ABSTRACT
At Princeton University in March 1996, I heard James Baker III, Jack Matlock Jr., Brent Scowcroft, and others expand on how their efforts in the Reagan and Bush administrations led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Reagan’s military build-up (especially his anti-ballistic missile “star-wars” program) and Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall” speech in Berlin were credited with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We were told that most political change results from elite challenges and tough talk. Even political scientists studying democratic transitions have fallen victim to this with an overemphasis upon the role of elite negotiation and “elite pacting.” In studying the collapse of the Soviet Union this perspective leads inevitably to an overemphasis on Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s interactions and to a tale about how their cat-fighting tore the Soviet Union apart.
