The End of the Cold War
Three causes in one sentence
- Advances in U.S. military and technological development, the Soviet Union's costly and ultimately failed invasion of Afghanistan, and public discontent and economic weakness in communist countries led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- Three causes: an external pressure, a failed war, and internal weakness.
- The CED gives them equal grammatical weight, which is unusual — 7.6 marked one cause especially, and this sentence does not.
Select all three causes the CED names.
The Non-Aligned Movement belongs to 8.2.
Competing with a wealthier rival
- Advances in U.S. military and technological development put a cost on matching them.
- A state with a smaller economy must spend a larger share of it to keep pace, which crowds out everything else.
- So the arms race is an economic mechanism as much as a military one.
Compared with 7.6, this sentence...
So a ranking must be argued for, not quoted.
A costly and failed war
- The CED describes the invasion of Afghanistan as costly and ultimately failed — both adjectives are doing work.
- Cost drains an economy already under strain; failure removes the political return that might have justified it.
- It is the clearest single case in this unit of a proxy conflict damaging the superpower that entered it.
Which of the three causes is this?
Sort each pressure by the CED's categories.
The CED locates discontent and weakness in communist ____, in the plural.
The pressure is across the bloc, not only in one state.
The CED gives all three causes equal weight here. Unlike 7.6, no cause is marked especially — so an answer that ranks one first must argue for the ranking rather than quote the CED, and saying so explicitly is itself a strong move.
Select both adjectives the CED applies to the invasion of Afghanistan.
Cost drains; failure removes the return that might have justified it.
Discontent and economic weakness
- Public discontent and economic weakness in communist countries is the third cause, and note the plural: countries.
- So the CED locates the pressure across the bloc, not only in one state.
- Economic weakness and public discontent reinforce each other: shortages produce discontent, and discontent makes reform harder to control.
Put the interaction in order.
The chain is worth more than three separate paragraphs.
Explaining causes of an ending
- The objective is the causes of the end of the Cold War, and the CED's sentence names all three you need.
- A strong answer says how they interacted: external pressure raised the cost, the war spent what was left, and weakness made discontent unanswerable.
- That chain is worth more than three separate paragraphs.
A state already spending a large share of a smaller economy on defence commits to a war it cannot win, in a decade when its shops are short of goods. Each pressure alone is survivable; together they make every available policy worse than the last — which is the interaction the CED's single sentence compresses.
Advances in U.S. military and technological development, the Soviet Union's costly and ultimately failed invasion of Afghanistan, and public discontent and economic weakness in communist countries led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Three causes with equal weight — an external pressure, a failed war, and internal weakness. Explain how they interacted.