The causes of the end of the Cold War remain one of the most important, and highly contested, debates in the study of international politics. Numerous scholars have detailed the effects that variables such as economic decline, relative power shifts, identity and behavioral changes, and complex learning, to name probably the most prominent examples, had on bringing the Cold War to a close.1
On identity changes and the end of the Cold War, see Risse-Kappen 1994; Checkel 1997; English 2000; and Evangelista 1999. On economic decline and power shifts, see Brooks and Wohlforth 2000/2001; Schweller and Wohlforth 2000; and Wohlforth 1994/95. On complex learning, see Stein 1994.
Although the principal variables that scholars have used to explain the Cold War's end have varied substantially, the primary object of scholars' attention has not. Almost all of the most important studies of the period examine the subject from the Soviet Union's perspective, that is, what pushed Soviet leaders in the Mikhail Gorbachev era to initiate the revolutionary domestic and foreign policies that they did? In relation to the sources of Soviet foreign policies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, analyses of the causes of U.S. decisions in this period have received comparatively little attention.2
I am referring to the theory-oriented literature that tests in a systematic way competing explanations of U.S. policies; for an exception, see Chollet and Goldgeier 2003. There are a number of memoirs and histories that recount the American side of U.S.-Soviet relations, many of which I cite below.
This article addresses this hole in the literature. My analysis focuses on U.S. leaders' attitudes and policies toward the Soviet Union in the Gorbachev era during the Ronald Reagan, and to a lesser extent, George Bush Sr., administrations. I am particularly interested in answering two questions: When did America's key decision makers in the 1980s start to believe the Cold War was ending? Why did they hold this belief? In answering these questions, I combine an examination of policymakers' private and public statements on this subject with a longitudinal study that compares the timing of changing assessments of the nature of the Soviet threat with shifts in Soviet foreign policies, power, and domestic institutions and ideology. This research design allows one to determine if American leaders' changing assessments of the Soviet threat were primarily in response to more cooperative international policies in the Gorbachev era (as systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments claim), to reductions in Soviet power (as realists assert), or to changes in Soviet domestic politics (as various democratic peace theories argue).
I find that American leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending corresponded most closely with domestic-ideological and institutional changes in the Soviet Union, and not with changes in Soviet power or international policies. As soon as the most important U.S. decision makers in the Reagan administration believed both that Gorbachev was dedicated to core tenets of liberal ideology—most notably greater respect for fundamental human rights—and that these liberal values would likely be made durable by the creation of liberal domestic political institutions, the Americans tended to view their Soviet counterparts as much more trustworthy individuals whose interests were likely to be largely supportive of American interests rather than threats to them. These changes occurred after Soviet foreign policies had become much more cooperative than in previous periods, but before significant reductions in Soviet power and geopolitical influence.
These findings make important contributions to the literature. By showing how liberal principles and institutions combine to increase cooperation with other liberal or liberalizing states, the evidence presented in this article helps to resolve tensions among various competing explanations within the democratic peace literature. The evidence also confirms prominent arguments, such as Walt's balance-of-threat theory, which state that perceived intentions—and not just capabilities—are critical to politicians' threat assessments.3
See Walt 1987.
My argument proceeds as follows. In the first section, I examine the major theoretical explanations for U.S. leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending. The second section provides a longitudinal analysis that compares the timing of changes in U.S. views of the Soviet Union during the Reagan presidency with shifts in Soviet foreign policies, power, and domestic institutions and ideology. This analysis, along with various statements made by U.S. decision makers, points to the most important causes of the end of the Cold War from these individuals' perspective. I follow this section with a briefer analysis of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Bush administration.
International Relations Theories and U.S. Foreign Policies at the End of the Cold War
The chief puzzle to be explained with regard to U.S.-Soviet relations during the Reagan presidency is the dramatic transformation that occurred in key U.S. leaders' views of the USSR in 1988. For the first seven years of his presidency, Reagan and his closest advisors viewed the Soviet Union in highly adversarial and threatening terms. Yet by the time of the Moscow summit in May 1988, powerful U.S. officials had reversed these views. At the summit, Reagan asserted that his description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world” belonged to “another time, another era,” despite the fact that he made these statements only five years earlier.4
Quoted in Garthoff 1994, 98, 352.
Reagan 1988c, 32.
See Fitzgerald 2000, 467; Zelikow and Rice 1997, 19; Shultz 1993, 1131; and Powell 1995, 375. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher also asserted the Cold War to be over in this period; see Shultz 1993, 1131.
Garthoff 1994, 368.
There are four major competing arguments that can potentially explain this remarkable transformation in the views of the Soviet Union held by America's greatest cold warrior president and his closest advisors. These four explanations examine the effects created by more cooperative Soviet foreign policies, shifts in relative power, and changes in Soviet domestic institutions and ideology, respectively. The dependent variable for each of these arguments is American leaders' perceptions of the threats posed by the Soviet Union to U.S. interests.
Explanation 1: The End of the Cold War as a Response to More Cooperative Soviet Foreign Policies and the Consequent Communication of Benign Intent
A first set of arguments that potentially explains the end of the Cold War from U.S. leaders' perspective examines the effects of increasingly cooperative Soviet international policies in the 1980s. To proponents of these arguments, Gorbachev wanted to terminate the Cold War rivalry with the United States, and he communicated this intent to the Americans by adopting accommodating foreign policies toward U.S. interests on key issues, including arms control negotiations, military doctrine toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and imperial control in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan.
There are two main varieties of theories that subscribe to this understanding of the Cold War's end. Although the microfoundations of their respective causal logics are different, the two are united in their beliefs that: (1) changing assessments of Soviet intentions (as opposed to capabilities) were the central cause of the end of the Cold War from America's point of view; and (2) accommodating Soviet foreign policies (as opposed to domestic changes) were the principal mechanism by which Soviet leaders communicated benign intent to the Americans.
The first of these arguments is drawn from the so-called “systemic” branch of social-constructivist theory. All constructivists believe that states' interests are not fixed. Interests are instead a product of identities, that is, the core social rules, conventions, and beliefs to which actors are dedicated. If leaders' identities change, so too will their interests and policies, even if other key variables—including the international distribution of power—remain constant.8
For background on constructivist international relations theory, see Wendt 1999.
The principal feature that differentiates systemic constructivists from others operating within this research program is that the former claim that the primary source of state leaders' identities is the intersubjectively created meanings formed through interactions with other policymakers. Thus to systemic constructivists, international practices are the key to leaders' identities and interests. Domestic sources of identity are bracketed in these scholars' analyses.9
If politicians' identities are endogenous to interaction with other states' leaders, then it is possible for one group of decision makers to change others' identities—and thus their interests and policies—by adopting qualitatively different actions toward the latter than done previously. To this thinking, cooperative international policies will tend to create more trusting identities among states' leaders, to the point where even enemies can be turned into partners. As Wendt expresses these points: “If states find themselves in a [conflictual] self-help system, this is because their practices made it that way. Changing the practices will change the intersubjective knowledge that constitutes the system…. [Cooperative] practices [can] teach other states that one's own state can be trusted and should not be viewed as a threat to their security.”10
Wendt 1992, 407, 421, respectively.
According to many systemic constructivists, this process of redefining the nature of leaders' identities by adopting qualitatively different practices than in the past is precisely the strategy that Gorbachev used to end the Cold War.11
By adopting much more cooperative foreign policies on key issues than had previous Soviet leaders (for example, being more accommodating in arms control negotiations, withdrawing from Afghanistan, and loosening control over Eastern Europe), Gorbachev pushed U.S. leaders to revolutionize how they understood the essence of U.S.-Soviet relations: from that of fundamental antagonism to cooperation and even partnership. Once this transformation in identity occurred, American policymakers were free to declare the Cold War over.The second set of arguments that explains the end of the Cold War from America's perspective as primarily a product of Soviet cooperative foreign policies comes from the “costly signals” literature. The core claim of costly signals arguments is that states' leaders can effectively communicate benign intent to one another if they are willing to adopt policies that are sufficiently costly such that individuals with malign intentions would be unwilling to make them. Because only leaders who possess benign international intentions are likely to adopt potentially risky international policies such as substantial unilateral reductions in armaments, consistently forgoing opportunities for geopolitical expansion, or renouncing existing territorial gains, when decision makers do adopt measures like these, others in the system will feel reassured about the former's intentions.12
Others are, as a result, more likely to reciprocate these cooperative efforts.To costly signals accounts of the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev's decisions to make disproportionate, often unilateral, reductions in armaments, to allow foreign inspectors on Soviet soil, to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and to terminate the Soviet Union's empire in Eastern Europe, were so costly both to the Soviet Union and Gorbachev politically that the general secretary was able to convince the Americans that he was a trustworthy actor who was genuinely committed to ending the Cold War.13
To costly signals arguments, it was the costliness of Gorbachev's policies, not their effects on American leaders' identities, that convinced the latter that the Cold War was over.Irrespective of the important differences between systemic-constructivist and costly signals theories, both agree with the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: The end of the Cold War from American leaders' perspective was primarily a response to increasingly cooperative foreign policies adopted by the Soviets toward the United States in the Gorbachev era.
Test of the hypothesis. If this hypothesis is correct, the more cooperative Soviet foreign policies became—especially when these policies incurred substantial costs for the Soviets—the more America's leaders should have viewed the Soviets as trustworthy actors, and thus the more they should have believed the Cold War was ending.
Explanation 2: The End of the Cold War as a Response to Soviet Relative Power Decline
A second explanation of the Reagan administration's reversal in views of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s is drawn from realist theories of international politics. The foundational premise of realist arguments is that U.S. attitudes and policies toward the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War were primarily a product of international power distributions and trends. To this view, the root cause of America's enmity toward the USSR was the latter's ability to threaten America's vital interests, most notably the independence of the states in Western Europe. Only if the Soviet Union no longer possessed the capabilities to threaten the other industrial centers of the world would U.S. suspicions and hostilities toward the USSR end.
Given these claims, the key cause of the end of the Cold War from American leaders' perspective was the substantial decline in the Soviet Union's relative power beginning in the late 1980s. Wohlforth succinctly summarizes the realist account of the Cold War from the point of view of the United States and its allies: “The Cold War was caused by the rise of Soviet power and the fear this caused in the West. The end of the Cold War was caused by the relative decline in Soviet power and the reassurance this gave the West.”14
Wohlforth 1994/95, 96.
The central cause of the USSR's relative power decline in the 1980s was its failing economy. From 1975 until 1985, the USSR's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by an average of less than 2 percent a year. In the same period, the GDP of the United States grew more than 1.5 times as fast. By 1986, Soviet defense expenditures were greater than 15 percent of GDP, and internal debt was 20 percent of GDP. Compounding these problems was the fact that between 1970 and 1982 the costs associated with the USSR's geopolitical position, both in Eastern Europe and around the globe, had more than doubled.15
On these points, see Kotz 1997, 24, 32, 43, 76; Brooks and Wohlforth 2000/2001, 20; and Brooks and Wohlforth 2003, 277.
Notice that realists look at many of the same variables as do systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments to explain the end of the Cold War from America's perspective (for example, arms control talks and retreat from both Eastern Europe and Afghanistan). The causal logics by which these outcomes affected U.S. policies are different according to these competing analyses, however. To systemic-constructivist and costly signals theories, accommodating Soviet foreign policies pushed U.S. policymakers to trust that their Soviet counterparts possessed benign international intentions, which made Cold War confrontational policies unnecessary.
Enhanced feelings of trust and changing assessments of Soviet intentions play little or no role in realist accounts of American policies at the Cold War's end. In fact, because “the systemic distribution of power gave [the USSR] few options other than to sue for peace on the best possible terms,” realists believe that Soviet international behavior in the 1980s offers small insight into Soviet motivation.17
Schweller and Wohlforth 2000, 85; see also Mearsheimer 2001, 202; and Brooks and Wohlforth 2000/2001.
Realist theories generate the following hypothesis for U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1980s:
Hypothesis 2: The end of the Cold War from American leaders' perspective was primarily a product of the Soviet Union's declining relative power in the Gorbachev era.
Test of the hypothesis. If this hypothesis is correct, American leaders' changing perceptions of the Soviet threat should have closely corresponded with shifts in Soviet capabilities and geopolitical influence.
Explanation 3: The End of the Cold War as a Response to Changes in Soviet Domestic Institutions
The third and fourth potential explanations of the end of the Cold War from U.S. leaders' perspective examine the effects of changes in Soviet domestic institutions and ideology, respectively. Both explanations agree with systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments that changing assessments of Soviet intentions were central to U.S. leaders' views of the USSR at the end of the Cold War. The root cause of these new intentions assessments by the Americans was, however, not shifts in Soviet international policies, but Soviet domestic changes.
Arguments that attribute the Cold War's end from the U.S. point of view primarily to Soviet domestic institutional changes examine the effects of Gorbachev's and fellow New Thinkers' decisions to replace the Soviet Union's totalitarian political institutions with more representative and transparent ones. The most prominent analyses that attribute the end of the Cold War from the U.S. perspective to these developments are so-called institutional explanations of the democratic peace, which is the proposition that democratic regimes tend not to fight one another.
There are three major pathways by which democratic political institutions tend to decrease other democracies' perceptions of threats. First, representative political institutions place significant limits on executive power, including the ability to wage war. A defining institutional feature of modern democratic regimes is the existence of checks and balances among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, which makes it difficult for any one to become too powerful. A particularly important component of these checks and balances is citizen oversight of governmental policies through the franchise. This check helps ensure that highly unpopular policies cannot be sustained, especially in the long run.
Institutional checks and balances on governmental power help to lower significantly the perceived threat among liberal regimes. Institutional constraints ensure that no one person, or even small group of people, will possess sufficient power to adopt major changes in policies, including aggressive war.18
Morgan and Campbell 1991.
Kant 1795, 113.
Applied to U.S. policies in the 1980s, this analysis implies that as the Soviet Union adopted more representative political institutions under Gorbachev's leadership, the domestic barriers to international aggression increased to the point where the Americans deemed the chances of unprovoked aggression unlikely. At this point, they could declare the Cold War over.
Democratic domestic institutions not only significantly constrain states' ability to wage aggressive war, but they also help inform others about states' international intentions and military capabilities. Because of their free press, largely open decision-making process, and the need to marshal public opinion to sustain activist foreign policies, democracies are highly transparent regimes. Consequently, such key variables as which states democratic leaders view as probable enemies, as well as the size of, and specific purchases in, military budgets, are likely to be public knowledge.
The openness of democracies means that other states can to a great extent know if democratic leaders intend them harm, and whether the latter possess the types and quantities of weaponry that can do so. This information allows others not to have to make worst-case assumptions about democracies' military power and foreign policy goals.20
Applied to U.S. foreign policies at the end of the Cold War, these statements imply that the creation of more transparent democratic institutions in the Soviet Union in the 1980s provided sufficient reliable information about Soviet intentions and capabilities to the point that American leaders no longer had to assume the worst about these variables. With greater transparency in the USSR, the Americans could assume continued superpower peace until the Soviets demonstrated otherwise.21
Collins 1997, 167, 174.
A third way by which the formation of more democratic institutions in the Soviet Union may have led to the Cold War's end for U.S. leaders was by creating the means by which current Soviet politicians could: (1) make their promises of nonaggressive foreign policies more credible to outside powers; and (2) commit future Soviet policymakers to more peaceful international relations.
A defining feature of democracies is the ability of citizens to vote leaders out of office for adopting unpopular policies. The franchise not only constrains leaders from waging aggressive war (as discussed above), but also allows politicians with benign international goals a greater ability to signal in a credible manner their pacific intentions to other states.
The link between popular accountability and policymakers' ability to communicate benign intent occurs through what are known as “audience costs.” For purposes of this article, audience costs are defined as the domestic penalties that politicians pay for policies that are considered wrong or ineffectual. Because leaders in democracies can be voted out of office, audience costs in these regimes will be on average much higher than in illiberal states.22
Fearon 1994.
High audience costs help to make democratic leaders' international commitments credible. Because policymakers are likely to suffer electorally for reneging on international promises, they are unlikely to make commitments they do not intend to keep. Consequently, when democratic leaders profess pacific international intentions, other states are more likely to believe these claims because of the high domestic price the former are likely to pay for lying about their goals. By increasing the credibility of leaders' international promises, high audience costs help to mitigate the problem of uncertainty in international relations.23
Democratic political institutions help leaders not only to commit themselves to pacific foreign policies, but to commit future policymakers as well. A central component of the institutional checks and balances in democratic governments is the juridical limits on state policy, meaning that democratic politicians are bound to honor the laws established by preceding administrations. Although current leaders can change the existing legal environment, they must have sufficient power to overcome opposition in both rival branches of government and interest groups that desire to maintain the status quo. Given these barriers to change, governments will face in most cases substantial constraints in favor of maintaining existing laws.
The difficulty of changing the existing legal structure in democracies means that current leaders can to an important degree tie the foreign policy hands of their successors. Once the current administration agrees, for example, to an arms control treaty or a formal alliance commitment, these agreements become part of the law of the land, which future politicians will in most cases find difficult to alter.24
Applied to U.S. policies at the end of the Cold War, the preceding analysis implies that when Gorbachev created more democratic political institutions in the Soviet Union, he was able to make more credible commitments about the peacefulness of Soviet international intentions, both for himself (because of greater audience costs as the USSR democratized) and for future Soviet policymakers (because future leaders would find it difficult to reverse Gorbachev's foreign policy initiatives that decreased tensions with the West once they became embedded in a more democratic Soviet Union's legal framework).
The predictions of the preceding three institutional explanations of the democratic peace generate the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: The end of the Cold War from American leaders' perspective was primarily a response to the creation of more democratic political institutions in the Soviet Union.
Test of the hypothesis. If this hypothesis is correct, American leaders' perceptions of the Soviet threat should have closely corresponded with New Thinkers' replacement of authoritarian political institutions with more representative and transparent ones, for reasons consistent with one or more of the three causal logics developed above.
Explanation 4: The End of the Cold War as a Response to Changes in Soviet Domestic Ideology
A final set of arguments that can potentially account for the end of the Cold War for U.S. leaders examines the effects of Soviet domestic ideological changes under Gorbachev. To proponents of this perspective, when Gorbachev and fellow New Thinkers abandoned orthodox Marxist-Leninist beliefs in favor of core tenets of political liberalism—most notably a greater respect for human rights, greater tolerance for opposing political views, and the creation of more representative political institutions—American decision makers acquired greater trust of the Soviets to the point where they believed the two states were no longer enemies.25
Because a core feature of liberal ideology is the establishment of representative political institutions, an ideology-based explanation of the end of the Cold War overlaps with the previous institutional arguments. To differentiate the two, I rely on the different causal logics that I lay out in the two sections. Thus, if more democratic institutions in the Soviet Union inclined America's leaders to believe the Cold War was ending because of increased checks on executive power, greater transparency, or an increasing ability by the Soviets to make international commitments, institutional explanations of the democratic peace will be deemed superior to ideological ones. If, however, Soviet democratizing institutions led to the end of the Cold War by demonstrating Soviet leaders' commitment to core tenets of liberal ideology, regardless of the particular effects of these institutions as discussed in the previous section, then ideological accounts of the democratic peace will be judged to have greater explanatory power.
For studies that make this claim, as well as substantial elaboration of the role of ideology at the end of the Cold War, see Jervis 1996 and especially Haas 2005. On the importance of liberal ideology (and power) to U.S.-Russian relations at the end of the Cold War through George W. Bush's administration, see Goldgeier and McFaul 2003.
There are two major pathways that potentially link the Soviet Union's shift toward liberal ideology and decreased perceptions of threat by the Americans. First, leaders dedicated to political liberalism tend to possess a presumption of amity toward fellow liberals. Liberal policymakers tend to assume that others who share their beliefs are trustworthy people who share important common interests, and thus are likely not to be aggressive.27
See Owen 1994; and Dixon 1994. Elsewhere I argue that diminishment in the ideological differences dividing states' leaders tends to reduce threat perceptions regardless of the nature of the particular ideologies in question. This argument and ideological explanations of the democratic peace that examine feelings of trust among liberals generate very similar predictions for the end of the Cold War. See Haas 2005.
Ideological explanations of the end of the Cold War generate the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: The end of the Cold War from the U.S. perspective was primarily a product of enhanced feelings of trust that resulted from Gorbachev's renunciation of orthodox Marxism-Leninism in favor of core tenets of political liberalism.
Test of the Hypothesis. If this hypothesis is correct, American leaders' decreasing threat perceptions should have closely corresponded with New Thinkers' greater respect for human rights, greater tolerance, and the establishment of freer political institutions.
In the next section, I combine a longitudinal analysis of U.S.-Soviet relations in the Gorbachev era with process tracing to test the preceding four hypotheses during the last four years of the Reagan presidency.
Shifts in Soviet Foreign Policies, Power, and Domestic Institutions and Ideology, 1985–88
Changes in Soviet Foreign Policies
From virtually the time of his election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in March 1985, Gorbachev adopted a number of foreign policies that were intended to reduce Cold War tensions with the United States. For example, in April 1985 Gorbachev announced a freeze on the deployment to Europe of SS-20 missiles (nuclear missiles of intermediate range). Ten days later, he proposed a moratorium on all nuclear weapons tests.
1985 also marked the beginning of important changes in Soviet defense doctrine. In this year, Gorbachev asserted at various times that Soviet force levels should be based on the principle of “reasonable sufficiency.” This meant that the Soviet Union should possess forces sufficient to repel an enemy's attack, but insufficient to conquer other powers' territories.29
Gorbachev reinforced the doctrine of reasonable sufficiency when he began to assert in 1985–86 that in international relations, security was “mutual.” To this view, if one of the superpowers was made insecure by the other's actions, both would end up more vulnerable. Conversely, if one of the superpowers was made more secure, both would benefit. Hence Gorbachev claimed that by making the Americans feel safer by not increasing or even reducing Soviet force levels, the Soviet Union's safety would also be enhanced.30Even more important than these changes were Gorbachev's arms control proposals and his position on the war in Afghanistan. These developments were especially important because they generated clear material, reputational, and political costs for the Soviet Union, thereby making them difficult to dismiss as “cheap talk.”31
Kydd 2000, 340–51.
With regard to arms control, Gorbachev offered in 1986–87 a number of concessions to American demands, especially with regard to intermediate-range nuclear forces (INFs). These concessions included agreeing to highly disproportionate cuts in these weapons and allowing intrusive on-site inspections for verification purposes. These inspections were important not only because they facilitated an agreement on INFs, but because they signaled that the Soviet Union under Gorbachev's leadership was becoming a more open regime.32
For details on Gorbachev's concessions during the INF talks, see Sternthal 1997, 50–52, 74–75, 78–79, 85, 88; and Ekedahl and Goodman 1997, 116.
Changes in the war in Afghanistan from 1986 to 1988 were just as dramatic as progress in the INF talks. At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev referred to the war as a “bleeding wound.” Later that year, the Soviets removed six regiments from Afghanistan, which was an even more concrete indicator that Gorbachev was interested in winding down the war. In April 1987, Gorbachev told Shultz that the Soviets wanted to leave Afghanistan, and in September of that year Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze told Shultz that the decision to withdraw all Soviet troops from the country had been made. Shultz believed that Shevardnadze was telling him the truth. Gorbachev publicly confirmed this decision in February 1988.33
Brown 1996, 221, 234–35.
The American Response to More Cooperative Soviet Foreign Policies, March 1985–March 1988
If systemic-constructivist and costly signals explanations of the end of the Cold War are correct, Gorbachev's more cooperative foreign policies from 1985 to spring 1988 should have been instrumental in convincing American decision makers that the Cold War was coming to a close. These developments, however, did little to change American hostility toward the USSR in this period. To begin with, the Americans made no major positive policy responses to either Gorbachev's 1985 offers to suspend nuclear weapons tests and deployments of SS-20 missiles to Europe, or to changes in Soviet defense doctrine that would most likely have required reductions in defense spending. Instead, U.S. leaders continued unabated the hostile policies and rhetoric of the previous years. During Gorbachev's first year in power, the Reagan administration asked for an 8 percent increase in defense spending; ordered the Soviet Union to reduce the size of its UN mission in New York by more than 100 people because of suspicions of espionage; had two warships deliberately enter Soviet territorial waters in the Crimea; substantially increased aid for indigenous groups opposed to Soviet influence in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Angola; announced that the United States would no longer abide by the caps set by the strategic arms limitations talks (SALT) II Treaty; made new nuclear weapons tests (two days after Gorbachev offered to continue his moratorium of nuclear testing); and made several very anti-Soviet speeches.34
On these developments, see Fitzgerald 2000, 315, 332–33; Oberdorfer 1991, 165–68; and Garthoff 1994, 247, 268, 270–71.
Dobrynin 1995, 599–600.
America's responses to Gorbachev's 1986 concessions in the INF talks and his indicated intent to wind down Soviet involvement in Afghanistan were also not positive. In the six months after the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik in October 1986, the White House stated that the United States would actively oppose any application by the Soviet Union for membership in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).36
Garthoff 1994, 296, 311.
Reagan 1987e.
Garthoff 1994, 308.
There was, however, some change in U.S. perceptions of the Soviet threat over the course of 1987. In a speech in April, Reagan noted a decline in the Soviet danger due to Gorbachev's growing concessions in the INF talks. According to the president, the best word to describe superpower relations at that time was “proceeding: no great cause for excitement, no great cause for alarm.”39
Reagan 1987c, 383–84.
Shultz was even more optimistic. In late 1987 and early 1988, the secretary of state noted that Gorbachev's arms control initiatives had added a “new dynamism” to U.S.-Soviet relations that was helping to make a “less dangerous world.”40
In his memoirs, Shultz recounts how Gorbachev's foreign policies, especially the INF Treaty and likely withdrawal from Afghanistan, led him to believe by the end of 1987 that “a profound, historic shift was under way: the Soviet Union was … turning a corner; they were not just resting for round two of the Cold War.”41Shultz 1993, 1003.
Despite acknowledging that Gorbachev's more cooperative foreign policies were helping to make American-Soviet relations less dangerous by the end of 1987, U.S. leaders' clearly dominant sentiment at the time was that Gorbachev's initiatives did little to alter the overall adversarial character of the superpowers' relationship. In this period, no key American official claimed to believe that the end of U.S.-Soviet enmity was likely in the foreseeable future. For example, on the eve of the Washington summit in December 1987 at which the INF Treaty was signed, Shultz (who was clearly more pessimistic at the time about the nature of U.S.-Soviet relations than his memoirs, as quoted in the previous paragraph, indicate) asserted that “there is nothing in the ‘new political thinking’ to date which suggests that the end of the adversarial struggle [between the superpowers] is at hand.”42
Shultz 1988b, 7.
Shultz 1988a, 41.
Reagan 1988a, 20. Consistent with these views, as 1987 ended the U.S. Congress was considering legislation that would place new restrictions on Soviet trade with America; see Garthoff 1994, 337.
In sum, contrary to systemic-constructivist and costly signals predictions, Gorbachev's (often costly) cooperative international policies from March 1985 to March 1988 with regards to arms control, Soviet defense doctrine, and the war in Afghanistan did not push the Americans to believe that the Cold War was ending or that a new era in U.S.-Soviet relations was dawning. In fact, key American policymakers openly denied that arms control agreements and other international cooperation would be sufficient to end U.S.-Soviet enmity as long as these agreements were not accompanied by major liberalizing domestic changes in the USSR. As Shultz explained in February 1988: “I do not think that the accumulation of agreements or cooperative arrangements will, by itself, result in a quantum leap to a qualitatively different kind of relationship. The [ideological, especially views on human rights] differences between us and the suspicions they generate are too deep … for agreements alone [to] bridge such a divide.”45
See Shultz 1988a, 41; and Matlock 1995, 80–81. Gorbachev explicitly agreed with this hypothesis. According to Anatoly Chernyaev (Gorbachev's personal advisor on foreign affairs), “Gorbachev [in the early years of his tenure as general secretary] believed that we could end the Cold War mostly or exclusively through a process of disarmament, while putting aside all those other questions, such as human rights… .” “It was only later that Mr. Gorbachev accepted and even became convinced that without a solution to the human rights problem the Cold War could not be brought to an end, and a new relationship with the United States could not be built”; in Wohlforth 1996, 166, 95, respectively.
Changes in Soviet Power
Realist theories confront the opposite problems than do systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments in explaining Reagan administration officials' revolution in attitudes toward the Soviet Union in spring 1988. Problematic for systemic-constructivist and costly signals theories is that the independent variable of these arguments (Soviet foreign policies) had changed substantially from March 1985 to March 1988, but without a corresponding shift in this period in the dependent variable (American leaders' threat perceptions). Problematic for realism is the fact that after April 1988, U.S. leaders' understandings of the likely threat posed by the USSR were greatly changing to the point where key officials including Reagan, Shultz, Matlock, and Powell were declaring the Cold War over, but power variables had altered little. Systemic-constructivist and costly-signals arguments, in sum, predict significant change in threat perceptions when there was none before spring 1988, while realists predict constancy in threat perceptions through 1988 when there was significant change in that year.
Soviet capabilities remained largely constant throughout Gorbachev's first three years in power. In terms of military hardware, the Soviets from 1985 through spring 1988 committed themselves to reducing weapons in only one category: intermediate-range nuclear forces; and the INF Treaty signed by the United States and Soviet Union in December 1987 reduced Soviet nuclear arsenals by only four percent. Overall Soviet defense spending from 1985 to 1987 grew, according to contemporary Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates, at a 4.3 percent per annum pace, which was the fastest rate of growth for a three-year period since the 1960s.46
The Soviet Union's economy also remained fairly constant from 1985 through 1988. According to both official Soviet economic data and contemporary CIA estimates, the Soviet Union's economy slightly improved from 1986 to 1988.47
Harrison 1993, 146.
Similarly, from 1985 to 1988 few changes had been made in the Soviet Union's support of clients in the Third World. Indeed, Soviet arms deliveries to Third World states actually grew in relationship to similar American efforts in these three years, including to Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Afghanistan (while in February 1988 Gorbachev publicly pledged to remove Soviet troops from Afghanistan, he also at that time increased aid to forces in the state that were sympathetic to the USSR).48
Herrmann 1992, 452–57.
See Ibid., 461; and Beschloss and Talbott 1993, 105.
Given the fact that in none of the major indices of power, including military hardware, defense spending, economic strength, and geopolitical influence, had the Soviet Union's capabilities decreased in significant ways from 1985 to spring 1988, realist theories have great difficulty explaining key Reagan administration officials' reversal in attitudes toward the Soviet Union in May 1988 to the point where they were declaring the Cold War over.
Changes in Soviet Domestic Ideology and Institutions, 1985–88
Gorbachev's domestic-ideological and institutional changes during his first three years in power (March 1985 to March 1988) are a study in ambiguity. From almost the beginning of his tenure, Gorbachev's rhetoric seemed to reveal preferences for important departures from orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology and existing domestic institutions. For example, at the April 1985 plenum Gorbachev asserted that class conflict was no longer the key determining force in international politics. A year later, he stated that peaceful coexistence was not part of the class struggle.50
Both statements repudiated long-standing tenets of Marxist-Leninist thought, and showed significantly greater tolerance for opposing political views than had been the case throughout the Soviet Union's existence.51Matlock 2004, 166.
More important in terms of domestic ideological changes in the early Gorbachev years were the glasnost (“openness”) policies that reduced, often substantially, domestic repression and better protected fundamental political rights. More movies and books that were critical of the Soviet system were allowed to be released. Soviet leaders approved of higher levels of emigration and freed a significant number of political prisoners, most notably Andrei Sakharov, at the end of 1986.52
Ibid., 261–65, 295.
Quoted in Shultz 1993, 986.
Gorbachev's commitment to liberalizing the Soviet political system was far from unambiguous, however. Gorbachev's domestic policies for roughly his first year and a half in power were centered on the concept of “acceleration,” by which was meant an attempt to reinvigorate the Soviet economy through such means as increased worker discipline, an aggressive anti-alcoholism campaign, and increased investment in industrial equipment.54
Sternthal 1997, 34–36.
Furthermore, although the keystone phrases of Gorbachev's domestic policies after 1985—glasnost, perestroika (“restructuring”), and democratization—may have sounded like he was ushering in a liberal revolution, Gorbachev frequently defined or qualified these terms in such a manner as to rob them of revolutionary content. For example, the first time Gorbachev mentioned “democratization” as central to his domestic objectives (in 1986), he defined it in terms of “responsibility, duty and the question of discipline.”55
Quoted in ibid., 71.
Similarly, the original objective of glasnost was not to create a more transparent regime, but to create more tools to allow Gorbachev to criticize his opponents. Criticism of Gorbachev and his policies, however, was originally not part of glasnost. I thank one of the reviewers of International Organization for pointing this out.
Quoted in Brown 1996, 175.
Soviet institutional changes for the first three years of Gorbachev's rule were also mixed. The most important political institutional developments in the Soviet Union from March 1985 through March 1988 occurred at the January 1987 plenum. At that time, Gorbachev called for multiple candidate elections with secret ballots for all party posts (all candidates had to be members of the CPSU). These proposals were a significant departure from past Soviet practices and a move toward a more liberal political order. Gorbachev, however, was unable to get the Central Committee to adopt them. Opposition from Soviet conservatives remained too high at that time.58
Garthoff 1994, 303.
An important implication of the preceding analysis is that for the first three years of Gorbachev's tenure as general secretary, it is very difficult to measure the depth of Gorbachev's and fellow New Thinkers' commitment to political liberalism, especially to outside observers. There is little doubt that the USSR was changing in this period: it was objectively becoming a less repressive, more open regime. What was in doubt based on contemporaneous evidence was if the Soviet Union under Gorbachev's leadership was entering a truly revolutionary domestic period, or if the end result would be merely the reform of existing Soviet ideology and institutions.59
As Reagan explained in his memoirs, in 1987 “we were still facing a lot of uncertainty regarding the Soviets: Gorbachev had announced his new programs of perestroika and glasnost and it was evident something was up in the Soviet Union, but we still didn't know what it was”; Reagan 1990, 708. See also Central Intelligence Agency 1987, 24; Shultz 1988a, 42; Shultz 1993, 683; and Gates 1996, 343, 376.
These facts have key ramifications for testing institutional and ideological explanations of the end of the Cold War. For the first three years of Gorbachev's time in power, none of the prerequisites for the institutional explanations of the democratic peace (for example, checks on executive power, a free press and open decision-making process, and politically powerful public opinion) were established. Consequently, the fact that American threat perceptions through spring 1988 had not substantially lowered is consistent with these arguments.
The independent variable of ideological explanations of the democratic peace shows more variance than the institutional varieties during the first three years of Gorbachev's rule. Gorbachev's greater respect for basic political rights, greater tolerance of differing political beliefs, and proposals to create more competitive elections among CPSU members meant that he had adopted some of the key prescriptions of political liberalism. Normative explanations of the democratic peace would therefore predict corresponding diminishment in U.S. leaders' threat perceptions from March 1985 to March 1988. As discussed above and in the next section, this prediction was for the most part not met.
Thus far, I have discussed the ideological and institutional changes in the Soviet Union through March 1988. In April of that year, Gorbachev laid out major new institutional objectives for the Soviet Union that would be voted on in the Nineteenth Party Conference, which was scheduled for June. In addition to renewing his call from the January 1987 plenum for multiple-candidate, secret-ballot elections for all party posts, Gorbachev proposed at the conference having competitive elections involving nonparty members; establishing a new, popularly elected Congress of People's Deputies that would select a standing legislature (a new “Supreme Soviet”) that possessed significant power; creating an independent judiciary; and providing protections for freedom of speech, assembly, and press.60
For details on Gorbachev's proposals for the Nineteenth Party Conference, see Fitzgerald 2000, 454; Matlock 1995, 122; and Adomeit 1998, 351.
Garthoff 1994, 361, 389–92.
These domestic changes were Gorbachev's most ambitious, by far, that occurred during the Reagan presidency. According to Soviet expert Brown, the political changes resulting from the Nineteenth Party Conference marked Gorbachev's switch from “reformist to transformative change of the [Soviet] political system.”62
Brown 1996, 175.
Ibid., 156.
The proposals and resolutions of the Nineteenth Party Conference allow for reasonably clear tests of both the ideological and institutional explanations of the end of the Cold War. There is no doubt that establishing competitive, largely open elections and the creation of a more powerful, independent legislature and judiciary were major steps toward fulfilling liberalism's core domestic prescriptions. These resolutions therefore should have removed much doubt to outside observers about Gorbachev's liberal bona fides, and whether he was dedicated to the transformation or reform of the Soviet domestic system. If ideological explanations of the end of the Cold War are correct, the results of the Nineteenth Party Conference should have led to significantly higher levels of trust between Soviet and American leaders than had existed previously.
I do not mean to imply that Gorbachev's proposals at the 1988 conference removed all doubt about his commitment to liberalism. He did not in 1988 support deleting Article Six from the Soviet Constitution, which guaranteed that the CPSU have a “leading role” in the USSR.64
Garthoff 1994, 393.
Similar statements can be made about all three of the institutional explanations of the end of the Cold War developed earlier. The resolutions from the Nineteenth Party Conference called for the creation of both greater checks and balances on executive power and the means of making the Soviet Union more transparent through greater freedoms of press and speech. The resolutions also resulted in increased audience costs due to the popularly elected Congress of People's Deputies scheduled for March 1989. The conditions were thus being created for a substantial lowering of tensions between the United States and USSR according to each of the main institutional accounts of the democratic peace.
The American Response to Soviet Ideological and Institutional Changes, 1985–89
If ideological differences with the Soviet Union were central to U.S. leaders' understandings of the Soviet danger, American officials' threat perceptions should have noticeably diminished with Gorbachev's glasnost policies from 1986 to 1988 that resulted in a more tolerant, less oppressive Soviet regime that better respected fundamental human rights. This prediction, however, was for the most part not confirmed. By the end of 1987, most key U.S. policymakers recognized that Gorbachev was making the USSR a substantially less repressive state. In October 1987, for example, Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead labeled glasnost policies that made the Soviet Union a “more open and human regime” “striking and significant.”65
Whitehead 1987, 68.
Shifter 1988, 40.
Shultz 1993, 887.
Ibid., 990, also 895–897, 986, 988, 994.
Despite the widespread acknowledgment among American officials by the end of 1987 that the Soviet Union was becoming significantly more liberal in terms of protecting fundamental rights, there was little reduction in threat perceptions in these years in the sense of whether or not the USSR was still an enemy of the United States (though as discussed, most believed that superpower relations were becoming less dangerous, in the sense that chances of conflict due to miscalculation were diminishing). This was true even for Shultz, who was the most optimistic of all of Reagan's key advisors concerning Soviet domestic changes. As explained above, in late 1987 and early 1988 Shultz asserted that there had been no “qualitative change” for the better in U.S.-Soviet relations, and that it was unlikely that “adversarial” relations with the USSR would end.69
See Shultz 1988a, 41; and Shultz 1988b, 7. See also Shultz's quotations from the above section analyzing the American responses to more cooperative Soviet foreign policies from 1985 to 1988.
Two factors were most responsible for U.S. leaders' continued belief through April 1988 in the ongoing adversarial nature of U.S.-Soviet relations. First, despite Gorbachev's much improved human rights record by the end of 1987, America's most powerful leaders—including Reagan, Shultz, Matlock, and Powell—were not convinced that Gorbachev's domestic reforms were born of a genuine dedication to liberalism. Instead, these individuals until spring 1988 continued to believe that Gorbachev remained a committed Marxist-Leninist who only wanted to reform Soviet domestic principles, not revolutionize them. Shultz, for example, thought that at the end of 1987 Gorbachev was “still imprisoned by [Marxist-Leninist] ideology…. Success … would depend on his willingness to abandon, not just modify, a failing system.”70
Shultz 1993, 1081.
Powell 1995, 355.
Matlock 2004, 295–96.
Second, the Americans were very concerned about the likely durability of Soviet domestic reforms if Gorbachev were removed from office by conservatives. The Americans feared that because the Soviet Union by the end of 1987 had not adopted any major institutional changes that could help make permanent the liberalizing glasnost and perestroika policies that Gorbachev and his allies had adopted, these reforms could relatively easily be reversed with a change in Soviet leadership. This vulnerability of Gorbachev's domestic reforms was critical to many U.S. leaders' beliefs through spring 1988 that the Cold War continued. As Deputy Secretary of State Whitehead explained in fall 1987: “Until [Soviet domestic] improvements we have seen are secured by enduring changes in Soviet institutions,” Gorbachev's reforms that have made the “Soviet Union a more open and humane society remain vulnerable to arbitrary reversal.”73
Whitehead 1987, 68.
This is a sentiment that was repeatedly expressed by important U.S. officials. Assistant Secretary Shifter asserted in October 1987 that as a result of Gorbachev's domestic reforms, “the shackles [of repression] have been loosened, in some respects substantially so. But they remain in place. They can be tightened again at the will of the leadership.”74
Shifter 1988, 40.
Reagan 1987d, 1.
Gorbachev's proposals for the Nineteenth Party Conference and their subsequent ratification at this meeting significantly reduced U.S. leaders' doubts about both the depth of Gorbachev's commitment to liberal ideology and the likely permanence of his liberalizing domestic changes even if he were removed from office. America's most important policymakers immediately recognized the ideological significance of Gorbachev's 1988 domestic objectives. According to Matlock, “as I read [Gorbachev's proposals] and discovered one new element after another, my excitement grew. Never before had I seen in an official Communist Party document such an extensive section on protecting the rights of citizens or such principles as the separation of powers, judicial independence, and presumption of a defendant's innocence until proven guilty.”77
Matlock 1995, 122.
Ibid.
Matlock 2004, 295–96.
Powell had a similarly dramatic reaction on hearing of Gorbachev's domestic intentions. With the conference proposals, Gorbachev “was going to change the USSR in ways we never imagined. He was saying, in effect, that he was ending the Cold War. The battle between their ideology and ours was over, and they had lost.”80
Powell 1995, 375. See also Reagan 1988b, 38; Fitzgerald 2000, 454, 459; Sigal 2000, 26; Cannon 1991, 783–90; and Shultz 1993, 1098, 1131.
The Nineteenth Party Conference proposals were significant not only because they convinced key U.S. leaders of Gorbachev's liberal convictions, but because the nature of Gorbachev's domestic objectives would both move the Soviet Union in a revolutionary direction and make it difficult for future Soviet leaders to reverse course if they desired to do so. With institutional checks and balances, including higher levels of popular oversight of the government, future Soviet policymakers would likely lack sufficient power to undo Gorbachev's domestic reforms.
Matlock expressed these last points to Reagan when reviewing the significance of the 1988 conference objectives. “If freedom of speech, press, and assembly were really guaranteed, if multiple-choice elections and secret ballots were allowed, if principles of judicial independence were legally enacted, then I had no doubt that the Communist Party monopoly on political power would soon end.” With these reforms, “the Soviet Union could never again be what it had been in the past.”81
Matlock 1995, 122.
Similarly, Reagan asserted in a speech in London after the Moscow summit in June that the Nineteenth Party Conference proposals, which included “such things as official accountability, limitations on length of service in office, [and] an independent judiciary,” were “cause for shaking the head in wonder.” These proposals convinced Reagan that Gorbachev “is a serious man seeking serious reform.” Because of Gorbachev's domestic objectives and their institutionalization, the Soviet Union was very likely now entering a period of “lasting change.”82
Reagan 1988b, 38, 37. Reagan stated in his memoirs that personal interactions with Gorbachev at the Moscow summit also helped to build trusting relations, as systemic constructivists predict; see Reagan 1990, 709, 711–12. This outcome obtained, however, only in the context of Gorbachev's revolutionary institutional proposals. Previous personal interactions at the Geneva and Reykjavik summits did not lead the president to believe the Cold War was ending.
It was shortly after the Americans became convinced that Gorbachev was trying to revolutionize the Soviet domestic system, and that his domestic reforms would be very difficult to reverse with the creation of various institutional checks on future Soviet leaders, that they began to assert that the Cold War was at an end. Most famously, when Reagan was asked at the Moscow summit—which was just weeks after Reagan learned of Gorbachev's goals at the Nineteenth Party Conference—if he could declare the Cold War to be over, the president answered: “I think right now, of course.”83
Reagan 1988c, 32.
Reagan 1988b, 38.
Powell 1995, 375. Leading Democrats were experiencing a similar transformation. For example, in fall 1987 the Democratic nominee for president, Michael Dukakis, said that the current high level of defense spending was appropriate because the Soviet threat remained largely intact. By June 1988, Reagan's rapprochement with the Soviet Union enjoyed strong bipartisan support, and at this time Dukakis began to identify himself explicitly as a Reaganite on policies toward the USSR; see Washington Post, 13 September 1987, A8; Washington Post, 16 June 1988, A23; Washington Post, 29 July 1988, A19; and Washington Post, 10 August 1988. A4.
This does not mean that all U.S. officials agreed that the Cold War was ending by summer 1988. There remained influential people both in and out of the administration—including Deputy Director of the CIA Robert Gates, former Secretaries of State Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and former President Richard Nixon—who continued to believe that the Soviet Union remained a formidable adversary, primarily because Soviet military capabilities remained substantial.86
Garthoff 1994, 320, 325. Both Gates and Powell recount that many officials in the CIA and military agencies remained suspicious of Gorbachev at this time, while members of the State Department were more trusting; see Gates 1996, 335, 375; and Powell 1995, 375–76, 438. Skeptics of Gorbachev and opponents to U.S.-Soviet rapprochement continued in the Bush administration, most notably Vice President Dan Quayle and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney; see Garthoff 1994, 383, 387–88.
Consistent with this assertion, a number of hardliners left the Reagan administration by spring 1988, including William Casey, Patrick Buchanan, Richard Perle, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Gaffney, and Kenneth Adelman.
The preceding analysis offers support for both ideological and institutional explanations of the end of the Cold War. The virtual simultaneity of revolutionary domestic proposals in the Soviet Union and substantial decreases in American threat perceptions point to the accuracy of this statement. The most powerful members of the Reagan administration were not judging the Soviet threat primarily by this state's capabilities, but by perceived intentions based on domestic variables.88
Matlock summarizes Reagan's (and his) views on this subject when he writes that “[Reagan] understood that the Cold War was ultimately about ideology. He saw both the arms race and geopolitical competition as symptoms of an ideological struggle, not its causes…. [Reagan was convinced] that a more open Soviet Union with an informed and empowered public would not threaten the United States or its neighbors.” See Matlock 2004, 320.
Domestic changes in the Soviet Union did, however, affect U.S. leaders' threat perceptions in different ways than hypothesized in the theory section. Contrary to the most prominent existing institutional accounts of the democratic peace, the Americans were not primarily moved by Soviet institutional changes proposed in spring and summer 1988 because they made Soviet aggression more difficult through checks on executive power, made the Soviet Union more transparent, or made Soviet leaders' commitment to particular foreign policies more credible. At the time that central U.S. leaders were declaring the Cold War to be ending, none of these institutional effects existed. The Americans were responding to Gorbachev's proposals to democratize the Soviet Union, not actual democratization and its effects.89
These findings are problematic for Mansfield's and Snyder's claim that democratizing states tend to be war prone; see Mansfield and Snyder 2005. Regardless if this assertion is true or not, this fear was not an important one to Reagan (or Bush) officials. These individuals believed that a democratizing Soviet Union would be a force for international peace.
Gorbachev's proposed institutional changes were critical to the Americans because they convinced U.S. officials of Gorbachev's genuine commitment to liberalism, which significantly increased their trust in the Soviet leader. Once this trust was established, they believed Gorbachev would carry through with his institutional reforms that would make domestic-political reversals in the future difficult.90
Democratic institutions thus did enhance Gorbachev's ability to make commitments, but not to particular foreign policies as the institutional democratic peace literature highlights. What mattered most to the Americans when they were declaring the Cold War over were commitments to liberalizing domestic changes.
Problematic for ideological accounts of the democratic peace is that Gorbachev's significant improvement in human rights protections by the end of 1987 did not result in correspondingly lower threat perceptions by America's most important decision makers. In order to substantially lower U.S. threat perceptions, more comprehensive domestic changes that included proposals to establish representative political institutions were needed.
Thus America's most powerful leaders were responding to likely changes in both Soviet domestic ideology and institutions. The creation of representative institutions in the Soviet Union in the 1980s in the absence of leaders dedicated to core liberal norms such as tolerance, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and minority rights (that is, if the USSR had been, in Zakaria's phrase, an “illiberal democracy”91
Zakaria 2003.
U.S.-Soviet Relations Under Bush
America's relationship with the Soviet Union continued to improve after the election of George Bush to the presidency. Statements made by Reagan and other leaders over the last half of 1988 that the Cold War was over played a role in this process. Bush's National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft recollected that “once you say the Cold War is over, you can never take it back. You can only say it once.”92
Zelikow and Rice 1997, 20.
Beschloss and Talbott 1993, 49–50, 76.
Partly in response to this domestic and international pressure (and partly due to conviction, as I shall show), beginning in May 1989 Bush initiated several policies that were designed to deepen U.S.-Soviet cooperation.94
According to contemporary U.S. officials' accounts, both Baker and Scowcroft pushed for the adoption of “bold ideas aimed at satisfying public desire for new approaches” with the USSR; Washington Post, 8 May 1989, A1. These policies occurred after a “pause” in the progress in U.S.-Soviet relations from January to May while the Bush administration performed an intensive review of America's security environment.
Ibid. The purpose of the proposal, according to Scowcroft, was to “demonstrate both to the Soviets and the Europeans that we were serious, forward-looking, and prepared to take some risks to move East-West relations to a new plane”; see Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 74; and also Baker 1995, 68.
Blanton 1998, 185–86.
The record is thus clear that by the end of 1989, at the latest, the most important Bush administration officials had reached similar levels of trust in Gorbachev and his allies as did the key leaders in the Reagan White House. It is much more difficult, however, to ascertain the ultimate sources of Bush officials' favorable views of the Soviet Union than it is in the case of the Reagan presidency. Soviet foreign policies, power, and domestic ideology and institutions were all greatly changing during Bush's first year in office, and at virtually the same time. In December 1988 during a speech at the United Nations, Gorbachev committed the Soviet Union to removing unilaterally 500,000 men and 5,000 tanks from Eastern Europe. This decision significantly reduced the Soviets' ability to wage an offensive war in Europe. In November 1989, Soviet leaders chose not to try to prevent the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, which was a major step toward the abandonment of the USSR's empire in this region. In terms of domestic institutions and ideology, in March 1989 the Soviet Union held competitive, largely open elections for the Congress of People's Deputies. New Thinkers throughout 1989 also deepened such liberal policies as allowing greater emigration and more autonomy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics, and renouncing the use of force at home and abroad.
Given the virtual simultaneity of significant changes in Soviet foreign policies, power, and domestic institutions and ideology, it is very difficult to test the four hypotheses developed earlier by using a longitudinal analysis. Process tracing, however, yields more definitive results. Just as for the Reagan administration, the most powerful leaders of the Bush presidency, including Bush, Baker, and Scowcroft, asserted that New Thinkers' acceptance of liberal ideology in combination with the creation of democratic political institutions were critical factors pushing them to believe that the Soviet Union was no longer a significant international threat.
Bush, for example, asserted in a May 1989 speech that because America was “approaching the conclusion of a historic postwar struggle between two [ideological] visions,” its leaders should adopt new policies “that recognized the full scope of change taking place … in the Soviet Union.” Instead of Cold War containment, the United States was now able to seek “the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of nations.”98
Bush 1989, 16.
Baker 1989, 36.
Baker 1995, 138.
Ibid., 141, 140.
Even Scowcroft, whose putative mantra was to judge states by their capabilities and not their intentions, placed great emphasis on the effects of New Thinkers' liberalism on America's security. To the national security advisor, substantial improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations was most due to “Gorbachev and the Soviet reformers, men who through perestroika and glasnost had set these changes [of U.S.-Soviet rapprochement] in motion.”102
Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 205.
Ibid., 39.
The creation of more liberal political institutions in the Soviet Union added to the pacifying effects of New Thinkers' commitment to liberal ideology. Although Bush, Baker, Scowcroft, and other prominent policymakers were convinced that Gorbachev's liberalism was resulting in much less threatening and more cooperative relations, the same individuals were also pessimistic that Gorbachev would remain in power long past 1989.104
Because Soviet conservatives did not share New Thinkers' dedication to liberal principles, the Americans believed that the Soviet Union under conservatives' leadership would be significantly less cooperative.105See Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 216, 222, 229, 238, 271, 275, 495, 563; and Baker 1995, 143. On the substantial foreign policy differences between old and New Thinkers throughout the 1980s, see Haas 2005, chap. 6.
The good news from the U.S. point of view was that even if “old thinkers” ousted Gorbachev from office, the Americans believed that the institutional checks and balances on governmental power that were in place in the Soviet Union by 1989 would make highly confrontational foreign policies very difficult for any one group of Soviet leaders to realize. As a secret U.S. intelligence estimate written in September 1989 explained: “The chances that Gorbachev will successfully overcome [his domestic dilemmas and remain in power] over the long term [are] doubtful at best. But the process of pluralistic forces taking root in Soviet society strengthens the rule of law, builds constraints on executive power, and fosters resistance to any turnaround in military spending and to reinvigoration of an expansionist foreign policy…. This process [of liberalization] … benefits greatly from each year's prolongation of Gorbachev's rule.”106
Central Intelligence Agency 1989, 13.
Here one sees support for the “checks and balances” and “commitment” hypotheses from the institutional democratic peace literature. By creating institutional constraints on executive power and strengthening the rule of law, the Americans believed that Gorbachev was able to tie the hands of future Soviet leaders even if they did not agree with his international objectives.
As the September 1989 intelligence estimate indicates, the Bush administration also believed that democratic institutions would help ensure the survival of liberal values. Each year that liberalization in the Soviet Union continued, reactionaries would find it that much more difficult to return to the former totalitarian system. “Pluralist forces” and protection through the rule of law meant that liberal groups would very likely continue to have power to contend with illiberal ones, which would help prevent a return to Cold War confrontation.
The belief that Soviet democratic institutions would likely prevent a return to aggressive foreign policies was very important because it reduced the potency of the security dilemma for the Americans. They did not have to assume the worst about future Soviet intentions, even though most U.S. officials were skeptical about Gorbachev's staying power. This confidence helps explain Bush's strategy of negotiating with Gorbachev. The president predominantly tried to settle various outstanding Cold War disputes by trying to reassure the Soviets rather than coercing them with America's power superiority.107
In order to both reassure the Soviets and bolster New Thinkers' domestic position to help keep Gorbachev in power as long as possible, in 1989–90 the Americans made new, more favorable proposals on strategic arms reduction talks (START), Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), and chemical weapons talks; offered a number of concessions to ease trade restrictions on the Soviet Union; promised not to engage in polemics with regard to the Soviet Union's deteriorating position in Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics; engineered restrictions on a unified Germany's sovereignty (including foreswearing weapons of mass destruction); and agreed to transform NATO from an anti-Soviet military alliance to a post–Cold War political coalition that promised to have close, cooperative relations with its former enemies.108For details on the preceding points, see Beschloss and Talbott 1993, 154–57, 164, 188–89; and Zelikow and Rice 1997, 263, 314, 318, 321–25.
This analysis does not mean to imply that the Americans met the Soviets halfway in the negotiations that settled the outstanding issues of the Cold War. The Soviets clearly did much more compromising than the United States—a fact that damaged Gorbachev's domestic position despite America's interest in the continuation of his time in office.109
Gorbachev's agreement that a unified Germany could be in NATO was a particularly difficult pill for many conservatives to swallow. This defeat contributed to the growing conservative backlash in the Soviet Union, which led to Shevardnadze's resignation in December 1990 and culminated in the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991.
This choice was important. More consistent hard-line U.S. policies could have pushed the Soviets to be far less accommodating in their negotiations with the other great powers, most notably over Germany's future status. Instead of allowing a unified Germany within NATO, a more threatened Soviet leadership could have attempted either to force the Germans to choose between unification and NATO membership (the Americans and Europeans were worried that this strategy would succeed111
See Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 241, 300; Zelikow and Rice 1997, xi, 148, 161, 172, 196, 248; and Baker 1995, 198, 234, 257.
See Brooks and Wohlforth 2003, 302, 304; Dobrynin 1995, 627, 630–31; Adomeit 1998, 326, 491, 498; Sigal 2000, 49, 56, 76; Zelikow and Rice 1997, 179, 245, 261; and Beschloss and Talbott 1993, 178, 186.
Shevardnadze, for example, stated that without various Western concessions—most notably commitments to transform NATO from a military into a political alliance—“membership of Germany in NATO would have been unacceptable to us”; quoted in Zelikow and Rice 1997, 272; see also ibid., 331–32, 342, 344; Wohlforth 2003, 22, 58; and Baker 1995, 259.
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated the importance of liberal ideological and institutional changes in the Soviet Union in the 1980s to American leaders. As soon as the most important policymakers in the Reagan and Bush administrations believed in Gorbachev's genuine commitment to core tenets of political liberalism, and believed that New Thinkers' liberalizing policies would be difficult to reverse in the future, they believed the Cold War to be over.
This article's findings challenge, to varying degrees, all the arguments developed in the theory section. Contrary to realist predictions, U.S. decision makers were not judging the Soviet threat primarily by this state's capabilities, but by the perceived intentions of Soviet leaders. Problematic for systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments is that American policymakers were not changing their assessments of Soviet intentions due to more cooperative foreign policies, but to the perceived depth and durability of liberalizing domestic changes.
The findings also refine ideological and institutional explanations of the democratic peace. Gorbachev's renunciation of much of Marxism-Leninism in favor of core precepts of liberalism did substantially increase Americans' trust of New Thinkers, just as ideological accounts of the democratic peace predict. But Gorbachev needed to propose major democratic institutional changes before most U.S. leaders believed his commitment to liberalism was genuine. Greater tolerance and respect for basic human rights were insufficient to arrive at this conclusion.
Similarly, liberal institutions were important to the Americans not primarily because they created checks on executive power, increased transparency, or increased politicians' ability to make international commitments. U.S. leaders in the Reagan administration were responding to mere proposals to create democratic institutions, not actual democratization and its effects. Instead, proposals to create democratic institutions both revealed Gorbachev's liberal bona fides, and provided reasonable assurances that Soviet liberalization would be difficult to reverse. Democratic institutions, in short, created important preconditions that allowed the pacifying effects of liberal ideology to be at work. These findings point to a synergy of liberal values and institutions in explaining the peaceful resolution of disputes that is frequently neglected in the democratic peace literature.
