External Effects Of The Cold War

The soviet collapse was shaped overwhelmingly by domestic factors. External developments had a largely indirect impact on changes within the USSR, through the cumulative effects of underlying shifts in the international landscape and as a result of strategic moves that opened the Soviet Union to outside influence. Both kinds of developments made a difference by affecting the conditions in which the domestic political game was played out. Only on occasion did external factors intervene in developments more directly by influencing the behavior of key domestic actors. Through a combination of ‘ conditioning’ and ‘intervening’ effects, the international developments associated with the ending of the Cold War made a significant contribution to the process of collapse, and in particular to the speed and relatively peaceful nature of its course.
There were two areas in which underlying developments and strategic moves relating to the international position of the Soviet Union had important conditioning effects on the
process of its disintegration: pressures on the economy and greater opening up to the West.
Problem of external pressure and economic performance were connected with the process of collapse, though less centrally and directly than they appear from accounts that credit American containment strategies, especially as pursued by President Ronald Reagan, with a crucial role in bringing an end both to the Cold War and to the Soviet Union.
To be sure, the arms race squeezed resources available for consumer production. And complaints about Moscow’s management of the economy formed part of nationalist platforms; but, typically, they served as adjuncts to the emotional and political case for independence. The sharp deterioration in the economic state of the country in 1990 to 1991 certainly reduced the capacity of the center to cope with political challenges at the periphery and in Moscow itself. The economic crisis was, however, connected less with international pressure than with the failings of the command economy and the flawed attempts at its reform.
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It could be argued that external material pressures, military and economic, had an impact on the domestic scene by way of the strains they imposed on Moscow’s imperial rule in Eastern Europe and beyond. But the growing costs of empire were a cause for concern rather than a major reason for the radical liberal turn in Moscow’s stance towards the region that came with Gorbachev’s accession. It was in Moscow’s Third World ventures that symptoms of the overextension often associated with imperial decline were more visible. Yet, even in the case of Afghanistan, the economic and military costs were far from crippling and formed part of a wider political reassessment which led to the decision to withdraw troops. For those seeking greater autonomy within the USSR, the withdrawal was significant less as a sign of general imperial erosion than as a strong signal of the new priority assigned to political rather than coercive means of managing challenges.
External material pressures exercised their most powerful influence by helping to spur the critical reassessment that produced Gorbachev’s doctrinal revolution and perestroika. The steady and growing lag of economic performance behind that of the developed capitalist states underscored the infirmity of the Soviet system and reinforced the case for a change in direction. The results of the re-appraisal were reforms to invigorate the system and to foster co-operation with the West, in part to ease the passage of domestic re-structuring.