Question

How do some scholars believe Ronald Reagan helped bring an end to the Cold War?

Answer 1

You probably mean when he was President. Few scholars believe his Hollywood oeuvre hastened the fall of the Wall.

1. By turning around the economy of the United States. In the late 70s -- which I lived through -- the general impression was that the US was in decline. That it had reached the apogee of its power, wealth and influence in the 60s, and was doomed to steadily decline. Gasoline was rationed, prices were rising steeply (10-15% a year), standards of living were falling. The impression was that, however distasteful the Soviet empire was, we would simply have to live with it -- because we hadn't the ability to contest it.

Reagan changed all that by making some domestic changes -- principally a tremendous simplification of the tax code, making it much simpler, cleaner, and fairer, but also a slimming of the burden on the economy of government fiddling and well-meaning but often ignorant and counter-productive regulation -- which led to the greatest economic boom in 20th century American history, lasting from roughly 1982 to 1999, continuing long after he left office.

Prices stopped rising, unemployment fell, personal income rose, gasoline became plentiful, and the nation exploded with innovation -- this was the beginning of the silicon microchip revolution: IBM introduced the PC in 1981, Apple introduced the mouse/windows operating system with the Mac in 1984, Intel introduced the first modern CPU, the 80386, in 1985, TCP/IP (the backbone of the Internet) was introduced in 1983, Steve Jobs organized the company that would become Pixar in 1986, and so on.

The turnaround in the US economy and apparent future prospects convinced Americans they did not have to simply accomodate the Soviets, and convinced the Soviets -- who were experiencing no such boom, but rather the reverse, a steady slide in living standards -- that the centrally-planned economy was a disaster, removing one of the major reasons for a communist government.

2. By a deliberate program of pressure on the Soviet Union. Even minor expansiosn of Soviet influence, e.g. in Central America, were opposed by the United States. The military was enlarged. Weapons systems that could readily threaten the USSR were deployed close to the Soviet borders, e.g. the Pershing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany, more nuclear-armed strategic submarines, more aircraft carriers, the B-1 supersonic bomber, and (although this was not known until later) the development of the "stealth" B-2 bomber and B-117 fighter. In addition, although it was only known later, the CIA led a program of secret industrial sabotage. One of the more successful was a "Stuxnet" type bug secretly introduced into a massive program that controlled a new Soviet gas pipeline which caused an enormous explosion that destroyed important components of the pipe.

3. A component of this pressure widely cited is Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative," derisively called "Star Wars" by journalists at the time. The idea was to develop a ballistic missile defense -- to be able to shoot down ICBMs after they were launched but before they landed. It was widely mocked at the time as technologically impossible, althought that has proven to be untrue. But it was clearly at the very forefront of technology, including in particular the microchip/computing technology at which the US was at that very moment excelling -- pulling far out in front of the rest of the world -- so some historians think this put particularly damaging pressure on the Soviets, by convincing them Reagan had started the one kind of arms race in which they lacked the ability to even plausibly compete. Whether this one component of what is otherwise a broad program is sufficient to explain the demoralization of the USSR, I doubt, but that's what some people say.

4. Finally, and most importantly, Reagan managed to convey the impression to Soviet leaders that he was man of his word, and that he had no personal dislike of Russia, much as he might despise the Soviet Union and communism. (This was even more true of his successor, the elder George Bush, and some scholars give at least equal credit to the less visible but equally vital role played by George Bush, Sr., in winning the Cold War peacefully.) This allowed Soviet leaders, such as Gorbachev, to believe they could abandon the Soviet Union and communism but still be Russian patriots -- that the US would eagerly cooperate in dismantling the USSR, but would be a fair and reasonable partner to Russia, when she emerged from the wreckage of the USSR.

The importance of the last point cannot be overstressed: US leadership at the time of the end of the Cold War, Reagan and even more so George Bush, Sr., gave the men in charge of the USSR an "honorable exit," so to speak, or perhaps a "win-win" solution to the Cold War: the Russians could abandon the aspirations and methods of the Soviet Union, which were destroying them anyway, without giving up the aspirations and pride of being Russians, or Ukrainians, Georgians, et cetera.

Indeed, as it turns out, the most lasting and successful conclusions to wars are very often those in which the leadeship of the victorious side finds a way for the leadership of the losing side to abandon the fight without abandoning their pride or patriotism. Grant got Lee's surrender in part because he convinced Lee (e.g. by allowing officers to keep their horses and weapons) that he would not brutalize the South after victory. Allied victory in the First World War was corrupted because Wilson and Clemenceau wanted Germany humiliated, not just beaten, and this mistake was not made at the end of the Second World War by Eisenhower. MacArthur succeeded in post-war Japan in part because he was sympathetic of, and respectiveful to, the Japanese people, much as he disliked the bushido culture and the Imperial government.