By Duncan Currie
In retrospect, the ending of the Cold War may seem inevitable. Of course the Berlin Wall eventually came down. Of course the long-subjugated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe eventually threw off the shackles of totalitarianism. Of course the chronically dysfunctional Soviet economy eventually plunged into a terminal crisis. Communism depended on lies and terror to survive; it produced miserably poor living standards; and it clashed with the most basic elements of human nature — so of course it was destined to collapse.
Well, not exactly. Communism was always doomed to fail in its stated mission; but the precise timing, circumstances, and nature of its implosion were hardly preordained. “At the beginning of 1989,” notes the eminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, “the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe seemed as solid as it had been for the past four and a half decades.” (Or almost as solid: Poland had been rocked by a series of massive labor strikes in 1988, but instead of jailing Lech Walesa and the other leaders of the Solidarity trade union, the Communist government was negotiating with them.) Only later did we discover that “the Soviet Union, its empire, its ideology — and therefore the Cold War itself — was a sandpile ready to slide.” The unraveling of Communism was among the most remarkable geopolitical developments the world has ever seen. Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, we are still grappling with the significance of what transpired in November 1989.
The end of the Cold War “may well be one of the most misunderstood episodes in all of American history,” wrote the late intellectual historian John Patrick Diggins. Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of promoting overly simplistic narratives about the role played by Ronald Reagan. The latter tend to emphasize Reagan’s first-term hawkishness and tough rhetoric but neglect his crucial second-term diplomacy; the former, meanwhile, have long resisted giving the 40th president his due, though that is slowly changing.
Indeed, a growing number of non-conservative analysts have come to appreciate Reagan’s vital importance. In his 2007 book, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, Diggins lauded Reagan as “one of the three great liberators in American history,” along with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
Earlier this year, veteran journalist James Mann published The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, another thoughtful effort to counter Reagan mythology and explain the Gipper’s true Cold War legacy. As Mann notes, those who credit the Reagan administration with exhausting the Soviet economy generally point to a host of U.S. actions that strained Moscow’s finances, such as cranking up defense spending, proceeding with the Strategic Defense Initiative, collaborating with the Saudis to reduce global oil prices, limiting Soviet access to high-tech exports, and secretly aiding anti-Communist movements in Poland (Solidarity) and Afghanistan (the mujahedeen). While Mann dismisses the idea that Reagan’s policies caused the Soviet Union to collapse, he acknowledges that some of these policies — particularly covert support for the Afghan mujahedeen — did indeed weaken it.
Popular memories of President Reagan as a hawkish Cold Warrior stem chiefly from his first-term record: predicting that Communism was headed for “the ash heap of history,” rebuffing calls for a nuclear freeze, branding the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” invading Grenada, installing Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Mann’s book focuses heavily on the period from 1986 to 1988, when Reagan and Soviet boss Mikhail Gorbachev pursued sweeping arms-control negotiations. During those years, prominent Republicans of diverse ideological stripes expressed concern that Reagan had misread Gorbachev and gone perilously soft on the Soviet leader. These critics included Jesse Helms, Dan Quayle, Henry
Reagan’s appraisal of Gorbachev turned out to be the correct one: Gorbachev really was different from previous Soviet rulers, and he really was committed to transforming Soviet foreign policy. Reagan provided Gorbachev with the “time, latitude, and prestige” he needed to implement his reforms, says Mann. Absent Reagan’s deft diplomacy, Gorbachev might not have had adequate support in Moscow to make such momentous policy changes. Reagan gave Gorbachev “the breathing room he required.” In the end, Gorbachev established a partially liberalized Communist system that was unsustainable. As Mann puts it, “Gorbachev unintentionally destroyed the Soviet system. Reagan gave him the help he needed to do it.”
We should not overstate or misunderstand Gorbachev’s role in the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe. His chief contribution was refusing to suppress the indigenous revolts with violent force. As the unrest stirred, in 1989 and 1990, Gorbachev chose to avoid a replay of Hungary ’56 or Prague ’68. The momentum for liberalization came from the European reformers and activists, who were emboldened by Reagan’s and Thatcher’s democratic evangelism. But Gorbachev made the critical choice not to resuscitate the Brezhnev Doctrine, the longstanding policy that said Moscow would not allow Soviet-bloc countries to leave its sphere of influence.
In his 2005 book, The Cold War, Gaddis points out that the Brezhnev Doctrine had effectively died in 1981, when the Soviets chose not to intervene militarily in Poland. KGB chairman, Politburo member, and future general secretary Yuri Andropov told colleagues that even if the Solidarity movement gained control of Poland, the Kremlin would not dispatch troops. “I think we have reached a unanimous view here on this matter,” said chief Kremlin ideologist Mikhail Suslov, “and there can be no consideration at all of introducing troops.” As Gaddis writes, “Had these conclusions become known at the time, the unraveling of Soviet authority that took place in 1989 might well have occurred eight years earlier.”
Gaddis deems Reagan “one of [America’s] sharpest grand strategists ever.” Mann says he “played a crucial role” in ending the Cold War. Yet Mann remains dubious of the notion that Reagan sought intentionally to bankrupt the Soviet Union, emphasizing that “there is no consensus among Reagan administration officials that such a strategy was ever the driving force behind the American policy.” George Shultz, who served as secretary of state from 1982 to 1989, was asked in a 2000 PBS interview whether Reagan’s military buildup “effectively broke the back of the Russian economy,” and whether this was a “deliberate” U.S. policy objective. “I don’t think it was,” Shultz replied. “The policy was for us to be strong so that no one could contest our allies and us. That was the essence of the matter. And the other side had to respond.” In Shultz’s view, “the most important moment” came when the U.S. and its NATO partners deployed intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe to counter the Soviet Union’s own weaponry.
What if Reagan had decided not to install the missiles? (Their installation spurred massive protests in both the U.S. and Europe, not to mention bitter opposition from the Kremlin.) How would that have affected Soviet policy? What if, a few years later, Reagan had backed away from arms-control talks with Gorbachev? Speaking of Gorbachev, what if he had been deposed by hardliners in, say, 1987? What if those hardliners had sought to revive the Brezhnev Doctrine? What if, alternatively, Gorbachev had embraced the strategy being followed by the Communist Chinese rulers and combined Leninist political controls with capitalist economic reforms? What if Moscow’s European satellites had followed suit?
As for the Berlin Wall, what if Hungary had not removed its barbed-wire fence along the Austrian border (thereby attracting East Germans hoping to emigrate)? What if East German security forces had opened fire on the tens of thousands of demonstrators who gathered in Leipzig one month before the Wall fell? What if famed German conductor Kurt Masur had not joined those demonstrators and helped prevent a violent crackdown? What if a clumsy East German Politburo member had not accidentally given his countrymen the green light to descend on the Wall and seek passage into West Berlin during a fateful November 9 press conference?
To pose these questions is to realize that the Cold War’s end game was not inevitable. It resulted from the courageous efforts of ordinary citizens, the controversial decisions of political leaders, and the inherent flaws of Communism. Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev do not prove that diplomacy always works: Just because the U.S. could “do business” with Gorbachev does not mean it can do business with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il. The Cold War was a unique historical challenge, Gorbachev was a unique historical figure, and Reagan’s Cold War policies were a heterogeneous mix — some infuriated liberals, while others troubled conservatives. The same president who delivered the “evil empire” speech and put nuclear missiles in Western Europe later forged a world-changing friendship with a Soviet general secretary and signed historic arms-control pacts. (Indeed, Reagan wound up suggesting the abolition of nuclear weapons.)
In the process, Reagan encouraged a wave of liberalization that swept through the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. During the early years of the post-Communist era, these countries adopted a slew of reforms (privatization, flat taxes, deregulation, anti-inflation measures) that improved their economic fundamentals and bolstered productivity. In 2004, ten of them — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia — were admitted to the European Union.
Before the global financial crisis, the so-called EU-10 were enjoying solid GDP growth. But as economist Edward Hugh observes, this growth was largely a product of “credit-driven consumption and housing booms, abetted by a waning commitment to fiscal and monetary prudence” (though not in Poland or the Czech Republic). Meanwhile, EU-10 countries were hemorrhaging citizens to Britain, Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere. When the credit crunch erupted, their economies were highly exposed, and (to varying degrees) they were thrust into turmoil. From the third quarter of 2008, which ended two weeks after Lehman Brothers went bust, through the first quarter of 2009, Hugh notes, capital inflows to the EU-10 dropped by two-thirds.
The region’s future economic growth will be constrained by demographic factors, namely, a dwindling supply of workers and a ballooning number of elderly. Thanks to low fertility levels and high emigration rates, the population of the EU-10 is set to plummet. According to the latest projections from the United Nations Population Division (UNPD), Bulgaria’s population will shrink by a staggering 28.5 percent between 2009 and 2050. The corresponding population declines will be 21.5 percent in Lithuania, 18.8 percent in Romania, 17.6 percent in Latvia, 15.9 percent in Poland, 10.6 percent in Hungary, 9 percent in Slovakia, and 8 percent in Estonia. (In Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, the declines will be 14.2 percent, 17.6 percent, and 23.4 percent, respectively.) As Hugh puts it, the EU-10 economies “seem to be past the point of demographic return: fertility would have to increase by more than one-third just to replace the existing population.”
None of this diminishes the magnitude of November 1989. When the Berlin Wall came down, it catalyzed historic improvements in human welfare around the world. As John O’Sullivan points out in the latest NR, the “secondary effects” of the Soviet empire’s dissolution between 1989 and 1991 “included the globalization of markets and a marked rise in living standards for billions of Asian workers.” The post-1989 surge of democratization triggered a surge of optimism in the West about the prospects for spreading democracy abroad. Over the past two decades, that optimism has been depleted by the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia, by the persistence of nondemocratic governments in the Middle East, and, perhaps most of all, by the rise of autocratic capitalism in China.
According to the most recent World Bank projections, China’s economy will expand by 8.4 percent this year; the International Monetary Fund expects 8.5 percent growth. Given the sluggish economic conditions currently prevailing throughout the West, these numbers are eye-popping. As the New York Times reports, many economists now predict that China will supplant Japan as the world’s second-largest economy sometime in 2010, which is “as much as five years earlier than previously forecast.” The country’s economic ascent has not, however, yielded a liberal political regime: China seems farther from democracy today than it did in early 1989, before the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Yet China’s impressive growth rates and urban skyscrapers conceal a powder-keg of social grievances. As former State Department official Susan Shirk notes in her 2007 book, China: Fragile Superpower, Chinese police data indicate that the number of mass protests in China (incidents involving more than 100 people) increased from roughly 8,700 in 1993 to 74,000 in 2004. The demonstrators include everyone from poor farmers and unemployed industrial workers to ethnic minorities and army veterans. In the absence of democratic institutions and a genuinely independent, transparent legal system, their frustrations have produced a constant wave of civil disturbances.
“The political system is so weak,” a Beijing university student told Shirk. “One day it could erupt like a volcano.” As mega-rich Chinese businessman Li Qinfu explained to the New York Times in 2002, the outward appearance of dictatorial stability masks an underlying weakness. “In a one-party country everything looks peaceful,” Li said, “but when there’s a problem, it’s a big problem.” (Witness China’s mishandling of the 2002–2003 SARS outbreak.)
Needless to say, the Chinese Communists have closely studied the democratic revolution that swept Europe two decades ago, hoping to forestall a similar uprising in their own country. They were particularly struck by the role that Solidarity played in democratizing Poland. Beijing is thus hypersensitive to any organized activity among disgruntled workers. So far, writes Shirk, the only area of China that has experienced “large-scale labor unrest” is the northeastern rustbelt. In 2002, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 displaced oil workers in Heilongjiang Province staged China’s “largest protest since 1989.” They were demonstrating against a reduction in severance benefits from the Daqing oil field.
Chinese authorities must also grapple with unwelcome demographic trends. By 2050, according to the UNPD, 31.1 percent of the Chinese population will be 60 or older, compared with 11.9 percent in 2009. Chinese aged 15 to 59 will account for only 53.7 percent of the population in 2050, compared with 67.9 percent today. In a 2004 report, demographers Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies observed that “China may be the first major country to grow old before it grows rich.” The Middle Kingdom has a small and rickety pension system that is already under intense strain. The looming explosion in China’s elderly population will create an enormous socioeconomic dilemma.
Meanwhile, China has a yawning gender imbalance fostered by the government’s one-child policy and a cultural preference for boys. As Shanghai-based journalist Mara Hvistendahl notes, China now has a sex ratio at birth of 120 boys to 100 girls — one of the most lopsided in the world. (In 1982, the ratio was 107 boys to 100 girls.) Over the coming decades, an increasingly large number of Chinese men — especially less-educated, lower-income men — won’t be able to find women to marry. This “boom in restless young men,” writes Hvistendahl, “promises to overhaul Chinese society in some potentially scary ways.” Among other things, it could lead to a big spike in crime.
For years, Chinese officials have depended on supercharged GDP growth to ensure “social stability.” But China’s nascent economic recovery has been driven by an avalanche of government stimulus spending, and there are concerns that a bubble economy is developing. Renowned financial strategist Peter Tasker believes China could be headed for “a Godzilla-sized credit binge” like the one Japan experienced during the late 1980s, followed by a deeply painful crash.
In short, while China may seem an emerging colossus, its myriad vulnerabilities portend considerable social and economic turbulence in the years ahead. This turbulence will not necessarily usher in democracy, but it will pose steep challenges to China’s current authoritarian order — and it will make the vaunted “China model” look less attractive to developing (and developed) countries across the globe.
The demise of that model is not inevitable, but neither was the demise of the Berlin Wall. As Gaddis writes, 1989 was “a bad year for predictions.” Those forecasting the permanence of Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe received an utter shock. The collapse of the Soviet empire occurred relatively peacefully. If Chinese authoritarianism eventually disintegrates, the process could be much messier.
— Duncan Currie is deputy managing editor of National Review Online.
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