ABSTRACT
The end of the cold war was accompanied by a set of ironies. The ironic twist to this endgame is that while American attention was riveted on tiny Nicaragua and the Iran-contra scandals, the Soviet empire, stretching over eleven time zones and embracing one of history's greatest tyrannies, was being undermined. Richard Nixon's pursuit of detente epitomized this approach by simultaneously pursuing strategies of both cooperation and leverage vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. It is popular for some historians to dismiss the Reagan influence on the demise of Soviet Communism as inflated by Republican partisans trying to instill a legacy for his administration. From this perspective, the Soviet Union fell of its own weight and incompetence. The United States engaged reluctant European and Asian governments to help deny the Soviets access to advanced technology and to restrain the flow of scientific and technological data that they required as a superpower.
