Perestroika without politics: how realism misunderstands the Cold War’s end Robert English

This narrative predominates in American media and policymaking circles, not to mention the popular outlook. “We won the Cold War because of our economic superiority,” the argument goes, “even hastening its denouement thanks to Ronald Reagan’s heightened militarytechnological challenge to Moscow. Gorbachev, admittedly an unusual Soviet leader, was nevertheless tightly constrained by severe material pressures; his liberal ‘new thinking’ ideas about demilitarized, cooperative international relations served mainly to rationalize the inevitable. The Soviets essentially gave up because they could no longer compete, their bankruptcy confirmed by the USSR’s collapse close on the heels of the Cold War’s end.”