Thread by @RadioFreeTom

Okay, so, I'm back and I'm going to tell you guys why you're probably wrong about the end of the Cold War, and putting "/1" on this tweet means I'm not done so hold your water until you see an "/x" in a tweet.

/1

For one thing, it is bad reasoning to be mono-maniacal about "it was Reagan" or "it was Gorby!" History is more complex than that.
Also, you're all starting way too late. You have to back to about 1975, the U.S. low point in the Cold War. Vietnam, stagflation, NATO crumbling. /2

This is the time the Soviets think that the world is turning in their favor. They make some mistakes: They refuse to think about economic reform, and they begin a process of imperial over-extension and binging on arms buildups that even they later admit was crazy. /3

They might have gotten away with it, too, but they pushed Carter - yes, Carter - too far, particularly with new strategic nukes and the SS-20 mobiles in Europe. This freaks out NATO and the US and Carter in 1978 makes a hard right turn - to his credit. /4

The thing is, Carter is bad at politics. And so he becomes a kind of preachy leftist about peace and human rights but he's also approving giant weapons programs and unveiling a new nuclear warfighting strategy (PD-59) that scares the shit out of the Soviets. /5

Carter and Reagan aren't that far apart on Cold War stuff, no matter how many of you think Carter was a dove and Reagan a hawk. Stealth, Trident, MX - all Carter stuff. Nuclear warfighting? Carter. Reagan adopts all of it. So why credit Reagan at all? /6

For one thing, Carter has no political capital. He's spending money, but the Soviets aren't really scared of him, other than that they think he's a Bible-thumping nut. For another, Carter sucked at alliance politics. (The neutron bomb fiasco alienated the Germans, for ex.) /7

The Soviets actually *preferred* Reagan, thinking he'd be a Nixon-type they can talk turkey with. Boy, were they wrong. And here's where everyone gets the timeline screwed up: The key is not Gorbachev, but the deliberations in Moscow that produced Gorbachev. /8

Brezhnev croaked in 82, Andropov - as scary a m'fer as ever ran the USSR after Stalin - takes over. This is the time of ultimate peril, and I think war was more likely from 1982-1984 than any time since October 1962 /9

Reagan, by late 1983, realizes his "nuke the commies" talk may have gone too far. He wants to tone it down. (Yes, I have footnotes. Hold your questions, thank you.) But circumstances and choices - KAL 007, Grenada, Andropov's failing kidneys - prevent better talks. /10

And yes, we were scaring them and spending them into the ground, but they were already maxed out on defense spending. We didn't really bait them into *more*, we made *reducing* their budgets politically impossible. So it was busting them. /11

But we overshot the mark, and the Soviets were convinced we were going to nuke them. This was a bad, bad time. Andropov dies, a placeholder is chosen, and then *he* dies shortly after. Now the real choice. The Kremlin has to pick: Reformer, or war hawks? /12

You see, there *were* other options vying for power, including a guy named Romanov, a nut and a drunk who would have started World War III, hands down. He had a coalition and argued that it was time to put Reagan in his place. He was...scary. /13

Gorby, meanwhile, said: We're screwed, and we brought it on ourselves: Afghanistan, the Pershing missiles, a unified NATO (one that was full of anti-Soviet leaders), even a Polish pope they feared so much that they tried to kill him. We can't go on like this, he says. /14

We have to get out of this dead end, Gorby says. We can't compete with the Americans. The Soviet military, blocking reform for a long time, finally says: Yeah, we're f*cked. We need better tech and reform or we're in the dust.
Gorby wins. Reagan immediately reaches out. /15

There's a lot more that happens, duh, but the key moment is when the Soviets have to go with the "get us out of this shit" guy over the "let's take one more run at the imperialists" guy. Now here's how I see the causation:
/16

"Brezhnevism" and American collapse in the 70s leads to Soviet overreach; this spurs Carter and NATO to get off the floor; Reagan makes a play for slam-dunking the Soviets and goes too far, and realizes it (almost too late); Reagan and NATO foreclose war as an option. /17

The Soviets, exhausted and the victims of choices that they, as Politiburo adviser Arbatov later writes, helped bring Reaganism into power in US foreign policy, realize they need an exit. They finally pick Gorby. Reagan and Gorby seize that moment. /18

I would argue that Carter and Reagan almost damn near started WW III, but that Reagan's policies made anything but reform and exit nearly impossible. Add to this that Reagan relies on George Shultz - a choice not to be dismissed lightly in all this. /19

The guy who *really* should get credit for the soft landing in 1991 is George HW Bush, who might more than anyone be responsible for peace, but without Reagan in 1981, I am not sure that this ends peacefully and on U.S. terms (which is assuredly did). /20

Okay. Now I'm done. If you've been tweeting at me while I've been trying to get this out, I didn't see your questions. But that's my short version, and AMA.
/21x