Nick Duffy

Cold War
Paper 3
5/17/18

Mikhail Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” led to major changes in the Soviet vision of the

world community by introducing new ideas, many of which involved reform in foreign policy.

As General Secretary of the Communist Party and as President of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev

implemented policies that contributed to the end of the Cold War.

Before Gorbachev took office and began to spread his “New Thinking” policy, the Soviet

vision of the world community revolved around the spread of communism, as well as the

denunciation of capitalism. This Old Soviet Ideology was still held by the more conservative

Soviets. They believed that there was inevitable conflict between capitalistic and communistic

governments, since they had different class characters. Therefore, there was conflict and

competition between the United States, whose government served the interest of capitalists, and

the Soviet Union, whose government served the interest of the proletariat. The Soviet vision was

that communism would ultimately win and would be spread throughout the world. Conservative

Soviets still believed that war was inevitable between the two world leaders since they aimed to

end capitalism. They saw capitalistic economies and governments, specifically the United

States’ government as imperialistic and as a threat to them. The idea of war being inevitable was

put forth by Stalin. Later, Nikita Khrushchev eased this expectation of war with capitalism.

Despite this removal of inevitable war from Soviet ideology, the idea of communism as the final

form of government for the world was still there. Gorbachev took these somewhat liberal ideas

introduced by Khrushchev much further. His “New Thinking” and his vision of the world

community changed the way Soviets viewed relations with other countries, particularly with the

United States.
 Gorbachev abandoned the class approach, focusing on how the two nations can work

together rather than against each other. “New Thinking” did not hold the view of the United

States as a hostile threat to the Soviet Union simply because it was driven by capitalism. Instead

Gorbachev called for interdependence and possibly even convergence of the two seemingly

opposing social systems. He also pushed for Soviet foreign policy to be free from communistic

ideology and instead be based on universal democratic values. Along with this he renounced the

use of force in foreign policy (the Brezhnev Doctrine), and advocated for ‘freedom of choice’ for

all countries to determine their own governments and economic systems. This principle of

freedom choice is essentially identical to the principle of national self-determination that was

presented by American leaders who were fighting against the forceful spread of communism.

Gorbachev propagated the principles of perestroika and glasnost, both of which reformed old

Soviet ideals. Perestroika was an economic and political restructuring, which introduced some

market-like qualities to the Soviet Union in order to make socialism and the command economy

work more efficiently for them. Glasnost (“openness”) was a policy that introduced some

democratic qualities to the Soviet Union by removing some power from the Communist Party

and moving toward the freedoms of information and speech for Soviet citizens. “New Thinking”

and Gorbachev’s new vision of the world community dramatically changed the Soviet Policy

toward the U.S. American leaders, particularly President Reagan, viewed Gorbachev’s policies

as revolutionary, as many of his ideals overlapped with the democratic and market-based ideals

held by the United States. Cooperation between the two world leaders would be vital for

Gorbachev’s goal of arms reduction for the two nations and the eventual end of the Cold War.

The Reykjavik summit of 1986 marked a turning point in the Cold War as Gorbachev and

Reagan met to discuss the reduction and limitation of nuclear arms for both the U.S. and the
Soviet Union. Both leaders realized they had similar goals in relieving the world of nuclear

threat and that they could truly cooperate with one another, and so this meeting was considered a

success. The INF treaty of 1987 was possible due to the concessions that Gorbachev was willing

to make that had been rejected by leaders before him. This included a great reduction in land-

based intercontinental ballistic missiles, an acceptance of the ‘zero option’ for the euro-missiles,

and abandonment of the Soviet demand to include Britain and France’s nuclear potential in the

East-West balance during the SALT negotiations (Grachev, p.83). Gorbachev also abandoned

the Soviet insistence that America stops its research and development of SDI, and allowed for an

asymmetrical elimination of missiles. These concessions revealed a completely different

approach to arms control negotiations that Gorbachev was taking. The Old Soviet approach was

to request deals that the U.S. was very unlikely to agree with. When the U.S. inevitably denied

the requests, the Soviets would turn their denial into propaganda, portraying the U.S. as

aggressive and disagreeable. Gorbachev instead made all of these concessions in hopes that the

two countries could enter into a genuine agreement. This approach was successful, as the INF

treaty eliminated and stopped the production of ground-launched missiles with intermediate

range (500-5,000 km). It also called for the elimination of the shorter range ‘Oka’ (SS-23)

missile (Grachev, p.97). In the end, the U.S. eliminated 846 missiles while the Soviet Union

eliminated 1,846 missiles.

The shift in the Soviet policy toward the United States was also evident in the Gulf War.

In August 1990 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Iraq, like many other Arab

countries, was a Middle Eastern partner and client country to the Soviet Union. The Soviets also

had oil and weapons contracts worth $1.2 billion with Iraq (Grachev, p.191). Despite this,

Gorbachev proclaimed that this act of aggression could not be tolerated, thus uniting with the
U.S. against Iraq, further improving U.S.-Soviet relations. This unification would likely not

have formed under any leader other than Gorbachev.

Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” not only restructured domestic political, social, and

economic issues in the Soviet Union, but also had a huge impact on the Soviet Union’s policy

toward the U.S. By operating on universal democratic values, Gorbachev helped weaken the

arms race as well as unite with the U.S. in condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. All of these

stances culminated in the ending of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet

Union.