Slide2:
The 3 main dimensions of the Cold War:
Ideological
Communism vs. capitalism, revolutionary processes
Geopolitical
The Soviet Union’s emergence after WWII as the strongest power in Eurasia
Military
The arms race
What changed by the 1980s:
Slide3:
IDEOLOGY
Capitalism boomed
The information revolution
Globalization
New dynamism of the market system
Decline of the Global Left
Deepening crisis of state socialism: growing attractiveness of liberal ideas (markets and democracy)
Western social democracy successful and stalled
The end of decolonization
The rise of the New Right; Thatcher and Reagan
Free markets as the universal solution
Militant anticommunism
Global counteroffensive against the Left
The rise of ethnic and religious nationalism
Slide4:
GEOPOLITICS
The Soviet Union’s global influence was declining
China shifted to a semi-alliance with the US
Western Europe was booming, confident, integrating
In the Middle East, the US worked both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the USSR was marginalized
In the Third World, USSR was losing allies, becoming irrelevant
Afghanistan became the turning point in Soviet fortunes in the Third World
Slide5:
THE ARMS RACE
The economic burden: the Soviet economy increasingly unable to bear it
Political futility of the arms race:
Do arms buy security?
Is major war thinkable?
Nuclear weapons as a global threat
The momentum of arms control: mutual vulnerability and mutual interest in survival
The rise of new antimilitarism
Slide6:
By the mid-1980s, political conditions in the Soviet Union matured enough to produce a major shift in favour of all-round systemic reforms. GORBACHEV
To enable the Soviet system to adapt to new world realities through political and economic reforms, the Soviet Union needed to get out of the Cold War
“New Thinking” in foreign policy was closely integrated with the policies of “perestroika” (restructuring) of the entire Soviet system – a revolution from above