The end of the Soviet-American competition not only seemed to occur unexpectedly but also destroyed near-unshakable assumptions about the long-lasting nature of the Cold War. Structural change in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe had put in place the conditions, under which the superpower conflict could actually have ended by in the first half of the 1980s. But why, then, did the superpower conflict still take so long to end? Both superpowers were Cold Warriors almost until the very end. American-centric interpretations of a US victory in the Cold War to the contrary, the USSR decided to end it. Although the last Soviet leader originally sought to reform and strengthen the Soviet Union, by 1988 he realized that this goal was unattainable.