Original citation

Learning question
In the previous paragraph, we looked at an explanation for the end of the Cold War 
that emphasises the importance of Western engagement with the Soviet Union over 
the role of military and political confrontation. 
In a short paragraph, explain which of the theories mentioned in Chapter 1 best 
captures this argument. Be sure to include a thesis statement at the beginning of your 
paragraph that sums up your argument. 
You can post this paragraph to the course section of the VLE for feedback from your 
peers and the academic moderator.
IR theory debates the end of the Cold War 
Within academia, the debate about the end of the Cold War has today 
assumed a somewhat different character. Reagan and US policy are still 
given their place in the hierarchy of causes, but the focus has moved 
from the role of individuals to what might be termed ‘objective’ factors 
operating at higher levels of analysis. There are a wide variety of 
narratives from which to choose. These range from internalist explanations 
that stress the extent of Soviet economic decline by the 1980s and fall 
squarely into unit-level analyses; to systems-level explanations that focus 
on the ability of Western capitalism to globally outcompete its centrally-
planned economic rival. Many contemporary Realists have become 
attracted to this type of explanation. According to the most interesting 
of these – William Wohlforth, Dartmouth College – the events of the 
1980s can readily be explained in basic material terms. The Cold War was 
caused, he argues, by the rise of the Soviet Union and the extension of its 
power after the Second World War. Logically, it came to an end when the 
economic bases of that power began to decline in the 1980s. 

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11 Introduction to international relations
44
Though it has its fair share of academic supporters, this interpretation also 
has its critics. It may be true, its critics accept, that the Soviet economy 
was in deep trouble and the USSR overstretched. But, as they point out, 
the economy was hardly collapsing when Gorbachev took over in 1985. 
Moreover, though Soviet foreign policy came with a very high price tag, 
it was not so high as to force the collapse of the entire Soviet system. 
Instead, these alternative analyses insist that the active role played by 
ideas led to an important shift in Soviet thinking over the course of the 
1980s. Gorbachev’s new thinking was meant to take the USSR beyond its 
traditional theories of a global class struggle between two international 
camps. Some of Gorbachev’s new ideas came from within the USSR 
itself, especially from its various ‘think tanks’. Several others came from 
within the larger leftist and socialist movement around the world. Even 
Western peace movements, which had grown up in the 1970s and early 
1980s, played a role in helping Gorbachev rethink Russian security within 
a larger, pan-European context. His idea of a new ‘European home’, in 
which all states could achieve security without military blocs, arose within 
the context of ongoing debates that he and his advisers were having 
with Western thinkers and writers. True, these debates were only one 
factor that helped Gorbachev develop his world view before and after 
taking power in 1985. Yet the evidence seems clear. Ideas, domestic and 
international, mattered a great deal in the USSR and helped persuade the 
Soviet leadership to break out of its old security dilemma in order to find 
another way of doing business with the rest of the world.