ABSTRACT
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War were due to both internal and external factors. External factors led to the end of the Soviet Union and its political system. The US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), building on a decade of prosperity, were able to commit money to defense spending that forced the Soviets to respond. The US and NATO breathed a collective sigh of relief. The "Red Menace" was gone; the Cold War was over. And it had not involved fighting between the superpowers. Nearly everyone was convinced that the world would benefit from a "peace dividend" with dissolution of the Soviet Union. But in NATO and the US, military planners began to rely on the concept of airpower to provide relatively inexpensive, bloodless, precise coercive power to force enemies to concede. The Western world ended the Cold War and entered a new era of warfare with the idea that overwhelming technology.
