems lend themselves to growth in the economy. (Remember, that this is a highly simplified explanation.)

Now we'll look at why this helped lead the end of the Cold War. Really, it's very simple. As the Cold War entered it's fifth decade, both the US and the USSR had amassed vast nuclear arsenals capable of destorying the planet several times over. Spurred on by worldwide concern for the survival of the human race and such memorable bumper stickers like "Arms are for hugging" and "Build schools not bombs" the rivals did agree to control and/or limit the production and deployment of some such weapons. However, these agreements only applied to certain types of weapons and the bomb building continued, much to the chagrin of shelterless schoolchildren the world over.

So what does bomb making have to do with the economy? Bombs ain't cheap. At least not these kind. The bomb making continued to chew up hefty chunks of the economies of the Cold Warriors. But while the economy of the West continued to grow, the Soviet economy had been stagnating for years. The USSR was not able to keep up with the Jones' in the arms race and provide an acceptable quality of life for it's citizens. They couldn't even get a salami sandwhich. Well, maybe if they were in the Politburo or something. In reality, the Soviet system had been crumbling from the inside for at least a decade. But because the government controls pretty much all the information that goes in or out of the country, no one on the outside knew how bad things really were. A key moment in this drama occured in the 1980's at a summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in Iceland. I'll quote an expert:

He [Regan] increased defense spending and floated the idea of a
nuclear missile "shield" called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and
dubbed "Star Wars" by his critics. SDI caused waves of protest from the Soviet
Union, but also from many within the United States. The nuclear doctrine of
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) had been the centerpiece for keeping the wary
peace between the rivals for decades. The idea that no defense against nuclear
weapons was best, since both sides understood the devastation that would
accompany thermo-nuclear war. Hence the name Mutual Assured Destruction. SDI
threatened to upset this precarious balance. With a defense system in place, in
theory the US would have the first-strike capability against the USSR without
fear of repercussions. For obvious reasons, the Soviets didn't care for this
policy, but the fear in the US was that SDI would ratchet up tensions and the
Soviets may feel cornered and would launch a strike before the US had the system
in place. As it was, SDI was, and probably still is, years if not decades from
being a practical reality. But the idea, and Reagan's refusal to take it off the
table at a summit with Gorbachev in Iceland, caused the USSR to continue to
spend a disproportionate part of their treasury on defense and further
contributed to the decline of it's economy.

Wait, that wasn't an expert, that was me.

It wasn't all economics that ended the Cold War. Unrest among the people of the Soviet satelite country's, especially Poland, finally reached a head. Leaders emerged in these nations that challenged the authority of their Soviet-influenced overlords. They demanded more personal freedoms, freedom in the press, freedom of political will, you know, nothing major. In earlier days such appeals would have been answered with the boots of Red Army soldiers and cordiality of a Kalashnikov rifle. Gorbachev did nothing, and the people were bold. They tore down the Berlin wall while soldiers looked on. Not to say that there was no bloodshed in the wake of these actions, but it was, by anyones assesment, extremely minor.

My humble analysis can't do the subject the justice it truly deserves and I would again encourage anyone interested on the subject of the Cold War to read...The Cold War. If you missed it, you can read my review here. Hope this answered some of your questions, Josh. That is afterall this blogs reason for being.

Essentially, what ended the Cold War? (Non-Rocky variant)

The answer to this question kept getting longer and longer, so I've decided to break it into three parts so as not to frighten away my loyal readership, at least not any more than usual. This post constitutes part 1.

The reasons for the Cold War's end are larely economic. Since the Cold War was a, eh, cold war, meaning there was no direct military conflict between the main beligerents, it would not, or could not, be won by force of arms. As I've mentioned in earlier answers, both sides were well aware that such a conflict could very well have ended in total anilhilation for everyone. And really, where's the fun in that? So, the Cold War would be won not so much on the direct strength of one's military, but on the sustainability on one's economic system. Hence, the short answer to this question is that a capitalist, market economy was, and is, more sustainable than a communist, planned economy.

Ok, swell. But why is this so, and how did this play itself out? First we'll take an over-simplified look at why a market-capitalist economy is more sustainable than a planned-communist economy. (I am by no means an economist, so this is indeed a very over-simplified analysis. If you are an economist and somehow ended up here I would like to say first, I'm sorry, second, please feel free to critique my critique, and third, please stop wasting your time on this ridiculous blog and fix the burst in the housing bubble before property values plummet even further and my house is valued at what it's actually worth and I am forced to commit insurance fraud to feed my family.)

At the surface, it would appear that a planned economy is clearly the better option as it would seem to be less vulnerable to the boom-and-bust cycles of a market economy and the wealth generated would be distributed fairly amongst the populace. Capitalism, essentially, is predicated upon greed. An individual is free to do whatever is legally allowed, if not at least ambiguously unethical, to create greater profits for himself. There is a problem, however. In order to plan an economy, a government must control the means of production, distribution, and the flow of capital. This leads to a bloated government beaurocracy and the lack of competition quashes growth and improvement. A greed-fueled capitalist must always stay one step ahead of the other guy in order to be on top. This leads to a constant improvement of the product and relative stability in prices as rival business compete for customers. Some rules are neceasary to keep things in line, which is why there are anti-trust laws in place to prevent monopolies. In a planned-communist economy, pretty much everything is a government run monopoly. In summary, planned economy stagnates growth, capitalist economy encourages growth.

Essentially what ended the Cold War?

The Cold War's end can be traced back to Moscow in the winter of 1985 when an American boxer of Italian decent named Rocky Balboa, sometimes referred to as the Italian Stallion, followed his defeat of the gargantuan and genetically engineered Soviet fighter Ivan Drago with an empassioned speech now widely known as the "If I Can Change Address." In this singular moment, through the simple slurred words of a pugilist who's career was marked by continually defying the odds, the absurdities of the decades-old conflict were distilled. The odds were defied once again, as the usually stoic Soviet leader, inspired by Rocky's burning heart, which was rising like a spire, and his steely gaze, which has been likened to that of a tiger, rose to his feet and began to applaud in the stirring manner of what is known in the US as the "Lucas Applause." His countrymen, sensing the significance of the drama, responded in kind, thus sparking a series of events that in four years time would lead to the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

Who were the leaders of the Cold War?

Since the Cold War spanned several decades many leaders came and went. More came and went in the West as these countries democratically elected their leaders and they were subject to term limits. Some of the countries under communism saw even less turnover at the top because they were ruled by dictators. In Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito ruled from before the end of WWII until his death in 1980. During the Cold War the United States elected nine different Presidents, none serving longer than eight years. The USSR had seven General Secretaries of the Communist Party during the same period. Leonid Brezhnev was in power the longest, 1964 to 1982. The two leaders following Brezhnev had short reigns as they both died or became very ill while in office, paving the way for the younger reform minded Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev in the USSR and Ronald Reagan, President of the US, were very instumental to the Cold War's conclusion. Reagan, a virulent anti-communist, attacked the USSR and it's policies rhetorically from the very outset of his presidency calling it in one speech an "evil empire." He increased defense spending and floated the idea of a nuclear missile "shield" called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and dubbed "Star Wars" by his critics. SDI caused waves of protest from the Soviet Union, but also from many within the United States. The nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) had been the centerpiece for keeping the wary peace between the rivals for decades. The idea that no defense against nuclear weapons was best, since both sides understood the devastation that would accompany thermo-nuclear war. Hence the name Mutual Assured Destruction. SDI threatened to upset this precarious balance. With a defense system in place, in theory the US would have the first-strike capability against the USSR without fear of repercussions. For obvious reasons, the Soviets didn't care for this policy, but the fear in the US was that SDI would ratchet up tensions and the Soviets may feel cornered and would launch a strike before the US had the system in place. As it was, SDI was, and probably still is, years if not decades from being a practical reality. But the idea, and Reagan's refusal to take it off the table at a summit with Gorbachev in Iceland, caused the USSR to continue to spend a disproportionate part of their treasury on defense and further contributed to the decline of it's economy. Reagan had even agreed to share the technology with the Soviets, and then both countries would be free to dismantle all of their nuclear weapons.

Despite the rhetoric and hardball tactics, Reagan and Gorbachev connected on a personal level and were able to lead their countries in making the correct decisions that led to a relatively peacful end to the Cold War.

That is a brief snippet of a couple of leaders from the era and a little bit about what made them effective. Maybe this week I'll have time to cover a few more in detail. What little I've read about Kruschev I've found to be pretty interesting and the same goes for Richard Nixon. More is probably known about the mistakes of those two men than their triumphs, and both did make colossal and costly mistakes, but their triumphs are equally worth looking into as well. I've put a Wikipedia Cold War link in the sidebar, but I hope that doesn't stop you from asking questions. This is fun! :)

Here's a picture of some Russian nesting dolls my dad got me from Belarus. From left to right:
Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Stalin, Lenin. Technically, Lenin and Yeltsin were not part of the Cold War. Lenin lead the Bolshevik Revolution to oust the Tzar in 1916 (I think) and Boris Yeltsin was the frist Russian president after the USSR fell.

What essentially was the Cold War about?

The Cold War at it's most fundamental was a clash in political and economic ideologies: capitalism and communism. The nations aligned with capitalism, or The West, were led by the United States while the nations alinged, willingly or not, with communism were lead by the Soviet Union or USSR. It grew out of the waning days of World War II. As the Soviets drove the Germans back toward Berlin they came into possession of most of the countries of Eastern and South Easern Europe: Poland, Hungaria, Bulgaria, Romania, among others. The Allies, who were allied with the Soviets against Germany were concerned that Stalin would not liberate these countries after driving the Nazi's out and tried to get assurances from Stalin that his forces would indeed leave after the war and these countries would be free to govern themselves. This did not happen. After the war, the USSR continued to occupy most of these countries, including eastern Germany which was then divided into capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany or the German Democratic Republic (GDR) which was neither democratic nor a republic...discuss. Basically, after WWII the alies told Russia "Get out of Eastern Europe!", the Russians said "Make us!" and the two sides stood and stared at each other across the Iron Curtain (a phrase coined in a Winston Churchill speech) for the next nearly half century. Meanwhile on the other side of Asia, the communist forces of Mao Zedong defeated the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-chek turning the worlds most populace country red.

That half-century, the two sides engaged in a struggle to contain the other and bring as many nations as possible onto it's side. It's called the Cold War because the two main advesaries, the US and USSR, never engaged each other in open warfare. They pawed at each other through espionage and war between proxies like the Korean and Vietnam wars (though Soviet and American pilots did face each other in the skies over Vietnam, but neither nation acknowldged this). Though there were those who advocated outright war with the Soviets, Patton the most notable, the threat of nuclear war overshadowed everything. However, at the time of Patton's, eh, "admonishments", immediately after the end of WWII in 1945, the USSR did not yet have nuclear capability. But they had a lot of dudes in Europe. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

By the 1950's both nations had substancial arsenals of nuclear weapons and the spector of world annihilation was a very real and legitimate fear. Both country's were aware of the devastation that nuclear war would do, and though there were a few close calls, the Cuban Missile Crisis being the most famous, cooler heads always prevailed and no nukes were ever launched. The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) went along way to keeping a relative peace between the advesaries. By this time both superpowers had an entourage of like-minded nations, willing or otherwise, along side them. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the West and the Warsaw Pact on the communist side. WWIII was a very real possiblity.

Over the next few decades there were various crises and flashpoints but never a face to face meeting of the superpowers, other than the skies over southeast Asia. All the while, for the people living in countries behind the Iron Curtain life was hard as personal freedoms were repressed, economies stagnated, and individual political will was non-existent. One party, the Communist Party, ruled the day behind the walls. Meanwhile, those countries in the West thrived. Personal freedom was guaranteed, economies were growing, and leaders came and went by the will of the people. Never was the dicotomy more apparent than in the Germany's. By the 1980's the communist system was showing it's age. Though the system had been on the decline behind the scenes for some time, to those on the outside this was not apparent. The events of 1989 surprised nearly everyone. The people behind the curtain began to speak out against an unjust system, and their leaders couldn't silence them anymore. In that year the Berlin Wall was torn down by demonstraters and by 1991 the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.

In China however things weren't not as good for democracy. The then leader of China, Deng Xiaoping, while encouraging a freeer market, capitalistic, economy, was not prepared to allow those under his rule political freedom. A student demonstration for democracy in Tiananmen Square in Beijing was violently put down on his order in April of 1989, the very same year that German demonstraters had torn down the Berlin Wall with virtually not consequences.

So, I have no idea if that even answered your question. If not, please ask more questions. That's kind of the point of this blog.