Andy Wilson

April 25, 2005

Position paper

Issue 16

Issue 16 addressed the question of whether or not President Reagan won the Cold

War. Professor John Lewis Gaddis argues that President Reagan combined a policy of

militancy and operational pragmatism to bring about the most significant improvement in

Soviet-American relations since the end of World War II. Professors Daniel Deubney and

G. John Ikenberry contend that the Cold War ended only when Soviet president Mikhail

Gorbachev accepted Western liberal values and the need for global cooperation.

I believe that even though President Reagan played a fairly critical role in helping

to hasten the fall of the Soviet Empire I do not believe that he was in fact solely

responsible. I agree with Deubney and Ikenberry in that the fall of Communism was due

in large part to outside influences and internal weaknesses. By the 1980’s the Soviet

empire was breaking under its own weight. The Soviet economic system was in

shambles due to the huge arms race with the United States. After nearly fifty years of

high end military spending the Soviet economy had quite literally gone to the poor house

in a Mig. The Soviets saw the advantages of a Western capitalistic oriented society and

decided that it was more appealing than their own. Thus internal decline and western

ideals brought down the Soviet Empire, not President Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan

did do much to help improve relations with the Soviets but most of his fortune with the

Soviets comes from being in the right place at the right time.