Lessons of the Cold War
Joseph Nye, professor at Harvard University (USA), speaking at the conference "From Fulton to Malta: a beginning and end of the Cold War" (Gorbachev Foundation, March 2005), pointed to the lessons to be learned from the Cold War:
Bloodshed as a means of resolving global or regional conflict is not inevitable;
Significant moderating role played by the presence of the opposing sides of nuclear weapons and an understanding of what may become the world after a nuclear conflict;
Course of the conflict is closely linked with the personal qualities of specific leaders (Stalin and Harry Truman, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan);
Military power has a significant but not crucial (U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the Soviet Union - in Afghanistan) in the era of nationalism and the third industrial (IT) revolution to control a hostile population of an occupied country is impossible;
In these circumstances, a much greater role becomes the economic power of the state and the ability of the economic system to adapt to the demands of modernity, the capacity for constant innovation.
Significant role played by the use of soft influence, or soft power, ie ability to achieve other desired without forcing (intimidating), and they are not buying their consent, and drawing on their side. Immediately after the defeat of Nazism, the Soviet Union and communist ideas had great potential soft power, but most of it was lost after the events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the process continues with the use of the Soviet Union, its military power.