Global Security, Glasnost and the Retreat Dividend
THE QUESTION ‘WHO WON THE COLD WAR?’ IS STILL BEING debated. In a way it is certainly right to say that communism is collapsing and that Western capitalism has won the cold war. The Soviet Union (I shall not analyse here the situation in other socialist countries) has in fact recognised the complete failure of its economic system. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) has lost ground during the relatively free elections in various Soviet republics, etc.Yet we have to take into account that the cold war was largely a war of words, a war of ideas, and in some respects the Soviet Union has done well in the global ideological contest. For a country with a scarcity of food and most elementary consumer goods and with an extensive past record of repression and direct terror it has been extremely successful in establishing its image as a stable and peace-loving partner in the international arena, as a society which is capable of producing more humane, caring, intellectual and trustworthy leaders than most other countries. It is a remarkable achievement and it is even more remarkable that this ideological success has emerged from the ruins of the dull and rigid Brezhnevist ideological machinery.