Sarah Paine

Others would come to the opposite conclusion.

They would say, no, it took every single one of them for the Cold War to end on Western terms.

And here's back to Anatoly Kovalyov, the deputy foreign minister.

He said, look,

All these factors merge.

Internal, ideological, economic, military, it's all of them.

You remove any one of them and you get a different outcome.

Maybe the Cold War ends, but it might end completely differently.

So by this line of reasoning, the best barely won.

You should feel very fortunate that it did.

One can take this last argument and say it was more than that.

It also took the confluence and office of two very talented leaders, Helmut Kohl of Germany and George Bush Sr.

of the United States.

Not the son who got into those forever wars, but the dad who didn't.

George Bush Sr.

had one of the most amazing resumes of any president ever, any person to become president of the United States.

Just look at him.

When he's really young, he's a war hero in World War II.

He's a Navy pilot.

Dangerous thing to do.