The Cold War ended in 1989 because of the consequences of Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika. Discuss this view.

When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he inherited both political and economic stagnation. Brezhnev had used profits from the boom in the oil industry on the arms race with the United States rather than raise living standards. The Soviet defence budget had begun to undermine other aspects of Soviet society such as healthcare and the mortality rate had increased. Gorbachev recognised the inefficiency of the communist system. Unlike his predecessors, he knew that the USSR could never advance economically if it continued to devote 20% of gross national product and 40% of its budget to military spending. He wanted to demilitarise Soviet foreign policy to divert resources to fixing a broken economy.

Change was needed in the USSR, and he wanted moderate change with perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political openness); he believed this would help to restore the legitimacy of the Communist Party but, instead, the public became aware of its shortcomings. Gorbachev had only wanted to reform communism, not replace it, but he miscalculated how a revolution from below would seize the opportunity to overthrow it. It can be argued that his policies speeded up the dissolution of the Soviet system and once glasnost let people say what they thought, many people were encouraged to turn against communism and because of his refusal to use force, destroyed the communist system, ended the Soviet Empire and the Cold War.

However, there was a great desire for change in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev loosened governmental power which created a domino effect in which Eastern European alliances began to crumble, inspiring countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia to declare their independence. Soviet actions in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981 led to a general loss of faith in the system. By the summer of 1989, East Europeans were given more freedom and seized the chance to reject communism. By November, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Eastern Europe’s rejection of communist ideology removed a major obstacle to the ending of the Cold War.

Gorbachev's foreign policy which he referred to as ‘new thinking’ also contributed to the Cold War's demise. He believed that Soviet control over an empire in Eastern Europe was costing too much and providing too little benefit and that the invasion of Afghanistan had been a costly disaster. Rather than try to build as many nuclear weapons as possible, he wanted to hold only a minimal number for protection, but he needed assurance of external security and Ronald Reagan gave him this.

Reagan met Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985 to discuss a reduction in nuclear weapons. Reagan, unknown to Gorbachev, believed the weapons to be immoral. During the 1980s, Reagan initiated the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), an anti-ballistic missile programme that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. At a face-to-face summit in October 1986 in Reykjavik, Reagan suggested that the two sides get rid of nuclear weapons altogether and jointly build an SDI system. However, no agreement was reached but Gorbachev was convinced that Reagan did not intend to make a first strike against the USSR. Further summits took place and finally, in December 1987, they agreed the INF Treaty (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces), the first agreement on actually reducing nuclear weapons. When Reagan visited Berlin in 1987 he urged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall with the words ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’.