What brought an end to the Cold War?

Answer 1

The Pershing II Missile system. It brought the USSR to the table to sign the INF Treaty and ultimately ended the Cold War. Our technology beat them. It was peace through superior fire power. Consider this. The Soviet counterpart to the Pershing II was the SS-20. Each SS-20 had 4 warheads and the Pershing had one. The SS-20 had superior range and they had far more missiles that we had. We offered to get rid of ours if they destroyed theirs. They couldn't sign fast enough. Know why? Ours worked and theirs were crap. We could hit a 55 gal drum on the head 4 out 5 times from over 1100 miles. The warheads were accurate and reliable. Their warheads might not even hit critical mass and create a nuclear explosion. We had the better Military all the way around. We are better trained and much better equipped. Not to mention the loyalty of the troops to their country. Reagan knew how to defeat them without firing a shot.

Answer 2

It's not over at all, it's just shifted to other countries/enemies.

Once the small percentage of Americans get over the Reagan myth and look at the cold bare facts, they will see that the USSR was an unsustainable entity that was collapsing for the last 75 years. Reagan just happened to be around and some if it rubbed off on him.

The "Cold War" is a state of mind remember, it's not a "thing", so it can be fed by fear, propaganda and paranoia---that's all it needs to keep going.

Reagan kept it going full blast and indulged in radical deficit spending. To Ronnie's credit, near the end of his life he turned into a pacifist who wished to destroy all neclear weapons.

Answer 3

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist on December 24, 1991 and all of the other member states of the Warsaw Pact had selected democratic regimes in place of the communist regimes which had been forced upon them by the Communist International (Comintern) after World War Two. This including the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) which dissolved its government and reunified with the rest of Germany.

Answer 4

The Soviet Union collapsed. The communist system did not work. The country bankrupted itself, spending on nuclear weapons and military build up.
Individuals who helped push it over the edge were Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Mikael Gorbachev.

Answer 5

The fall of the USSR. Ronald Reagan forced the Soviets into an Arms Race that he knew they could never endure. It worked, but with all those weapons and all those unemployed scientists, we may have been better off with the Soviets.

Answer 6

Ronald Reagan ended it with sheer force of rhetoric: "Evil Empire"; "The bombing begins in five minutes."; "Tear down this wall!" That did it!

That's the right-wing myth. Now for the reality. The Containment Strategy crafted by the Truman Adminstration and followed by every successive Administration, finally bore fruit.

I can point to three particular factors toward the end:

1) Their War in Afghanistan, which revealed that their vaunted military was ineffectual in imposing their will.

2) The Chernobyl Disaster, which undermined confidence in their technology.

3) Matthias Rust, a teenaged German, flew his Cessna and landed it in Red Square, proving their air defenses were worthless.

Communism was a secular religion, and by the end, even the Party leaders didn't believe in it anymore.

Answer 7

Reagan's defense strategies. In the end we simply outspent them until Russia's economy collapsed from all the spending on defense and the people revolted in a bankrupt country.

Answer 8

Russia out smarted us.
They realized that if they pretended to financially collapse, that we would put them on the foreign aid list and send them money.
It worked, and we taxpayers paid for that last "Nuclear test" they had a while back.
Democracy vs. Communism...
Oh well, its only tax dollars...right???

Answer 9

president ronald reagan outspent the communists in a military buildup, while supplying weapons to the terrorists to fight the russians in afganistan.also, the pope, being from poland convinced a sitdown strike in the shipyards

Answer 10

In actuality we were able to spend more to support our military then they could; they tried since to be our equal they had to be equal in the military also but they didn't have the money. The Soviet economy suffered badly and finally they just could not maintain it.