What Was the Cold War About? Evidence from Its Ending

It is important to ascertain when the Cold War ended because such a determination can help to indicate what the Cold War was all about. Its demise is commonly associated with the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe in late 1989 or with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and of Communism in 1991. However, judging from the public rhetoric and actions of important observers and key international actors at the time, the Cold War essentially ended in the spring of 1989, well before these momentous events took place. If this proposition is true, it suggests that the Cold War was principally (or even entirely) about an ideological conflict in which the West saw the Soviet Union as committed to a threateningly expansionary ideology. Once this menace seemed to vanish with the advent of the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev (similar processes had taken place earlier in Yugoslavia and China), Western leaders and observers began to indicate that the conflict was over. Thus, the Cold War was essentially about ideas. It was not centrally about power or about the military, nuclear, or economic balance—or the distribution of capabilities— between the East and the West. Nor was it about Communism as a form of government, the need to move the world toward democracy and/or capitalism, or, to a degree, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The Cold War was not about these concerns because it came to an end before any of them was really resolved. Two issues should be clarified before beginning the discussion. I wish to argue that the Cold War essentially ended in early 1989, but I do not wish to suggest that the Cold War was necessarily permanently closed down or that it