Fair enough.
Tell me you are kidding. Please. The USSR was a top-down planned economy focused on two things: the suppression of dissent and the maintenance of a war machine of uncontestable power to maintain its and expand its empire and defend the empire's borders. There were only three entities in the Soviet Union that exercised any power, the Party, the KGB, and the Army: and Soviet politics consisted entirely of these three entities manouvering for power.......in the 72 years between the establishment of the Soviet Union and it's fall in 1989, the government managed to murder at least 20 million of its own citizens: double the number the Nazis murdered, second only to that other "communist" monolith China, that managed to murder at least 50 million.......it really was the Evil Empire.
The USA was a free market, democratic nation: the first modern democracy, and one of the freest nations on earth..........you can hardly rule out the "ideological differences" as they were a) the reason for the conflict in the first place, and b) the reason the west emerged victorius: so far.
For thev reasons listed above.
Gorbachev was, and remained a dedicated communist.......although a much more humane individual than any of the previous leaders of the USSR. Yet the fact remains the same: collectivist agriculture was a failure, Soviet industry was a failure, the economy was in the toilet, and a nation based completely on the upkeep of a massive military machine simply could no longer keep up to the west's free market economy........... (the old joke in the USSR? We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us")
well, economic management was never non-existent.....it was simply dumb-ass, a economy wrecked by ideology and top-down control, that Gorbachev tried to fix by tinkering......and it got away from him.
Ronnie Reagan forced the fall of the USSR by not backing down in Iceland.......unbelievably, he will go down in history as one of the best Presidents of the 20th Century......he believed in the power and superiority and ultimate victory of the American way......and he dragged everyone else along with him.....and proved to be right.........
Amazing.
It doesn't require brains, I guess.