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Justin Wong
Hist-135
Final Exam
Question A2

In his Power and Protest, Suri asserts that the distinction between
foreign and domestic politics is artificial (Suri, p.217). This was certainly the
case during the Cold War. As seen during the protests of 1968, the pressures
of foreign policy could often lead to dramatic changes in domestic affairs. As
such, the leaders of both the Western powers and the Soviet Union had to
work under the specter of domestic upheaval when crafting their foreign
policy. Towards the end of the Cold War, this domestic pressure became more
and more apparent with the increasing economic superiority of Western Bloc
countries. As the gap in human development between the Soviet Bloc and
the Western Bloc widened, the Soviet Union could no longer ignore the
economic superiority of the West, and was forced to make more and more
concessions in their domestic policy. This occurred both actively and
passively. In some cases, the Soviet Union was actively forced to make
domestic changes in order to lift economic sanctions imposed on it by the
West. In other cases, the Soviet Union had to respond passively in order to
meet rising popular demand for the goods and luxuries generated by the
prosperity of the West. These concessions in turn led to greater demands for
change until by the time of its collapse, the government of the Soviet Union
was barely recognizable as the one that had emerged from World War II.

At the end of World War II, the economy of the Soviet Union lagged
behind that of the West, and were painfully aware of the fact. As the Western
Bloc rebuilt successfully after World War II this economic difference was
exacerbated. This was due to the ravages of war, of which the Soviet Union
had taken the brunt, and Western economic sanctions. During the midseventies the United States of America was willing to end the sanctions and
make economic concessions. However, American politicians wanted to tie
these economic concessions to human rights issues. The Jackson-Vanik
Amendment to this bill blocked passage of until restrictions on the
emigration of Jews were eased (Judge and Langdon, p. 204). This effectively
destroyed the economic concessions bill, as the Soviet Union was unwilling
to accept this. A few months later however, at the signing of the Helsinki
Final Act, the Soviet Union was willing to sign an act that officially recognized
their economic rights to World War II territorial gains but also explicitly
demanded freedom of movement (Judge and Langdon, Helsinki Final Act,
p.408). This was pointed directly at the Jewish immigration problem.
However, the act went further and even included a clause that stated, The
participating states will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms,
including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief (Judge and
Langdon, Helsinki Final Act, p.407). This showed that the Soviet Union was
willing to make concessions to human rights and freedoms in order to
improve their economy. However, the signing of this act seriously
undermined the totalitarian underpinnings of the Soviet State and became a

standard to which dissidents and human rights activists were more than
willing to hold the Soviet Union accountable. Notably, it gave some official
legitimacy to protests such as the Solidarity movement in Poland, such that
the Soviet Union would be put in an awkward position should it try to
intervene. Foreign economic pressure caused the Soviet Union to cave on
their ideology at home and this set off a chain of events that made the end
of the Cold War inevitable.
The Soviet Union also made passive changes to attempt to achieve
some economic parity with the Western Bloc that accelerated the end of the
Cold War. With the Soviet economy faltering from mounting costs due to the
arms race, the leadership was hard pressed to give economic and especially
military aid to other Eastern bloc countries, or to prop up regimes elsewhere.
This was elaborated in Gorbachevs book Perestroika, where he advocated a
doctrine called New Thinking. One of the pillars of this doctrine held that
from the security point of view, the arms race has become an absurdity
because its very logic leads to the destabilization of international relations
and eventually to a nuclear conflict. Diverting huge resources from other
priorities, the arms race is lowering the level of security, impairing it (Judge
and Langdon, New Political Thinking, p.444). Projecting military power
overseas, and trying to retain foreign client states, as Gorbachev states, is a
waste of resources, and moreover, a danger to international stability. Instead,
he proposes a path to national success through the solution of other global
problems, including those of economic development and ecology (Judge and

Langdon, New Political Thinking, p.444). Although this change in policy was
couched in humanitarian language, and probably contained such intentions,
it also was driven as much by pragmatic thinking. After all, sustaining the
Eastern Bloc regimes and competing in an arms race was no longer
economically feasible. These changes effectively caused the Soviet Union to
relinquish its grip on Eastern Bloc countries, to let them determine their own
forms of government. When this was put in practice, at the official
renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Gorbachevs UN address (Judge and
Langdon, Gorbachevs UN Address, p. 449), already pent up tensions in the
countries of the Eastern Bloc boiled over, toppling the regimes of the former
Soviet satellites, and eventually Gorbachev himself. Although New Thinking
aimed to shore up the Soviet economy, allowing it to remain a superpower,
the dramatic shift in foreign policy ironically caused the downfall of the
Soviet Union itself and led to the end of the Cold War.

Question B1
The Cold War can be seen as the protracted aftermath of World War II.
The borders and ideological fault lines of Europe that existed in 1945
remained more and less frozen into place until the end of the Cold War in
1989. Towards the end of the Cold War, it seemed as if Eastern Europe was
still a land frozen in time. It was technologically behind the rest of the world
and yet stubbornly clung to the ideologies of 1945. In fact it was due to the
fanatical devotion to these ideologies that the countries of the Eastern Bloc
managed to remain in power. Even when communism foundered as
capitalism succeeded brilliantly just next door, ideology managed to trump
pragmatic concerns. It is fitting then, that when the Eastern Bloc finally

collapsed, it was due to the shedding of ideology and the establishment of a

much more pragmatic view towards foreign policy.
The Cold War began as an ideological war, with the two superpowers,
the United States, and the Soviet Union clearly defining themselves as
ideologically at odds with one another. In his article Sources of Soviet
Conduct, George Kennan stresses the dichotomy between capitalism and
communism. The key to dealing with the Soviet Union, he asserts, is to build
a conceptual framework to understanding the psychology of the leadership.
The first of these concepts is that of the innate antagonism between
capitalism and socialism. We have seen how deeply that concept has
become imbedded in foundations of Soviet power....It means that there can
never be on Moscows side any sincere assumption of a community of aims
between the Soviet Union and powers which are regarded as capitalist
(Judge and Langdon, p.297). By seeing the capitalists and socialists
fundamentally at odds with each other, Kennan closed off any opportunity for
effective policy making between the two superpowers. After all, if the Soviet
Union did appear willing to compromise, we should not be misled by tactical
maneuvers (Judge and Langdon, p.297). This sort of perpetual mistrust
hindered any possibility of ratcheting down tensions in the early stage of the
Cold War, and in the hands of the National Security Council, became a
justification of a massively armed stalemate. In fact, with this document, the
Cold War became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This unproductive mistrust of the other superpower occurred in the

Soviet Union as well. Stalin, in his postwar writings espoused a worldview
fundamentally hostile to that of capitalism, prophesizing that the capitalist
countries will eventually be overthrown in favor of socialism. Stalin further
outlines that the best way to do this is to patiently wait for the capitalist
countries to revolt and go to war with each other again (Stalin on the
Inevitability of War). Again, this formulation of foreign policy through
ideological analysis was not pragmatic. It did not advocate any specific
course of action except to wait patiently for the demise of capitalism. Like
Kennans document, this ambiguity gave license to hardliners to pursue
aggressive foreign policy tactics which escalated the Cold War.
How then, did each side pursuing a pragmatic policy bring an end to
the Cold War? The seeds for this pragmatic policy were sown during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union and the United States came
close to annihilating each other with nuclear weapons. This occurred due to
deep distrust between the two powers, with each party overestimating the
aggressiveness of the other. Realizing that the prospect of nuclear war was
too great, and that an ideological battle over Cuba was not worth risking
nuclear war over, the two superpowers set aside their mutual distrust and
found, contrary to Kennan, that there indeed was a community of aims
between the Soviet Union and capitalist powers. As a result of the crisis,
strategic arms talks to limit the production of stockpiling of arms were begun

and a concerted effort between the two superpowers for the sake of peace
was able to begin a period of dtente.
This pragmatic policy was further developed in the relationship
between Reagan and Gorbachev. In his book on New Thinking, Gorbachev
asserted that ideological differences should not be transferred to the sphere
of interstate relations, nor should foreign policy be subordinate to them, for
ideologies may be poles apart, whereas the interests of survival and
prevention of war stand universal and supreme (Judge and Langdon, p.
444). Gorbachev realized that adhering to the old ideology whereby
communism was to be always defended in the Eastern Bloc was bringing the
Soviet Union to financial ruin and creating a more dangerous world. Acting on
this, he pursued reforms that introduced some capitalist elements into the
economy and began relinquishing control over the Eastern Bloc countries. On
the other side, Reagan realized that in order to deal with Gorbachev, he had
to scuttle his Strategic Defense Initiative plans, which at the beginning of his
presidency was symbolic of his description of the Soviet Union as the evil
empire(Judge and Langdon, p.249). This pragmatic policy that Reagan
pursued broke the hostilities between the two superpowers, and showed his
commitment to world peace. By being pragmatic and repudiating age-old
ideologies that had been constructed over forty years ago, both leaders had
hastened the end of the Eastern Bloc and the Cold War.

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