Did Reagan end the Cold War or nearly start a nuclear war?

The short answer

• Afghanistan: the trap of the client state. Kabul’s communists seized power in 1978 on their own, then imposed land and literacy reforms by force. Their policies helped ignite resistance in a deeply rural and religious society. The Politburo repeatedly refused requests to intervene, and Kosygin warned that “we would be fighting the people.” Nevertheless, the client regime looked close to collapse. After the Iranian Revolution, Soviet leaders also feared Islamist influence spreading into Soviet Central Asia. The recognized costs of intervention did not remove their fear of abandoning Kabul. Washington saw the invasion in global strategic terms and increased support for Afghan resistance.
• The Euromissile spiral, a security dilemma in miniature. The mobile, accurate SS-20s that Moscow began deploying in 1977 could reach Europe. Soviet leaders presented them as modernization, but Europeans had to consider whether America would risk an American city to defend a European one. NATO planned Pershing II and cruise missile deployments while offering negotiations. Large protests followed, yet deployment went ahead in 1983 and Moscow left the missile talks. Each side’s response to its own security problem sharpened the other’s fear. Chapter 11’s INF Treaty would eventually remove an entire class of missiles, showing how the contest could be resolved.
• Reagan’s buildup: bankrupting strategy or dangerous bluff?. Reagan’s buildup and Strategic Defense Initiative posed an expensive challenge to a Soviet economy already estimated to devote perhaps 15–20% of GDP to defense, though that share is difficult to measure. The prospect of a technological race may have strengthened the case for reform. But pressure also operated in a climate of fear. Andropov’s government considered a first strike possible; the Soviet shootdown of civilian airliner KAL 007 over Sakhalin in September 1983 and Able Archer followed amid that anxiety. Reagan was shaken by the war scare and by The Day After. In January 1984 he moved publicly toward negotiation, declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Both the possible effect on reform and the danger require attention.
• Solidarity: the crack that martial law painted over. At Gdańsk, workers organized independently against a state that claimed to represent labor. Jaruzelski imposed martial law on 13 December 1981 and imprisoned Solidarity leaders. The union survived underground, assisted by networks including the AFL-CIO and the Vatican. Its survival kept an organized opposition in being despite the suppression, and challenged the government’s claim to speak for workers. When Round Table negotiations began in 1989, Solidarity was there to participate.

What it changed

Afghanistan bleeds the metropole. Afghanistan consumed Soviet lives and resources. The official military death toll was about 15,000; some post-Soviet researchers suggest it may approach 26,000. The war cost tens of billions of rubles, and coffins returned to a public told little about the fighting. It helped arm and train militant networks with consequences beyond Afghanistan. For Gorbachev, the conflict demonstrated the burden of commitments the Soviet Union struggled to sustain. He called it “the bleeding wound” in 1986; withdrawal ended in February 1989.

The peace movements change the audience. Nuclear weapons also brought citizens into the argument. Protesters filled streets in Bonn, London, Amsterdam and New York; the June 1982 New York rally was among the largest demonstrations in American history. They did not prevent the 1983 deployments, but they made nuclear danger a mass political issue and built support for arms control. NATO’s “dual-track” decision had already paired deployment plans with an offer to negotiate. Later, Western publics gave Gorbachev’s proposals an audience beyond governments.

The economics arrive on schedule. Military competition added to economic troubles that had begun earlier. Soviet growth was slow, grain had to be imported, and its computers lagged behind Western technology. Oil exports had supplied valuable revenue during Brezhnev’s stagnation, but in 1986 prices fell from around $30 toward $10 a barrel. Gorbachev had come to power in March 1985, aged 54, believing reform was possible. The new pressure made the existing economic problem harder to evade.