To the Editor:

While I agree with many of Joshua Muravchik’s points [“How the Cold War Really Ended,” November 1994], I feel strongly that he is wrong about the state of the Soviet Union at the time Gorbachev took power. The error is not an insignificant one and points to some serious weaknesses in our understanding of and response to the collapse of the USSR.

Contrary to Mr. Muravchik’s view, the situation in the Soviet Union at the time Gorbachev took power had become so acute that the country was severely limited in its ability to project power beyond its borders. Once this became apparent, particularly with the Soviet failure in Afghanistan, the fall of Communism was all but certain.

Although easy to assert in retrospect, this argument underlay the analysis I wrote for a statement on Afghanistan which was circulated at the Republican convention in Detroit in early July 1980. In this statement, I pointed out that there were compelling reasons to believe that the Soviets would limit their efforts in Afghanistan, thus making their defeat posssible. I also pointed out that the Soviet Union at the time was far more unstable than people outside the country realized.

In addition, I argued that when the Soviet failure in Afghanistan became generally known, it would also become clear that the Soviets were not likely to invade Eastern Europe to shore up their satellite regimes there. And my expectation was that there would then be a defection on the part of a country like Poland, which, I suggested, would have a profound impact both in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

While I believe this statement got it right, it really was not a remarkable analysis. As early as mid-1970, Vadim Belotserkovsky was pointing out, in a series of articles in Partisan Review, that economic conditions in the Soviet Union were so bad that he expected any (necessary) reform efforts to be highly destabilizing, as they had proved to be in Czechoslovakia. Beginning in 1980, the émigré economist Igor Birman, basing his opinion on an analysis of Soviet data, was arguing that the Soviet economy was headed for a crisis that threatened the very survival of the regime.

It is true that the CIA understood that the Soviet economy was running into increasing trouble in the early 1980’s, but it did not really comprehend how serious the situation was. Had it done so, it would not have been so difficult to predict the instability in Eastern Europe, as the Afghanistan statement attests. The problem stemmed in part from a marked inability of the academic and intelligence communities to evaluate émigré assessments objectively.

The issue here is not just academic. As a result of professional misassessments of the situation in the former Soviet Union, Americans simply did not understand how bad things actually were there, or the opportunities that this opened up to us. Thus, our responses in this area have not been appropriate. At this point, our failure to foresee the collapse of Communism might not turn out to have been serious, but our failure to respond to it appropriately could.

John Howard Wilhelm
Ann Arbor, Michigan

_____________

To the Editor:

Joshua Muravchik makes a solid case that the policies associated with the “hawks” in American politics were responsible for ending the cold war. But Mr. Muravchik does not mention the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Ever since Ronald Reagan first announced SDI, I believed it would ultimately cause the collapse of the Soviet system. Why? Because the program dealt a fatal blow to the morale of the Soviet elite, who knew all along that they could not compete with the United States in the high-tech fields of electronics and computers—the devices required to make SDI work. A long-term commitment to SDI, I felt, would eventually allow the U.S. to win the cold war. But of course I never imagined the Soviet system would collapse so quickly.

One of the major differences between Reagan’s policies and American postwar foreign policy in general was his willingness to view the cold war as a conflict that could be won. This should be contrasted with notions like Mutual Assured Destruction, which held (in my own interpretation) that the nuclear age had ended military history, or at least radically changed the rules. Throughout the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, while we were indulging ourselves in the myth of detente, the Soviets were building weapons as fast as they could. Unlike us (after the 50’s), they had a civil-defense program designed to spread out their industrial facilities to give them some degree of protection against nuclear attack. In short, they . . . saw the conflict as one they could win, even if it went nuclear. I think Mr. Muravchik has it exactly right when he says that President Reagan wanted “to make the cold war into more of a two-way street.”

I have never seen anything in print, however, that suggested that SDI played an important role in the Soviet collapse. Could Mr. Muravchik comment on this?

Once again, thanks for a perceptive and well-prepared article.

A. Steven Toby
Arlington, Virginia

_____________

To the Editor:

As a longstanding Eisenhower Republican, I was greatly amused by Joshua Muravchik putting a spin on the facts so as to give Ronald Reagan credit for winning the cold war. The credit for ending the cold war can be summed up in two words: Mikhail Gorbachev. Does anyone doubt that if a healthy Leonid Brezhnev had been in power during the 80’s and 90’s the Berlin Wall would still be standing and large contingents of Soviet troops would still be based throughout Eastern Europe? . . .

Mr. Muravchik claims that Reagan’s speeches influenced Gorbachev’s actions. It requires more than a leap of faith to imagine that the Soviet Union, or any nation, would alter its policy in response to such bumper-sticker rhetoric. The increased-military-spending argument does not work, either. All the fancy technology in the world would not be able to offset the tremendous advantage the Soviet Union (or Russia) would enjoy in the event of a European war by occupying the Eurasian land mass.

China in its social and political systems is as Communist as ever, but shows no inclination to keep up with the military spending of the United States. Those who claim that the Soviets were forced to keep up with our military spending like to sweep the example of China under the rug. Unfortunately, it creates too big a lump to go unnoticed. . . .

Merwin Auslander
Laguna Hills, California

_____________

Joshua Muravchik writes:

My main quarrel with all three letter writers is that each seems to be after a single key to unlock the mystery of the end of the cold war, and I believe there were a number of factors which intersected.

If John Howard Wilhelm was as prescient as he says he was, I take my hat off to him. Nonetheless, the Soviet Union’s economic woes, however dire, do not in themselves explain its downfall. The Communist regimes of Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam endure, although they preside over economies compared to which the Soviet economy was indeed a workers’ paradise. And none of them has been a slouch at projecting power beyond its borders.

I imagine that A. Steven Toby is right that SDI played a part in demoralizing the Soviet elite, and it was one of the things I had in mind when I referred to Reagan’s defense policies, but I do not ascribe to it the unique importance Mr. Toby does. I am not sure that the Soviets could not have competed in a high-tech race, since in the past they had surprised us—as with the development of the hydrogen bomb, or MIRV technology—with how close to us they were. SDI, however, threatened to trump their huge investment in MIRVed heavy missiles, the crown jewel of their military efforts, and this must have been disheartening.

Merwin Auslander is a bit hard to follow. Of course the Soviets were not compelled “to keep up with our military spending.” They chose to spend a much larger portion of their economy on the military than we did. What Reagan’s build-up did, however, was to counterbalance their huge effort, which constrained their military options and must have been discouraging. As far as we can tell, by the way, their defense spending did not decrease under Gorbachev, which bears on Mr. Auslander’s other point. Of course Gorbachev ended the cold war (as I wrote). But why? What was he thinking? We know that he did not start out to do what he did. What influenced him as he went along? I believe that American policies and words did. Mr. Auslander scorns that explanation. OK, but what is the alternative explanation?