Peaceful Revolution increasingly lacked the materials to continue the arms race with the Reagan-era United States – particularly with a drawn-out war in Afghanistan – and the resources to control Central and Eastern Europe. With his economic and sociopolitical reform program as well as his disarmament initiatives, Gorbachev therefore sought to take appropriate steps. Having initiated a policy of "glasnost" (openness) and emphasized the need for "perestroika" (economic restructuring), Gorbachev essentially permitted the six member states of the Warsaw Pact to now each take their own direction with their own reforms. While those reforms implemented the Soviet Union were met with broad
History of Western civilization States capitalist economic system to outproduce the communist Russians. The United States military was in a state of low moral after its loss in the Vietnam War, and President Reagan began a huge effort to out-produce the Soviets in military production and technology. In 1985, a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev took power. Gorbachev, knowing that the Soviet Union could no longer compete economically with the United States, implemented a number of reforms granting his citizens freedom of speech and introducing some capitalist reforms. Gorbachev and America's staunch anti-Communist president Ronald Reagan were even able to negotiate treaties limiting each