What I Believe: About the Cold War

The “Cold War” is a term that describes several attenuated competitions between the USSR and the US. One competition was strategic and military: an effort on the part of the US to “contain” the spread of communism through proxy wars with the USSR. (See “Good to Know,” above.) The other was an ideological competition between two very different approaches to government’s role in economics. The US championed a decentralized, free market, capitalist economy. The USSR favored a centralized, controlled, socialist economy.

I believe the military/strategic contest was won by nobody. It was, in its entirely, almost as costly in economic and human terms as WWII.

As for the ideological contest, there’s no doubt that the USSR lost. But I don’t believe they were “defeated” by the US. I believe they failed on their own, because their approach was (and still is) unsustainable.