The Cold War ended peacefully in 1991 after the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union collapsed, partly due to its inability to compete economically with the United States and Western Europe. However, the United States likewise began to show signs of slippage in its geopolitical influence, even as its private sector, now less inhibited by the claims of the public sector, increasingly sought private advantage to the prejudice of the public weal.