When looking at international conflicts, particularly the Cold War, it is interesting to note the strategies that actually brought about an ending to the hostility. Ronald Reagan’s policies that brought about peace were actually a result of realizing that the period of détente ushered in by Richard Nixon was actually perpetuating the war. Reagan recognized that the Soviets were weak before most of his contemporaries did, and as such was able to use this weakness to his advantage. He saw that the détente was extending the war rather than bringing it to a close, and so he placed additional strain on the Soviets in their weakness to produce a quicker end to the Cold War. He used “reassurance, persuasion, and pressure” in order to accomplish his objectives with Gorbachev.
Although the détente was commonly considered the time when tensions began to ease and thus when the Cold War began to approach its conclusion, it in fact failed to facilitate the end of the war. Although better relations were developed between America and Russia, Reagan understood that he needed to pressure the Soviet Union to really bring an end to the tensions rather than just try to make everyone feel good. At the time that Reagan employed these tactics, the relations between the countries had eased enough that the pressure he applied did not have negative results. In the earlier years of the conflict, when both the United States and the Soviet Union were exercising confrontational techniques, this would have only escalated the tensions, but because the Soviets had been weakened at this point, they had little choice in submitting to Reagan’s position. Although the détente began to remove the war from the highly volatile confrontational stages, in reality it was not what brought about the resolution of the war. Nixon’s contributions softened the Soviets, while Reagan was able to cause the conclusion of the conflict.
- Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
- Herrmann, Richard K., and Richard Ned. Lebow. Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.
