Maybe it's what you mean, but said that way it can be easily misunderstood. Many of those in a position to make or influence decisions have only one reason (at least one so overwhelmingly important to them that secondaries and tertiaries are irrelevant) but alliances are formed among individuals who have different "one" reasons, and often without each knowing what the others' priorities are.
It's all so complicated; as I said, I haven't begun to figure it out. But I'm pretty sure these people weren't really in control of the West throughout the Cold War.
My first point relates to this also. No one was "in control of the West" during the Cold War years; it was a continuous struggle among competing interests to find a course which fit the priorities of each. Every corner of the Western political apparatus had input, including communists, neo-fascsts, One-Worlders of left and right, and virulent anti communists. That it played out the way it did was, IMO, more accident than design. Related to this, I think glasnost and Prerestroika were intended to deceive the West to help the Soviet's pull their chesnuts out of the economic fire, but it got out of hand. As it got out of hand the upper-tier nomenclatura saw some things they liked and have since been trying to weave limited democracy, capitalism, corruption and authoritarianism into a Red flying carpet.
BUT I'LL BET ZVIADIST AND ASKEL5 HAVE A BETTER-INFORMED VIEW
Agreed. This was, in fact, the point of my post #58. We were all in it for different reasons and had different visions of what the peace might look like. The economic materialst, globalist crowd appears to have "won the peace" under Bush I and Clinton.
"...glasnost and Prerestroika were intended to deceive the West to help the Soviet's pull their chesnuts out of the economic fire, but it got out of hand..."
Again, I agree. Gorbachev and some of the upper echelon Communists thought they could "ride the tiger" of capitalist and limited democratic reform. If, like the Chinese, they had limited their reforms to the economic sphere while leaving Leninist social control apparatus in place, they might have succeeded. But they didn't do that. Instead, they introduced limited democratic reforms, which quickly spun out of their control. The rest, as they say, is history. Askel will no doubt disagree with all of this and call me naive again. :)
"But I'll bet Askel and Zviadist have a better informed view."
They usually do!