Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

Florian Wastl
f.wastl@lse.ac.uk

Draft – please do not quote or pass on.

The End of the Cold War as a Moment of Complexity

1. Introduction
There can be no doubt that the end of the Cold War was a highly complex event in-
volving the interplay of many factors over the years. And yet, the five common ap-
proaches to explain the end of the Cold War which exist in the discipline largely fail
to take account of this complexity. Instead, they (a) each posit just one discrete factor
which they deem to have been, more than any other, responsible for the end of the
Cold War; and for each approach, this is a different factor, depending on their as-
sumptions about the nature of international politics. They also (b) rely on largely es-
sentialist conceptions of social reality in which preformed entities are thought to de-
termine the nature of social relations. As a result, each approach is able to account
only for those factors which are consistent with ‘its’ preformed entities. Together (a)
and (b) lead to a situation in which the dominant approaches in the discipline are un-
able to provide a unified account of the events which led to the end of the Cold War.
A fuller account of the process is possible only through a ‘disaggregation’1 of events
and explanations.
In this paper, I will seek to apply an approach which focuses not on factors but on the
particular interactions between them. It thereby enables us to analyse the process as a
whole, not merely snapshots of its parts. The Cold War, then, ended not because of
any particular factor or factors per se but because of their timely and largely non-
linear interaction and confluence.

2. A Plethora of Factors
The end of the Cold War was the biggest shift in international relations for at least a
generation. It saw the end of a global, bipolar conflict between two socio-economic
systems which had been pitted against each other for some 40 years, with enough fire
power on each side to destroy the world many times over. Many were taken by sur-
prise by the speed and the peaceful nature of this rapidly unfolding event—but most
of all they were surprised that it happened at all. Asked in 1984, not many people—
scholars of International Relations or statesmen—would have suspected the Cold War
was about to end, much less that it would be over by 1990. In fact, the early 1980s
had brought a significant rise in tensions between the two superpowers after a brief
period of thaw in the 1970s. Yet, between March 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev took
office and October 1990 when Germany was reunified, the Cold War went from being
the defining feature of the international system—permanent in the minds of many—to
becoming no feature at all, irrelevant to the realities of a ‘new world order’2. In the
space of only five and a half years, the world had witnessed the enactment of wide-
ranging domestic reforms in the Soviet Union; the signing of numerous arms control

1
Wohlforth, William C., ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, in ibid. (ed.), Wit-
nesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996),
p.283; see below for a full explication of this term.
2
Bush Sr., George, on the eve of Operation Desert Storm to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, 16 January
1991.

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

treaties between the Soviet Union and the United States; the gradual dismantling of
the Soviet socialist economy and of communist ideology among the Soviet leadership;
the revocation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, shortly followed by the end of communism
in Eastern Europe after an avalanche of largely peaceful revolutions; and Soviet ac-
ceptance of German reunification within NATO. The demise of the Soviet Union it-
self followed little over a year later.
The question is why this rapid and unexpected change. Unfortunately, we are unlikely
to be given any straight-forward answer. The end of the Cold War did not just consist
of one single major event but it was made up of a sequence of many ‘smaller’ events
and changes, and their interplay. It involved many actors and, despite the speed of
change, it took years to unfold. This, but also the fact that no one had seen it coming
right until the end, suggests that there must have been a whole plethora of possible
reasons, factors, and causes—and combinations between them—that may have con-
tributed to the ending of the Cold War.
There are currently five dominant approaches in the discipline which seek to explain
the end of the Cold War. If one is to believe their judgement, there are a maximum of
five chief factors which caused the Cold War to end, a different one according to each
approach. Taken together, these were (i) ‘new thinking’, (ii) Soviet terminal decline,
(iii) Soviet domestic politics, i.e. the attempt to renew socialism from within, and the
crucial influences on events by (iv) Mikhail Gorbachev and (v) Ronald Reagan.
Yet, consider how many other possible factors may also have played a role in bring-
ing the Cold War to an end. Consider, for example, the suggestion put forward by
Vladislav Zubok (2005) that the Soviet Union was in fact materially much stronger
vis-à-vis the United States in the 1980s than in the late 1940s, yet had lost much of the
moral sense of purpose it had had shortly after World War II. 3 Zubok argues that, by
the early 1980s, many in the Soviet elites and leadership began to question the ration-
ale for opposing the United States, as it was becoming clear that the Soviet Union did
not meet many of the expectations that had been vested in it, economic, social, or
moral. “A growing number,” he writes, “looked towards the Western countries, not as
enemies, but as objects of emulation and envy.”4 Zubok argues that Soviet elites, hav-
ing lost their belief in the world-bettering mission of their state, were also losing their
imperial will.
And there is more. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act, according to Nick Bisley (2004),
may have had a similar effect. It not only “provided a means with which people could
measure Soviet action and find it wanting”,5 but more importantly, Bisley writes, by
signing up to some key liberal principles of international relations, “Helsinki planted
the first seed of normalisation among elites, dissidents and eventually the population
as a whole.”6 It was the first acceptance by the Soviets of their normality as a state in
the international system. Bisley argues that the Soviet drive towards normality, and its
eventual completion, ultimately brought the Cold War to a close.7

3
Zubok, Vladislav M., ‘Unwrapping an enigma: Soviet elites, Gorbachev and the end of the Cold
War’, in Pons, Silvio and Federico Romero (eds.), Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, in-
terpretations, periodizations (London/New York: Frank Cass, 2005), pp.158-160
4
Zubok, ‘Unwrapping an enigma’, pp.158-159; this is not the same as the decline argument which is
focused on a disparity in material capabilities and not on disillusioned elites.
5
Bisley, Nick, The End of the Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), p.102
6
Bisley, End of the Cold War, p.102
7
Bisley, End of the Cold War, pp.76, 87, 93

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

Or consider the impact of ‘Eurocommunism’ on the increasing social-democratisation

of the Soviet leadership and their reform agenda. Communists in Spain and France,
but particularly those from the strong communist party in Italy, had been critical of
Soviet-style communism for some time. Odd Arne Westad (2005) suggests that, later
on, they may have come to serve as an inspiration for reformers within the CPSU, as
Italian communists were strongly of the view that democratic politics in fact suited
socialism best.8
Furthermore, there was Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostpolitik’ of the early 1970s which had
opened more doors in the Soviets’ protective fence than many Eastern regimes had
anticipated, and ultimately, more than they could bear. Westad writes that not only did
West German engagement lower fears of a revanchist Germany in Eastern Europe,
thereby lowering the Soviet grip on these countries as a communist bulwark against
the German threat, but it also made Eastern European regimes more accountable in
the eyes of their own people, and regimes were keen, but ultimately not very success-
ful, to limit the contacts Ostpolitik had created.9
Not to mention the election of Polish Pope John Paul II in 1978. Agostino Giovagnoli
(2005) argues that John Paul II’s election was a major cause for concern for the re-
gimes of the Eastern bloc. It was not so much his anti-communism and emphasis on
human rights, which had been shared by his three predecessors, that posed a problem
for the USSR and other communist countries in eastern Europe. Rather, it was that
Karol Wojtyla was of Slavish origin, came from Poland, spoke people’s language, and
had lived under communism himself.10 Thus he was able, as Giovagnoli writes, to of-
fer “an alternative to communism’s explanation of the needs of [eastern European]
populations, an alternative that the communist regimes were ‘ideologically’ unable to
defeat.”11 He spoke for many in the region when he emphasised long-standing conti-
nuities and conceived of Europe as a unitary whole. All this undermined the ideologi-
cal hold of communism and made John Paul II dangerous to the regimes of the Soviet
bloc—and it may ultimately have contributed to the end of the Cold War.
And what of Soviet Third World engagements? The fostering of socialist regimes
around the world, and the installation of new ones wherever possible, was long per-
ceived to be an important part of the global contest between socialism and capitalism.
Yet, as Westad argues, Soviet disenchantments in regard to their Third World com-
mitments may have played a much greater part in effecting the foreign policy reorien-
tation of the 1980s than previously believed.12 In the two years between the Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and non-intervention in Poland in 1981, an im-
portant shift may have taken place, as Soviet elites were becoming increasingly disil-

8
Italian Communists regularly won about 30% of the Italian vote; Westad, Odd Arne, ‘Beginnings of
the end: how the Cold War crumbled’, in Pons, Silvio and Federico Romero (eds.), Reinterpreting the
End of the Cold War: Issues, interpretations, periodizations (London/New York: Frank Cass, 2005),
pp.71-73; see also Lebow, Richard Ned and Janice Gross Stein, ‘Understanding the End of the Cold
War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, in Herrmann, Richard K. and Richard Ned Lebow (eds.), Ending the
Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave,
2004), pp.200, 205; and Lévesque, Jacques, ‘The Emancipation of Eastern Europe’, in Herrmann,
Richard K. and Richard Ned Lebow (eds.), Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the
Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2004), pp.125-126
9
Westad, ‘Beginnings of the end’, pp.69-71
10
Giovagnoli, Agostino, ‘Karol Wojtyla and the end of the Cold War’, in Pons, Silvio and Federico
Romero (eds.), Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, interpretations, periodizations (Lon-
don/New York: Frank Cass, 2005), pp.84, 87
11
Giovagnoli, ‘Karol Wojtyla’, p.88
12
Westad, ‘Beginnings of the end’, pp.76-77

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

lusioned with the state of affairs in socialist regimes around the world, and were be-
ginning to count the cost of their involvements. This shift could have already set the
path for years to come. “It is not surprising,” Westad finds, “that many who had first
engineered, and then rejected, Soviet interventionism later re-emerged as reformers
during the Gorbachev era.”13
Consider also the potentially important impact of the change in mutual threat percep-
tions on the easing of tensions during the latter years of the Cold War. Robert Jervis
(1996) argues that the Cold War was in large part driven by the existence of conflict-
ing social systems and the threat they posed to each other. As the Soviet leadership’s
increasing social-democratisation and its disillusionment with socialism’s record was
changing Soviet perceptions of the threat posed by capitalism and the West, so Gor-
bachev’s public repudiation of ideology radically changed the United States’ percep-
tion of the USSR—despite the continued existence of large arsenals of nuclear weap-
ons on both sides.14 Indeed, Jervis writes “from what Secretary of State Shultz says, it
appears that the United States was more impressed by the renunciation of ideology in
Gorbachev’s UN speech than by the concrete promise to reduce troop levels in East-
ern Europe.”15 This reduction in mutual threat perceptions led to a change in the terms
of engagement between the two sides.
As did personal relations between the two groups of leaders. Fred I. Greenstein (1996)
argues that the frequency of negotiations between the two sides in the period from
1985 to 1989 provided them with an important ‘safety net’ to deal with events or mis-
understandings that might previously have led to a chilling in relations. Often leaders
simply knew each other well enough to give one another the benefit of the doubt.
“The great bulk of the change in superpower relations during the second term of the
Reagan presidency,” writes Greenstein, therefore “took less tangible forms than arms
control agreements and efforts to reduce force levels. In large part it consisted of
transformations in mind-sets, perceptions, and expectations. Where suspicion and
animosity had been, guarded trust and goodwill came to be.”16
And the list continues. Much is often made of Reagan’s hard-line policies which are
said to have driven the Soviet Union beyond breaking point and out of business. Yet,
his hard-line approach, according to Greenstein, may also have had a much more sub-
tle, if not necessarily less effective, impact on the course of events which led to the
end of the Cold War. Through his tough anti-communist stance, Greenstein argues,
Reagan was uniquely placed to negotiate an end to the Cold War. His outspoken op-
position to communism gave many the feeling that he was an extraordinarily safe pair
of hands in his dealings with the Soviets. This made him all but invulnerable to right-
wing attack for seeking an accommodation with the Soviet Union.17 And it was of
some importance that he could engage with Gorbachev as freely as he did. According
to Bisley, American “willingness to talk in reasonable and open terms was of crucial
importance to Gorbachev and the changes he was trying to impose. […] The Ameri-

13
Westad, ‘Beginnings of the end’, p.77
14
Jervis, Robert, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold War’, in Wohlforth, William C.
(ed.), Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996), pp.225-231
15
Jervis, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold War’, pp.225-226
16
Greenstein, Fred I., ‘Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War: What Differ-
ence Did They Make?’, in Wohlforth, William C. (ed.), Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Balti-
more and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp.200, 207
17
Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War’, pp.215-216

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

cans helped give Gorbachev a very important platform by embracing him as a person
to talk to, to take seriously and, belatedly to believe in.”18
Nor should one forget the more ‘accidental’ developments which took place during
this period, and which may have contributed to ending the Cold War. Robert English
(2005) argues that Chernobyl provided a push for domestic reform by exposing the
corruption and inhumanity of the Stalinist command-administrative system, as it
emerged that the Soviet leadership and, by extension their international counterparts,
had been misled by hardliners from within the regime. Meanwhile, the outpouring of
Western aid and goodwill strengthened internal support for Gorbachev’s foreign pol-
icy stance and sparked a renewed urgency on his part to try to break the deadlock in
US-Soviet relations.19 In short, as Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein (2004)
write, “the cover-up of Chernobyl […] drove home the lessons of openness and inter-
national cooperation to Gorbachev and made it easier for him to implement restructur-
ing.”20
A similar ‘accident’ was provided by young West German interloper Matthias Rust in
May 1987 when he landed a small plane on Red Square. Archie Brown (2004) argues
that Gorbachev used this as an opportunity to purge the military and replace defence
minister Sergey Sokolov with Dmitriy Yazov who was more inclined towards Gorba-
chev and his policies than Sokolov.21 This ‘quiet coup’, in the words of Anatoly Do-
brynin, 22 chairman of the CPSU’s International Department at the time, enabled Gor-
bachev to deflect powerful opposition to his plans for disarmament and other pro-
posed changes. Rust’s flight to Red Square may, therefore, have been an important
factor in facilitating those processes which eventually led to the end of the Cold
War.23
Finally, we must not forget time and process as a potential factor. The end of the Cold
War was a long, drawn-out process, not a set event, and conditions at the outset were
very different from those further along in this process. Neither of the main protago-
nists had a clear idea of where they were headed, or where this interaction would take
them, at the beginning of this process. It was only through the passage of time that
particular windows of opportunity opened up and more specific—and far-reaching—
goals became possible, and were formulated.24 As Lebow and Gross Stein write,
“process is often given impetus by deliberate initiatives of various parties and stimu-
lated and given momentum by outside events.”25 Over time, behaviour and outside
events may have led to unintended consequences which ultimately led to the trans-
formation of the system as a whole—an outcome which was thus ‘doubly’ unin-

18
Bisley, End of the Cold War, p.100
19
English, Robert, ‘Ideas and the end of the Cold War: rethinking intellectual political change’, in
Pons, Silvio and Federico Romero (eds.), Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, interpreta-
tions, periodizations (London/New York: Frank Cass, 2005), pp.128-129
20
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.207
21
Brown, Archie, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, in Herrmann, Richard K. and Richard
Ned Lebow (eds.), Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International
Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2004), p.44; Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-
Linear Confluence’, pp.198, 207
22
Dobrynin, Anatoly, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents
(1962-1986) (New York: Random House, 1995), p626; quoted in Brown, ‘Gorbachev and the End of
the Cold War’, p.44
23
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.207
24
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, pp.207, 212-214
25
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p. 207

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

tended.26 In the end, therefore, we may need to see the end of the Cold War as a
largely unintended consequence in which time and process had a major part to play.
A good example of this is provided by the case of German reunification within NA-
TO. Clearly inconceivable even as things were beginning to spiral out of control in
the autumn of 1989, it was not until events took a different turn following the fall of
the Berlin Wall that things began to move in the direction of eventual reunification
under NATO. It was only when East Germans began to demand economic and politi-
cal unification, first in Leipzig in late November 1989 (‘Wir sind ein Volk’), then as
they were leaving for West Germany in their tens of thousands each month demand-
ing that the deutschmark come to them or they would go to it, and as the GDR was
rapidly imploding, that quick reunification became almost inevitable.27 The Soviets
were now faced with a dilemma: By the spring of 1990, the momentum for reunifica-
tion was building fast, while the United States and West Germany were simultane-
ously pressing for a united Germany to remain inside NATO. Finally, as events had
all but overtaken them, a deal was struck between the US, West Germany, and Gorba-
chev in the summer of 1990 in which it was agreed that the reunified Germany would
remain a full member of NATO in exchange for Germany’s financing of the with-
drawal of Soviet troops from East Germany.
German reunification within NATO did almost certainly not feature on Gorbachev’s
wish list, not in 1985, not when he announced the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine in
March 1988,28 not even as the Berlin Wall was coming down in November 1989. In-
stead, it was brought about by a sequence of outside events, to which he may have
given the initial impetus, but which had rapidly spiralled outside his control.

3. The Need for an Alternative Framework

Surely, neither of these factors—and possibly many others—can be wholly dis-
counted in any study which seeks to establish why the Cold War came to an end. All
of them did in some way influence the course of events. Some may have been more,
some less important than others; some may have provided crucial turning points;29
others may have gone almost unnoticed but provided decisive catalysts for other fac-
tors to come into play and crucially shape events; yet others may have been obvious
underlying causes but in reality they required the existence of other factors to become
causally ‘active’; and somehow all these factors interacted with each other, simulta-
neously and over time. To make matters worse, this plethora of factors existed across
several levels. These are most crudely speaking, the international, domestic, and indi-
vidual levels, but as we have seen from the discussion of the many possible factors
above, in reality these were interspersed with, and dissected by, many more interme-
diate levels such as party, social, economic, transnational, intellectual, and ideologi-
cal.

26
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p. 214
27
Rapid reunification was also made possible by some skilful politicking from Helmut Kohl, the West
German chancellor, aided by the strong support given to him by George Bush. See Davis, James W.
and William C. Wohlforth, ‘German Reunification’, in Herrmann, Richard K. and Richard Ned Lebow
(eds.), Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New
York: Palgrave, 2004), pp.132, 138; for a full account of events surrounding Germany reunification,
see Davis and Wohlforth, ‘German Reunification’, pp.131-157
28
Before the Yugoslav Federal Assembly.
29
For a study of turning points during the end of the Cold War, see Herrmann, Richard K. and Richard
Ned Lebow (eds.), Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International
Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2004)

6
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

The end of the Cold War was a hugely complex event. It should be clear that an event
of such complexity cannot be captured by a simple, uni-directional correlation of
cause and effect, and therefore, ultimately, by defining dependent and independent
variables.30 Alas, however, that is largely the methodology pursued by the five domi-
nant approaches to explain the end of the Cold War. They do, for the most part, stipu-
late that one variable, above all others, fundamentally accounts for the variation that
was the end of the Cold War. Other factors are allowed merely to have influenced the
timing, nature, and implications of the event but are not deemed to have been respon-
sible for the fact that the variation itself took place, i.e. that the Cold War came to an
end. This has led to five largely incompatible stories of the end of the Cold War, each
based on a different set of ontological assumptions, and each analysing the available
evidence differently as a result.
However, the fact that such a complex event as the end of the Cold War cannot be
adequately accounted for by simple correlative approaches is not wholly lost on the
literature. Take, for example, William C. Wohlforth (1996), normally a supporter of
the ‘Soviet terminal decline’ thesis. “We can and should,” he writes, “show the causal
importance of individuals, perceptions, ideas, domestic constraints, and many other
factors. […] Any explanation of this event will feature many causes operating at many
levels. […] One could draw lines connecting all these factors, but in all cases the
causal arrows point in both directions.”31 This is mirrored by Richard K. Herrmann
(2004) who seeks “to promote a broader search for new evidence and more thoughtful
and complex causal explanations.”32 Finally, Lebow and Gross Stein make a similar
point when they call for “conceptual tools that bridge levels of analysis and permit a
more rigorous framing of the problem of multiple causation.”33
Yet, despite these calls to move away from simple correlations of cause and effect
with their propensity to produce conflicting accounts, and towards a ‘more compre-
hensive explanation’34 of the ‘process as a whole’35, no such unified analysis of the
end of the Cold War has so far been provided. Even Herrmann and Lebow (2004),
from whose edited volume some of the previous quotations are taken, divide the proc-
ess of the end of the Cold War up into five distinct turning points.36 Herrmann claims
that “by unpacking the interpretative task into smaller endeavours for which we could
acquire new empirical information, we can determine whether particular explanations

30
Jervis, Robert, ‘Systems and Interactions Effects’, in Snyder, Jack and ibid. (eds.), Coping with Com-
plexity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), pp.26, 41; quoted in Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Mak-
ers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.275
31
Wohlforth, William C., ‘The Search for Causes to the End of the Cold War’, in ibid. (ed.), Witnesses
to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp.198,
195; Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.275
32
Herrmann, Richard K., ‘Learning from the End of the Cold War’, in ibid. and Richard Ned Lebow
(eds.), Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New
York: Palgrave, 2004), p.225
33
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.196
34
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.191
35
Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.283; see also Checkel, Jeffrey
T., ‘Tracing Causal Mechanisms’, International Studies Review 8(2) (2006), pp. 362-370
36
Herrmann and Lebow define turning points as (1) changes of significant magnitude and (2) changes
that are difficult to undo. The main turning points during the end of the Cold War were in their view:
the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet withdrawal from regional conflicts, arms control, the liberation
of Eastern Europe, and the reunification of Germany. For more see: Herrmann, Richard K. and Richard
Ned Lebow, ‘What Was the Cold War? When Did it End?’, in ibid. (eds.), Ending the Cold War: Inter-
pretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2004), pp.1-27,
particularly pp.7-14

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

hold in one turning point as an exception or as a general rule.”37 In the same wake,
Wohlforth speaks of the need for the event to be ‘disaggregated’, and that “different
generalisations […] must be applied to its different parts.”38 Laudable therefore as
their calls for a more complex and comprehensive explanation undoubtedly are, this
sort of approach is unlikely to provide it. Rather, it leads to a focus on a series of
separate events or, as in Herrmann and Lebow’s edited volume, on different turning
points, with a different cocktail of factors identified as being responsible for each of
them.39 What remains absent is an analysis of the process as a whole.
I have argued previously (not included in this paper) that one reason why conven-
tional approaches find it so hard to provide more comprehensive accounts of complex
events like the end of the Cold War is because of an essentialist ontology at the heart
of their analyses. By stipulating the existence of a number of preformed entities be-
tween which all social relations are supposed to take place, I have argued, they cannot
account for factors that are inconsistent with these preformed entities or the social re-
lations as they have been defined by them—at least not without making previously
consistent factors newly inconsistent.40 To many, therefore, ‘disaggregation’ may
seem the only feasible way of overcoming the constraints of the need for ontological
consistency, and thereby, of providing a fuller explanation of complex events. The
best we can hope for, writes Wohlforth, is that “many of the theories that seem to be
competing may in fact be complementary, explaining different pieces of the puzzle.”41
Similarly—and despite their expressed aim to go “beyond an ad hoc historical narra-
tive that draws together different explanations,”42—Lebow and Gross Stein argue that
“scholars who work on questions with complex causes need to establish levels of in-
determinacy and use them to assess the relative merit of competing explanations.”43
Neither is the comprehensive account of the process as a whole that both of them call
for elsewhere. Instead, it is an approach punctured by numerous causal ruptures, or
gaps, where one analysis ends—complete with its own logic and main factors—and
another one begins. Ultimately, Wohlforth admits that complex events like the end of
the Cold War may simply ‘defy causal analysis’.44

4. An Alternative Conception of the End of the Cold War

37
Herrmann, ‘Learning from the End of the Cold War’, p.226
38
Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.283
39
For a summary of the factors put forward by the different authors for each turning point in the edited
volume by Herrmann and Lebow, see Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear
Confluence’, pp.197-201
40
This is why the discipline’s five dominant approaches to explain the end of the Cold War fail to de-
liver a more unified picture of the end of the Cold War. Essentialist ontologies prevent them from mov-
ing much beyond a certain set of relations (and factors) as ‘regulated’ by the nature of the entities
which they regard as preformed.
41
Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.283; for a similar attempt to
make competing approaches complementary through ‘disaggregation’, compare also Wendt, Alexan-
der, ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, in Tim Dunne, Michael Cox and Ken
Booth (eds.), The Eighty Years’ Crisis: International Relations 1919-1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), pp.103-112; Wendt, ‘Bridging the theory/meta-theory gap in international re-
lations’, Review of International Studies, 17(4) (1991), pp.383-392; and Carlsnaes, Walter, ‘In Lieu of
a Conclusion: Compatibility and the Agency-Structure Issue in Foreign Policy Analysis’, in ibid. and
Steve Smith (eds.), European Foreign Policy: EC and Changing Perspectives in Europe (London:
Sage Publications, 1994), pp.283-284
42
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.196
43
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.191 (orig. emphasis)
44
Wohlforth, ‘Scholars, Policy Makers, and the End of the Cold War’, p.275

8
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

In what follows, I will seek to dispel the notion that accounting for complex events
like the end of the Cold War requires a ‘disaggregation’ of events (and explanations),
or that it may even defy the possibility of causal analysis altogether. I will show that it
is neither necessary nor desirable to divide the end of the Cold War up into more di-
gestible pieces, be it to enable us to paint a picture of the overall event by accounting
for each individual event separately (Wohlforth), or to find out which explanation is
the best overall by creating levels of indeterminacy across different individual events
(Herrmann, Lebow and Gross Stein).
Let us begin with the five dominant approaches which seek to explain the end of the
Cold War. Each of them stipulates that one factor, above all others, was responsible
for bringing the Cold War to an end. Yet, this is a different factor in each case so that
there can be no final agreement among the different approaches why the Cold War
ended. It was either ‘new thinking’ which lay at the heart of the end of the Cold War,
or Soviet terminal decline, or domestic politics within the Soviet Union and the East-
ern bloc, or the actions and personality of Mikhail Gorbachev, or the tough policies of
Ronald Reagan. Which of these one is most likely to subscribe to is determined by
where one stands in one’s view of the nature of international politics. This is unlikely
to give us an accurate picture of the highly complex and intricate nature of the end of
the Cold War, made up as it was of a sequence of many ‘smaller’ events and changes,
and their interplay, drawn out over several years, and involving many actors on both
sides. It is just not very probable that the Cold War came to an end because of the
presence, at the outset, of only one main factor, and it is nonsensical to any outsider
that there should be five competing explanations for the same event.
Wohlforth argues, of course, that they may not be in competition with each other but
that different theories may just be best placed to explain different pieces of the proc-
ess as a whole. This ‘disaggregation’ of events and explanations is undoubtedly a step
forward. It enables us to take account of more than just one main factor, and thus, to
look at events beyond only those explained by that factor. Realists may now not just
look at the Soviet Union’s material decline as a factor for why the Cold War came to
an end, but also at the importance of ‘new thinking‘ and Gorbachev’s personality at
other stages of the process. However, what this does not do is to overcome the essen-
tialist propositions of the different approaches at the start. As consistency is, there-
fore, to be maintained with the nature of the entities at the bottom of each approach
(i.e. logics of consequence vs. appropriateness; the international is more important
than the domestic, etc.), there is only so far that any one explanation can reach before
another has to take over, without any real linkage between them. Consider the follow-
ing example: In accordance with this approach, we could argue that its material de-
cline vis-à-vis the United States made it impossible for the Soviet Union to continue
the standoff but it took the ideas of a new generation within the Soviet leadership, and
the bold leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, to face up to this reality and act upon it.
However, does this really tell us how and why these three factors interacted with each
other, or even if they did? All we can say for certain is that it seems logical, ex post
facto, that they might have done. What we do in this approach, then, is just a paper-
ing-together of different factors, a patchwork, without any real thought to, or explana-
tion of, how they may be connected to each other, or what other dynamics their con-
nection, and that of others, may have facilitated. Such an approach fails to take ac-
count of nonlinearity, dynamic confluences, causal mechanisms, and the importance
of process—and, thus, the causal linkage between different factors. Therefore, and
most damaging of all, it cannot account for ‘real’ causation because it merely points
to the existence of a number of different factors. Yet, as Lebow and Gross Stein

9
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

rightly point out, the existence of “underlying causes do[es] nothing more than to cre-
ate the possibility of change.”45 What is missing is an account of how that change ac-
tually took place. The real question, then, is: how is that possibility of change actual-
ised, or made effectual? What did really cause the Cold War to end?
To answer this question, as indicated in the previous section, we must give a compre-
hensive account, not of the factors, but of the process as a whole that led to the end of
the Cold War. It is important to recognise that it was neither ‘new thinking’, Soviet
terminal decline, domestic politics, Gorbachev, or Reagan—nor any of the many other
possible factors listed above—that were responsible for ending the Cold War, either
individually or collectively, but it was the way in which the interactions between them
created the conditions for the Cold War to end. As we will see, only such an approach
can truly supersede the divisions between the different factors themselves, as well as
give an account, however incomplete, of what really caused the Cold War to end.
4.1. Relations before Factors
Factors which may have led to the end of the Cold War are usually presented as pos-
sessing fixed ‘factoral cores’ which determine their ‘factor-ness’ by giving them a
particular causal essence. ‘New thinking’, for instance, is thought to have been a set
of ideas which had developed among parts of the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1960s
and 1970s, partly independently and partly through transnational exchanges with
Western liberal internationalists. It entailed a strong commitment to the humanising
and opening of the Soviet Union, and was rooted in beliefs of the one-ness of human-
ity, universal human rights, and common security. ‘New thinking’ reached the eche-
lons of power with the election of a Secretary General who was open to its appeal,
and its policy impact was aided by the extraordinary authority invested in the Secre-
tary General and the highly authoritarian, top-down structure of the Soviet political
system.46 A similarly fixed definition exists of the ‘Soviet terminal decline’ factor. A
stagnant economy, increasingly less able to support the mighty military apparatus, is
said to have thrown the Soviet Union into material decline in the early 1980s. Follow-
ing this, it was the subsequent change in the balance of power between the two super-
powers, and the realisation amongst Soviet elites that reduced capabilities would
make it impossible to continue competing with the United States on a par, which
compelled Gorbachev towards an accommodating strategy vis-à-vis the United
States.47
More factors could be mentioned to show that they have been conceived in a similar
way. Yet, none of these factors, neither those just mentioned nor any others which

45
Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.214 (orig. emphasis);
the full quotation reads: “Our study of the Cold War suggests the broader conclusion that underlying
causes, no matter how numerous or powerful, rarely make an outcome inevitable, or even highly prob-
able. Their effects may depend on fortuitous coincidences in timing of multiple causal chains, the inde-
pendent actions of people, even on accidents unrelated to any underlying cause. The Cold War case
suggests that system transformations—and many other kinds of international events—are unpredictable
because their “underlying causes do nothing more than to create the possibility of change.”
46
See English, Robert D., ‘Sources, Methods, and Competing Perspectives on the End of the Cold
War’, Diplomatic History, 21(2) (Spring 1997), pp.283-294, esp. p.284; and Risse-Kappen, Thomas,
‘Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold
War’, in Lebow, Richard Ned and ibid. (eds.), International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold
War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp.187-222, esp. p.188; and Checkel, Jeffrey T.,
Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New
Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1997); see also Chapter Three, pp.??-??
47
See Wohlforth, William C., ‘Realism and the End of the Cold War’, International Security, 19(3),
(Winter 1994-1995), pp.91-129; see also Chapter Three, pp.??-??

10
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

may have contributed to ending the Cold War, can be seen in this ideal-type way. We
cannot stipulate a factor and ascribe to it, by virtue of its internal ‘factoral core’, a par-
ticular causal essence for the process which led to the end of the Cold War, be this, in
the case of ‘new thinking’, the emphasis on openness and the one-ness of humanity in
Soviet policy, or ‘tipping the balance of power’ in the case of Soviet decline. Instead,
their causal essence was derived only from the constant interaction in which they
were embedded. In other words, they became what they were, not through any inner
attribute of themselves, but only through their relations with other elements in the on-
going flow of events.48 Instead of having its causal essence in ‘tipping the balance of
power’, then, Soviet decline may possibly have influenced the course of events
through its impact on Gorbachev’s, and others’, vision for socialism. Believing social-
ism was there for the betterment of the human condition, it may have troubled Gorba-
chev that the Soviet economy could produce the most sophisticated weapons systems
but was increasingly less able to provide an ample supply of some of life’s most basic
necessities. Dissatisfied and disillusioned as Gorbachev may have been with the sys-
tem as it was, his disgruntlement would have made little impact on policy, had it not
been for the high measure of flexibility in his thinking and personality which allowed
him to contemplate a break with one of the most central, and oldest, doctrines of So-
viet existence: that of having to oppose the capitalist West whatever the cost. But
even his own readiness to break with this important doctrine would not have been suf-
ficient to affect policy if Gorbachev had not had the power to persuade the politburo
that, to put socialism in a position in which it would be better able to fulfil its prom-
ise, the Soviet Union would benefit from a partial normalisation of its relations with
the United States.
In this possible scenario, which only retraces the first steps on the long road which
eventually led to the Cold War’s end, we see the seamless interaction of at least four
of the five ‘standard’ factors, as well as some of the additional ones listed at the be-
ginning of this paper. We see the interaction of material decline, disappointment of
the expectations vested in socialism, ‘new thinking’, Gorbachev’s personality, loss of
the imperial will, domestic politics, the authoritarian nature of the Soviet political sys-
tem, and the drive towards a normalisation of the Soviet Union. However, neither of
these factors was given a causal essence in and of themselves. Instead, this essence
derived only from the factors’ contextuality, that is, their relations with other factors.
This does not yet, however, tell us anything about ‘real’ causation. Nor does it present
a significant departure from the patchwork approach which I criticised above for
merely papering together a number of different, plausible factors into any sort of ex-
planation, without a view to how those factors were actually connected. Yet, recog-
nising that factors do not possess fixed causal essences in and of themselves, but that
they are fluid constellations which are given their causal essences only by virtue of
their place in the relations with other factors, is nonetheless an important cognitive
step. As Patrick T. Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon (1999) note: “If the world is under-
stood to be composed of processes and relations, then we cannot divide the world into
discrete variables.”49 It is, therefore, the precondition for any account which seeks to
focus on process rather than on individual events and factors.

48
For an account of ‘relationalism’, see Jackson, Patrick T. and Daniel H. Nexon, ‘Relations before
States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics’, European Journal of International Rela-
tions, 5(3) (1999), pp.291-332; and Emirbayer, Mustafa, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, The
American Journal of Sociology, 103(2) (September 1997), pp.281-317; also see Chapter Four, pp.??-??
49
Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before States’, p.306

11
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

If we did not understand the world as essentially relational and, conversely, we were
to insist on the continued conception of factors as self-propelling entities with fixed
causal essences, we would remain locked in the old need for consistency between dif-
ferent factors on the one hand, and the sort of events we would be able to account for
on the other. The only way to provide a fuller explanation of complex events would
be through a ‘disaggregation’ of events and explanations, as suggested by Wohlforth
above, along with the ensuing patchwork approach and its inability to account for
‘real’ causation. While not a significant departure from this patchwork approach at
this stage, the recognition that factors are entirely embedded in process and relation
without any internal ‘core’ thus forms the precondition for more.
4.2 Explaining Change
As a first thing, such an approach allows us to account for complex change. An ap-
proach which puts relations and process before static factors can explain how a
change in conditions may lead to emerging properties that may lead to further changes
along the same process, and thus to outcomes which were unthinkable at the outset. In
other words, so long as we do not contend that any particular factors are responsible,
individually or collectively, for a change in conditions, but instead the relations be-
tween them, we can account for emerging properties and are thus able to provide a
dynamic and endogenous account of change—in which change leads to more
change—rather than merely taking ‘snapshots of dynamic statics’.50 It allows us,
writes Mustafa Emirbayer (1997), “to avoid […] ad hoc reasoning and to develop
causal explanations more self-consciously within a unitary frame of reference.”51 In
this way, then, we can account for the emergence of new properties which were cru-
cial in creating the conditions that brought the Cold War to an end.
Consider the following example: When Gorbachev renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine
and encouraged other communist countries in Eastern Europe to adopt similar reforms
as those he had begun in the Soviet Union, he may have done so fully expecting that
this would lead to a strengthening of socialism in the region. It would put socialism in
those countries, so the possible reasoning, in a position to fully live up to its promise,
and it would thus gain added legitimacy and economic prowess. Of course, this may
well have happened, only had it not been for the particular interaction between Gor-
bachev’s joint message to reform, and to do so independently from Moscow, and a
number of other factors present in the region, such as Western ‘benign power’, nu-
merous lines of contacts with the West, the end of the perceived German threat, and a
strong residue nationalism. These had been largely dormant and invisible as underly-
ing factors until Gorbachev renounced the use of force to prop up the communist re-
gimes of Eastern Europe. Their interaction with the implication of Gorbachev’s an-
nouncement created an important emerging property: the more or less complete loss
of Soviet control over processes in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev had not intended it this
way. He had surely expected to retain some influence over developments, if mostly of
an ideological nature. Expected or not, however, conditions had changed dramatically
and in such a way which led to further dramatic changes—unthinkable at the outset.
As Eastern European countries were quickly looking West, what began as an encour-
agement to reform turned into a domino effect that was truly worthy of the name.52

50
Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before States’, pp.303, 308
51
Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, pp.311-12
52
Compare Koslowski, Rey and Friedrich V. Kratochwil, ‘Understanding Change in International Poli-
tics: The Soviet Empire’s Demise and the International System’, in Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas

12
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

Another example of this is provided by the change in mutual threat perceptions be-
tween the two superpowers. Here, again, a change in the underlying conditions cre-
ated emerging properties which helped to move things beyond the realm of what had
previously been conceivable. The change in the Soviet leadership’s mindset regarding
the threat posed by capitalism and the West and, as that process continued, Gorba-
chev’s subsequent renouncement of ideology fundamentally changed Reagan’s per-
ception of the Soviet Union.53 It led him to make his famous statement in which he, in
turn, renounced his earlier pronouncement that the Soviet Union was an ‘evil empire’.
Reagan’s suggestion that his earlier remark had been from ‘another era’ was indica-
tive of the changed relationship between the two countries which made an end to the
decades-long conflict between them possible. In some ways, it was only the emerging
properties of a certain amount of normalisation in the relations between the two which
eventually produced the possibility of almost complete normalisation.
Similarly, the much improved relations between the two groups of leaders may have
done much to create possibilities previously unheard of. Through the frequency of
negotiations between the two sides, leaders began to emerge from being mere repre-
sentatives of their respective systems to being ‘real’ people. As Greenstein puts it so
aptly: “It is possible to envisage mutually assured destruction as a means of deterring
an impersonal representative of an alien political system; it is repugnant to rely upon
such a mechanism when that individual is a genuine friend.”54 Again, a change in
conditions, in this case in the personal relations between the teams of negotiators at
the top, may have enabled them to do things previously unimaginable as the emerging
properties of trust and goodwill came to replace hostility and suspicion.
4.3. ‘Real’ Causation
Finally, an approach which puts process before factors also allows us to supersede the
patchwork approach which merely slips factors together without accounting for how
they were actually connected. A focus on process means that we cannot meaningfully
speak of any single factors’ necessary versus sufficient conditions for the achievement
of a particular outcome. This is because it is not particular factors which are either
necessary or sufficient, or both, but only the process as a whole which is either suffi-
cient (the Cold War ends) or not (it continues).55 To reflect this, one way of conceptu-
alising causation is through the so-called ‘INUS-condition’ put forward by J.L.
Mackie (1976).56 According to this condition, writes Heikki Patomäki (2002), “cause
is an Insufficient but Non-redundant element of a complex that is itself Unnecessary
but Sufficient for the production of a result.”57 Let us consider the following illustra-
tion to see what this might mean. In this example, Mackie pictures a group of experts
who are investigating the outcome of a house fire and conclude that it was caused by
an electrical short circuit. He writes:
Clearly the experts are not saying that the short circuit was a
necessary condition for this house’s catching fire at this time;

Risse-Kappen (eds.), International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1995), pp.127-165
53
Compare Jervis, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold War’, pp.225-231
54
Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War’, p.210; see pp.199-219 for more de-
tail.
55
Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before States’, p.307
56
Mackie, J.L., ‘Causes and Conditions’, in M. Brand (ed.), The Nature of Causation (Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1976)
57
Patomäki, Heikki, After international relations: Critical realism and the (re)construction of world
politics (London: Routledge, 2002), p.76 (orig. emphasis)

13
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

they know perfectly well that a short-circuit somewhere else, or

the overturning of a lighted oil stove, or any number of others
things might, if it had occurred, have set the house on fire.
Equally, they are not saying that the short-circuit was a sufficient
condition for this house’s catching fire; for if the short-circuit
had occurred, but there had been no inflammable material
nearby, the fire would not have broken out, and even given both
the short-circuit and the inflammable material, the fire would not
have occurred if, say, there had been an efficient automatic
sprinkler at just the right spot.58
What facilitated this particular outcome, therefore, was not any one particular factor,
or factors. Each factor was in and of itself insufficient, albeit non-redundant. Instead,
the particular constellation of the different factors altogether, that is, the complex (or
process) as a whole—although unnecessary—became sufficient to produce the fire.
This means that only the process as a whole was causally effective for the fire to oc-
cur. However, if it is only the particular constellation of all factors together that is ca-
pable of producing a result, not any one of them individually, or together collectively,
then the process is necessarily nonlinear. Actual change, then, depends on any number
of the following: the particular timing and location of factors (i.e. their spatiotemporal
context), outside catalysts or ‘accidents’, and the inadvertent confluence of unrelated
causal chains.59 Consider the example of the fire: Had the short-circuit occurred else-
where, without any inflammable material nearly, the sparks flying from it would have
simply died away; equally, if someone had been home to spot the fire, it could have
been put out before reaching any sort of destructive force; had there been no short-
circuit, the inflammable material nearby the electrical appliance which produced the
short-circuit would not have caught fire; and had the electrical appliance which
caused the short-circuit not malfunctioned and the inflammable material not been in-
flammable, nothing would have happened at all. As the case was, however, the short-
circuit happened, there was inflammable material nearby at the time of the short-
circuit, no one was home to detect the fire, and no effective sprinkler system had been
installed. Everything, therefore, was in place, at the right time, for the complex to be-
come causally effective.
Now consider some of the events which led to the end of the Cold War. Clearly, the
unexpected events of Chernobyl and Matthias Rust’s flight to Red Square each pro-
vided important catalysts for the advancement of Gorbachev’s reform agenda. He
used both to consolidate his own position as well as that of his reforms by moving
some potentially powerful opposition to his policies out of the way. Gorbachev may
have encountered both stronger and earlier opposition, had it not been for the oppor-
tunities provided by these catalysts. While their importance for the end of the Cold
War may be disputed, these ‘accidents’ nonetheless formed part of the overall process
that led to its resolution.60
Of more interest, however, are those instances in which different causal chains met to
significantly affect the course of events. The following provides a good example of

58
Mackie, ‘Causes and Conditions’, p.308
59
Lebow, Richard Ned, ‘Contingency, Catalysts, and International System Change’, Political Science
Quarterly, 115(4) (Winter 2000-1), pp.591-616; see also Chapter Four, pp.??-??
60
See English, Robert, ‘Ideas and the end of the Cold War’, pp.128-129; Lebow and Gross Stein, ‘End
of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence’, p.207; and Brown, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold
War’, p.44

14
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

this. Whatever the importance of economic stagnation in terms of the Soviet Union’s
international posture, it crucially coincided with the deaths, in short succession, of
some important members of the Brezhnev generation and the simultaneous coming-
of-age of ‘new thinking’. This confluence of factors from these three separate causal
chains, made possible by their fortuitous timing, provided an important catalyst as it
led to a reaction to the economic crisis quite unlike that which one would have come
to expect from the dogmatic Brezhnev generation.61 Instead of the entrenchment we
would have been likely to see from previous generations, it led to a fundamental re-
think of socialism internally, and retrenchment internationally.
A similar confluence was provided by the combination of Gorbachev as a representa-
tive of ‘new thinking’, his particular personality, and his strong leadership.62 Gorba-
chev’s election as General Secretary provided an important window of opportunity for
‘new thinking’ to find some role in future Soviet policy. His personality and leader-
ship ensured that it would be right at the centre of policy throughout his term in of-
fice. If it had not been for the interaction of all three—new thinker, personality, lead-
ership—‘new thinking’ would have been unlikely to be given the same prominence or
momentum, both in terms of its political implementation and intellectual develop-
ment. Both were crucial in driving Soviet policy to ever new horizons in its efforts to
normalise relations with the United States.
Or consider the important confluence between Soviet efforts to reduce tensions be-
tween the two superpowers and the presence of a US president who, by way of his
tough anti-communist stance and rhetoric, was all but invulnerable to right-wing at-
tack for doing deals with the Soviet Union. It is difficult to imagine the same amount
of change taking place if the two had not occurred simultaneously. As Greenstein
writes, Reagan “provided a permissive climate in which Gorbachev could continue his
domestic and international initiatives.”63 A more muted American response, from a
president less able or willing to engage seriously with the Soviets, may quickly have
led to a significant slowing in Gorbachev’s policies and the reform process may have
lost most of its momentum.64 Again, therefore, two separate chains of causation came
together, at the right time, to produce the conditions for the rapid change which en-
sued.
Yet, this was not the only important confluence produced by the simultaneous incum-
bency of Reagan and Gorbachev. Both leaders also shared a profound, and instinctive,
dislike for nuclear weapons. As early as March 1983, Reagan was quoted as saying
that it was ‘unthinkable’ to have these missiles forever pointed at one another.65 Both
leaders were intent, therefore, on reducing the number of these weapons and their
prominence in superpower relations.66 The subsequent reduction in nuclear arma-
ments may have been essential in reducing overall tensions between the two sides; yet
61
See Brown, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, pp.38, 54
62
See Brown, ‘Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, pp.38, 42; and Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorba-
chev, and the End of the Cold War’, p.211
63
Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War’, p.214
64
As Greenstein writes: “A less forthcoming president might well have created a siege mentality on the
part of the Soviet leadership and in so doing discouraged Gorbachev and his associates from bringing
about change.” Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War’, p.214; see also pp.214-
216; and Bisley, End of the Cold War, p.100
65
See ‘Transcript of Press Interview of President at White House’, New York Times, March 30, 1983;
quoted in Jervis, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold War’, p.227
66
Jervis writes that the development of SDI should also be seen in this light. Reagan hoped that it
would make nuclear weapons superfluous.; Jervis, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold
War’, p.227

15
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

their shared view on such a fundamental issue most definitely gave both leaders the
confidence that they would be able to do business with the other.
Similarly, as already mentioned, Gorbachev’s joint message of reform and political
independence for eastern Europe coincided with a number of regional factors he had
not reckoned with, such as the increasing force of Western ‘benign power’ and a
strong residue nationalism. As a result, the former satellites quickly looked West and
Gorbachev’s hope that they might adopt similar reforms towards social democracy
fell flat on their face.67
4.4 How the Cold War Ended
The underlying causes for the end of the Cold War, present at the outset, were (1)
‘new thinking’, (2) Soviet economic decline, (3) the appointment of Mikhail Gorba-
chev as General Secretary of the CPSU, and (4) Ronald Reagan’s incumbency of the
White House. Without these it is impossible to imagine the end of the Cold War, at
least remotely in the way that it happened. They were thus non-redundant elements
within the greater causal complex which eventually brought the Cold War to an end.
However, they were all in and of themselves insufficient as causes. What finally made
the greater causal complex in which they were embedded causally sufficient to ‘pro-
duce’ the end of the Cold War, then, was a number of catalysts, nonlinear confluences
of separate causal chains, and the fortuitous timings of both the former and the latter.
It was not, therefore, any individual cause, or even all of them together, but the par-
ticular way they related to each other.
I will go through the most important of these in roughly chronological order. The first
important confluence—that is, the one which started the process which led to the end
of the Cold War—was provided by the fortuitous near-simultaneity of the dying-out
of some important members of the Brezhnev generation, the coming-of-age of ‘new
thinking’, and the continued stagnation of the Soviet economy in the early 1980s. All
three originated from independent causal chains and did not cause, or were the result
of, one or the other. This goes without saying for the first, the deaths of Andropov and
Chernenko, but may be less obvious for the other two. Yet, ‘new thinking’ did not de-
velop, or was suddenly ‘deployed’, because of a crisis in the Soviet economy. It was
much older in origin, and its roots—and incidentally its convictions and beliefs—went
much deeper. According to ‘new thinking’, openness and reform were the solution to
the crisis faced by the Soviet Union, not to please the West or even to end the com-
munist-capitalist standoff, but to reinvest socialism with renewed strength and vigour.
That these chains of causation coincided, through their fortuitous timing, was instru-
mental for subsequent developments, as the confluence between them provided the
catalyst for a first retrenchment of Cold War positions.
Their coinciding was particularly important because the timing of their confluence, in
turn, coincided with another crucial factor: Ronald Reagan’s second term in office.
For Gorbachev to be able to maintain the momentum for his reforms, he needed an
American counterpart who would, so to speak, ‘reward’ him for his efforts to reduce
tensions, by taking him seriously and providing him with a platform for change, both
at home and abroad. By creating a climate for serious and open dialogue, Reagan was
in a unique position to do just that. It is far from clear whether a president Bush would
have been able to act in the same confident manner if Reagan had died in the attack
on him in 1981.68 Reagan, however, had a strong reputation as a hardened anti-

67
Compare Koslowski and Kratochwil, ‘Understanding Change in International Politics’, pp.127-165
68
Greenstein, ‘Reagan, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War’, p.216

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 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

communist and had spent most his first term in office denouncing communism in
general, and the Soviet Union in particular. This timely confluence between the will-
ingness of one leader to enact reforms and another who ensured, then, that Gorba-
chev’s reforms lost none of their momentum.
In fact, they were further accelerated by another important confluence. This was be-
tween Gorbachev’s openness to ‘new thinking’ and his strong leadership skills and
highly flexible mind. The combination between all three ensured that ‘new thinking’
would not only be at the forefront of Soviet policy, both domestically and abroad, but
that it would also quickly supersede itself as the initial reforms were rapidly making
way for a move towards democracy and an increasing social-democratisation of so-
cialism as a whole. This provided two important catalysts.
The change in Gorbachev’s mindset regarding the threat posed by capitalism and the
West led so far that he eventually renounced communist ideology altogether. This
provided an important catalyst for change as it fundamentally altered Reagan’s per-
ception of the Soviet Union69 and, therefore, changed the relationship between the two
countries to such an extent that an end to the Cold War was now in sight.
The second important catalyst was provided by Gorbachev’s abandonment of the
Brezhnev Doctrine. Having introduced his reforms in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev
urged the countries of the Eastern bloc to implement similar reform programmes. He
regarded the liberalisation of these regimes as a necessary precondition to instil within
them a renewed legitimacy, and thus to make them fit for the future. Yet, by giving
them their freedom to choose, Gorbachev unleashed local dynamics that he was un-
able to contain, and which quickly led to the end of communism in the former satel-
lites. The end of the Brezhnev Doctrine, therefore, provided an important catalyst for
the rapid unravelling of communism in Eastern Europe.
Finally, there are a number of factors which may or may not have served as important
catalysts and confluences for events which led to the end of the Cold War. Among
these are the disaster of Chernobyl and Matthias Rust’s flight to Red Square. Simi-
larly, the improved relations between the two groups of leaders may have enabled
them on occasion to go further than they would otherwise had. These factors also in-
clude the trust that may have developed in the dealings between Gorbachev and
Reagan following their shared view on nuclear weapons. It is difficult to say what im-
pact these had, and whether or not they facilitated anything that would otherwise not
happened. On balance, they probably did in some way or another, but it would require
a detailed study of them all to say this with any measure of certainty.
In summary, then, the Cold War ended not because of the dying-out of the hard-
liners, because of the Soviets’ economic difficulties, or because of Gorbachev’s selec-
tion as General Secretary; not because of Ronald Reagan’s ability to engage with the
Soviets; and not because of the input of ‘new thinking’, or because of the gradual re-
treat of revolutionary ideology; not either because of the abandonment of the
Brezhnev Doctrine, or even because of the centrifugal tendencies within Eastern
Europe. It ended because of the nonlinear catalysts provided through all these factors’
timely interaction and confluences which drew them together and made them,
thereby, causally effective to lead to an outcome that we call the end of the Cold War.

5. Conclusions

69
Jervis, ‘Perception, Misperception, and the End of the Cold War’, pp.225-231

17
 Florian Wastl, 28 March 2008

To give a unified account of the events which led to the end of the Cold War, it is im-
portant that we do not conceive of the end of this conflict as the result of a number of
key variations in the entities which were supposedly at its centre. Instead, we must see
the Cold War as made up of a number of fluid relations, and the end of the Cold War
as the result of catalysts which were brought about by nonlinear, well-timed, conflu-
ences between these relations.
This also highlights the more general importance of seeing social configurations such
as the Cold War not in their states of ‘being’, made up as it were of fixed entities that
give them a set of specific features, but in their states of ‘becoming’, as fluid configu-
rations. It is not possible to reduce such configurations to any constituent parts and to
account, in a linear fashion, for a change in the former by means of a change in the
latter. This also means, of course, that complex events like the end of the Cold War
are impossible to predict, as their development proceeds through fortuitous timings
and confluences of an essentially nonlinear nature.

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