THIS IS THE ANSWER, I GOT A 95%
Use the passage below to answer parts A, B, and C of the question that follows.
"Ronald Reagan was widely eulogized for having won the cold war, liberated Eastern Europe and pulled the plug on the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Charles Krauthammer and other notables offered variations of The Economist’s cover headline: ‘The Man Who Beat Communism.’
Actually, Jack F. Matlock Jr. writes in Reagan and Gorbachev, it was ‘not so simple.’ . . . . In both the title of his memoir and the story it tells, he gives co-star billing to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Reagan himself went even farther. Asked at a press conference in Moscow in 1988, his last year in office, about the role he played in the great drama of the late 20th century, he described himself essentially as a supporting actor. ‘Mr. Gorbachev,’ he said, ‘deserves most of the credit, as the leader of this country.’”
Excerpt from Strobe Talbott’s 2004 review of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock Jr., the senior coordinator of policy toward the Soviet Union under President Reagan
a) Identify ONE specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was attributable to Reagan’s policies and US pressure.
b) Identify ONE specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was attributable to Gorbachev’s leadership.
c) Identify ONE reason (other than partisanship), based on the events of the last decade of the Cold War, that historians might still debate the respective influences of Reagan and Gorbachev on the end of the Cold War.
A) One specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was due to Reagan’s policies and US pressure is the fact that during his presidency, he increased relations with the Soviet Union, while simultaneously building up the American army as both a backup plan and to prepare for a potential arms race, which put pressure on the Soviet Union. Reagan also proposed treaties between the USSR, simultaneously putting pressure on the USSR, essentially forcing them to enter into some sort of treaty or else they will enter an arms race that they likely wouldn’t win.
B) One specific example of how historians might argue that the end of the Cold War was a result of Gorbachev’s leadership was the fact that he instituted a lot of reforms that made the country more capitalist than before, and also more democratic, which pleased the rest of the world and increased foreign relations. He attempted to ease tensions within the country and it’s satellite states, and started to distance the country from authoritarian rule to move towards a system more suitable for the current world. These new reforms increased foreign relations, and led to the end of the Cold War.
C) One reason that historians might still debate the respective influences of Reagan and Gorbachev on the end of the Cold War is that fact that while they both contributed to it, there were a lot of other factors at play during that time period. It is often stated by historians, particularly in this case some historians at The Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that even if Gorbachev had not instituted the reforms that he did, the communist ideology would likely have still dissolved in the USSR. So even if Gorbachev didn’t become president and put those reforms in place to decrease the influence of the communist ideology of the people, it still would have likely happened anyway. On the other hand, one could argue that Reagan didn’t have much of an influence on the end of the Cold War either, as he himself even states that without Gorbachev, the end of the Cold War wouldn’t have been possible. He simply made decisions that were advantageous at the time that were essentially put in place for him. Those are both sides of the argument that many historians have about the influence of each leader on the end of the Cold War.