POLI 362 – Topics
1) Three Views: Traditional, Revisionist, Security-Dilemma
a) Traditionalist view
Figure:
Soviet belief in ideology Æ Soviet goal of replacing capitalism Æ Soviet takeover of East Europe
Origin:
• Beginning of the Cold War (CW): ~1940s/50s
• Oldest interpretation
Representatives:
• The Committee on the Present Danger
• George Kennan (1947)
• David Horowitz
• Arnold Beichman
Main arguments:
• Soviet Union (SU) planned to undermine the Capitalist system, it was not only a defensive system
• SU was motivated by ideology in its expansionism
• SU was a threat to Western security, the United States (US) was right in resisting this threat
• Responsibility for the CW lies at the SU
Evidence:
• Soviet leaders’ thinking before 1917:
Æ mistrust of the West was already there
Æ Lenin’s speeches (“rise against the remaining capitalist world”) and his belief in the
inevitableness of a war between the East and the West
Æ Party program of the Bolcheviks 1917: “our task is to fight capitalism in the world, even with
armed forces”
Æ no assumption that capitalism would perish without revolution (Kennan)
• Soviet movement evolved in the underground, these origins led to a sense of insecurity and
fanatism (Kennan)
Æ they feel besieged and can’t tolerate other powers (e.g. the church, other parties)
Æ the system needs an external threat to maintain its oppressive power (no internal adversaries
anymore)
Æ the leaders strongly believe in their ideology
• SU under Stalin = “Red Fascism” resp. “evil empire” (Gaddis)
Æ similarities between Hitler and Stalin
Æ Stalin killed many more people than Hitler
Æ Stalin’s role models: Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible
• Cooperation with Stalin was impossible
Æ cruel character, but highly intelligent/calculating (Gaddis)
Æ personality and ideology reinforced each other in making Stalin hard to reassure (Jervis)
Æ restraint was practiced mainly when there was an expectation of a strong Western response
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Soviet military build-up after WWII and the refusal of the Baruch plan and the Marshall Plan
Stalin’s imposition of Soviet-style governments in Eastern Europe and the Berlin blockade
Krushchev’s attempt to spread communism in Third World countries
Strengths:
• Many of the claims proved to be true after the end of the SU (better access to Soviet documents)
Conflicting evidence / Weaknesses:
• Doesn’t really consider the Soviet side and (understandable) motivations
• Often: reduction of the CW to a bilateral zero-sum game
• Often joined with national self-righteousness
• Often concealment of American mistakes / offensive actions (double standards)
• U-2 Spy Plane incident in 1959-Krushchev visiting US, Eisenhower approving U-2 flight
b) Revisionist view
Figure:
Past invasions/actions of the West Æ Soviet goal of security Æ Soviet takeover of East Europe
Origin:
• 1960s: a group of young scholars (mainly American) challenged the existing interpretations
• inspiration: Williams’ “The Tragedy of American diplomacy” and the Vietnam war
Representatives:
• Thomas G. Paterson
• Melvyn P. Leffler
• Jonathan Steele
• William Appleman Williams
Main arguments:
• US foreign policy has failed to develop a sound view of the SU
• The SU was primarily concerned with defense, with reactions to actions of the US
• The US was an active, expansionist power driven by (here the authors differ):
- economic reasons
- misperception
- confidence over military power
• The American expansionism was more a reaction to internal needs (ideological, political,
economic, strategic,…) and thus would have been developed even if the SU had not been there
Evidence:
• Historical argument: historical invasions of the country created a lasting sense of insecurity (Steele)
Æ Incursions from Poles, Swedes, and Germans. Napoleon’s march on Moscow. Mongol invasion
of 1237 destroyed the old Russia, and suppressed its culture for 250 years.
Æ two invasions since the Bolshevik revolution: Interventionists (1918), Nazis (1941)
Æ Americans did little to analyze the threat perceived by the Soviets (Leffler)
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Three main factors behind the Kremlin’s security fears (Steele):
1. a sense of geographical encirclement
2. the knowledge of two invasions since the revolution and the fear of possible future invasions
3. awareness that the next war is likely to be the last (nuclear weapons)
Æ After WWII: the SU felt that they needed a fighting machines that prevents them from future
invasions: development of a nuclear potential
Main goal of foreign policy: to gain respect and stability/parity (Steele)
Æ Arbatov: ”Our people have a right to some respect for what they have achieved in spite of
enormous difficulties.”
Æ document on the Basic Principles of Mutual Relations (1972): essential conditions are the
“observance of the principle of equality and equal security, respect for each other’s interests and the
peaceful settlement of differences”
Americans disregarded numerous signs of Soviet weakness, moderation and circumspection or used
them to illustrate that the Soviets were shifting tactics but not altering objectives (Leffler)
Æ withdrawal of Russian troops from northern Norway, Manchuria, Bornholm, and Iran
Æ reduction of troops in Eastern Europe and within the SU
Æ weak infrastructure and economy
Æ Soviet press not unalterably critical of the US, Stalin’s moderate speech on the UN
The Soviet threat was just an excuse for the expansionism of the US (Paterson)
Æ NSC-68 (National Security Council Paper No. 68) 1950: the “overall policy [of the US is]
designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish”
and this policy “we would probably pursue even if there were no Soviet threat”
Æ NSC-68 is supposed to be based on Kennan’s containment.
The creation of the NATO worsened the conflict even if there was no need for it (Paterson,
Kennan)
The SU was weaker than the US in the 1940s and 1950s: threat was exaggerated by the US
(Paterson)
Æ wrecked economy, weak military, no modern navy, no strategic air force, no nuclear potential
and no air defenses, demobilizing of forces after the war
Æ Soviet military threat to Western Europe was more myth than reality
BUT: Why did the US exaggerate the Soviet threat?
1. When leaders do not know, they tend to assume the worst of an adversary’s intentions and
capabilities.
2. To extricate the US from commitments and restraints that were no longer considered desirable.
3. Truman liked things in black and white, thus his staff simplified and exaggerated the Soviet
threat.
Æ the Truman doctrine was imprecise and universal, though it was clearly and only aimed at the
SU (“support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by
outside pressures”)
Æ problem: What about China? (Æ double standard)
4. Americans confused goals with actual behavior.
Æ the Soviets did not have a firm grip on Eastern Europe before 1948
Double standard of the US for the Soviet states and the American sphere of influence in Latin
America, where an unsavoury lot of dictators ruled (Paterson)
“Tragedy of American diplomacy” (Williams)
Æ gap between aspirations and accomplishments: the US preached self-determination but objected
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when others sought to practice it, it proclaimed the virtues of economic freedom even as it sought to
impose economic control
Stalin’s successors didn’t see the war between West and East as inevitable anymore
State interests became more important than international interests in 1977 (according to party
programs)
History of economic relations between the two states
Æ the West, in contrast to the SU, has frequently been an unreliable partner
Documents like the “What Is the Soviet Union Up to?” by the Committee on the Present Danger
(1978) show the deep institutionalization of harsh Anti-Soviet thoughts proposing a military
strategy, even during the days of détente.
Æ fear of inferiority: “…we are convinced […] that if past trends continue, the USSR will within
several years achieve strategic superiority over the United Sates.”
Æ fear of losing Western Europe: “…principal medium-term objectives of Soviet grand strategy
include: […] Multiplying and tightening the links connecting Western Europe to the Soviet Union
and its dependencies, and concurrently cutting it adrift from the United States.”
Æ fear of losing control over oil: “The USSR wishes both to make oil more costly […] and more
importantly to be in a position to control oil supplies necessary to the West.”
Strengths:
• Attempt to understand the Soviet motivation
• Focus on (often important) misperceptions
Conflicting evidence / Weaknesses:
• Soviet leaders’ thinking before 1916 (Kennan)
1. Capitalism leads to exploitation
2. Capitalism, in its final form of Imperialism, will lead to a revolution by the working class
Æ no assumption that Capitalism would perish without revolution
• Texts like “Main Stages in Soviet Foreign Policy” (1968) express strong antipathy towards the
West and especially the US (and the will to fight them resp. imperialism) and the feeling of “the
Soviet Union against the others”. It is written in a very polemic, ideologic and self-righteous way,
sometimes almost funny to read (especially because of the exaggeration of the Soviet peace-love).
Æ “Almost the whole of the capitalist world came out against the Soviet Republic.” (p.53)
Æ “If the Western leaders had accepted the Soviet proposals, the Second World War might not
have taken place.” (p. 54)
Æ “The Second World War has aggravated the crisis of the world capitalist system, accelerated the
collapse of the colonial system and the liberation of the oppressed nations.” (p. 54)
• Focuses to much on the US, no attempt to deeply analyze the Soviet foreign policy (Gaddis)
• Often: double standard for the SU (milder) and the US (harsher)
• Underestimation or even concealment of the role of Soviet ideology / expansionism
• Exaggeration of the SU’s desire for respect
• Concealment of Stalin’s cruel and aggressive regime (Gaddis)
Æ Stalin didn’t believe in long-term cooperation with the US (election speech 1946)
c) Security-dilemma view
Origin:
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1980s: attempts to draw a post-revisionist synthesis
Main arguments:
• the reason for the CW is to find in the condition of the international system and not in certain states
or leaders
Æ states more or less as black boxes
Æ international system = anarchy (absence of an accepted authority)
Æ each state is left largely to its own devices
• as each state looks after its security it forces other states to react to this behavior
• a security-dilemma can be produced by the very condition of uncertainty, combined with
misperception
• the reason for the CW is to find in the condition of the international system and not in certain states
or leaders
• tragic: states may desire mutual security, but their own behavior puts this very goal further from
their reach
Evidence (Jervis)
• Soviet military build-up after WWII and the reaction of the US
Æ even if the SU never seriously contemplated an all-out attack, Western leaders had to assume the
worst
• governments were driven by nightmares of inferiority, not by hopes of gain
• the US wanted to freeze the status quo at the end of WWII, as they were the superior power, the SU
wanted to catch up
Strengths:
• “no fault” argument: politically useful both within and between countries
• no either/or-mentality
• Inclusion of a system level-analysis
Weaknesses / Problems with the concept (Jervis)
• States as black boxes, no exploration of national or personal influences / particularities
• What is the object of security (e.g., individuals, the regime, the state, the values,…) and what is
needed to make states or individuals feel secure?
• Decision makers can’t always know which actions are safe or dangerous and costly.
• Problem: when security is equated with the preservation of the status quo.
Æ even expansionism can be pursued with a goal of security
• “Deep security dilemma”: a number of factors put mutual security out of reach
• Whether offensive or defensive motives are at work depends in part on which segment of the
means-ends chain one examines
• Two linked beliefs ensured that each side’s policies were seen as offensive:
- the deterrence theory’s stress on the importance of resolve
- the domino theory
Conflicting evidence (Jervis)
• The CW was no security-dilemma in its beginning: the SU was no military threat to the US
• Why did the SU not concentrate on its own security but try to expand in the Third World?
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It is unlikely that the SU would have been willing to stop their expansionism for a guarantee of the
status quo (reason: ideology)
Each side acted fearful (especially during crisis) and refrained from pressing the other side as hard
as it could have
US fears were more vague and less direct, involving instabilities of all kinds, the SU feared the
West in the sense of worrying that it could block their moves (different from the concept of the
security dilemma)
If a full-fledged security-dilemma had existed, Soviet leaders would have responded with arms and
hostility
For the SU, security in terms of maintaining a status quo was not a goal at all: they wanted to
expand communism and save what they already had achieved
as the US realized that maintaining the status quo was not possible, they often pursued offensive
tactics: they believed that the instability of world politics precluded a purely defensive posture
Given the basic beliefs and conceptions of self-interest on each side, there is little reason to believe
that even the best diplomacy could have brought an end to the CW (Jervis)
2) George Kennan (*1904)
a) Personal
• Prominent American diplomat (1933-45) and Soviet expert (he was stationed in Moscow from
1933-35 and for some years during WWII)
• After WWII: director of the State Department's policy-planning staff
• 1947: Mr. X-article
• 1950: Kennan left diplomacy and became a prominent scholar of the American-Soviet relations
• 1956: he became professor at Princeton University
b) Attitude towards the SU
• the US has to pay attention to the SU, as their ideology has nothing in common with the American
one
Æ SU = the only nation combining hostility with capability to do something about it
Æ functions of Soviet ideology: legitimization of an illegitimate government , excuse for repression
Æ writings of Marx and Lenin no reliable guide to Soviet behavior, as it is more a product of social
and political reality
Æ political personality of the SU = ideology + circumstances (of the power which they now have
exercised for nearly three decades)
• Soviet movement evolved in the underground, these origins led to a sense of insecurity and
fanatism (Kennan)
Æ circumstances of the immediate post-revolution period made the establishment of dictatorial
power a necessity
Æ they feel besieged and can’t tolerate other powers (e.g. the church, other parties)
Æ the system needed an external threat to maintain its oppressive power as capitalism as internal
threat no longer existed
Æ the leaders strongly believe in their ideology, the US shouldn’t misjudge that
Æ today (1947) the major part of the Soviet power structure is committed to the perfection of the
dictatorship (organs of suppression, fiction of foreign antagonism)
• SU is no military threat (1940s) but an “ideological-political” threat (especially to weak countries)
Æ the need and thirst for peace was overwhelming among the Russian people, weak economy and
military of the SU
Æ BUT: the SU had emerged from the war with great prestige for its immense and successful war
effort: danger of taking over weak countries by ideological-political intrigue and penetration
Æ the US government made fairly extensive concessions while the Russians were refusing to give
us even a look in their zone of occupation in Germany
Æ democracy in other countries has to be saved by the US by being a role model for the rest of the
world (not by military force) Æ SOFT POWER
Æ in this sense, communism seems to be a welcome complication
• He recognized the weaknesses of the SU (in contrast to many others)
Æ poor infrastructure, poor and hasty construction
Æ no culture of production and technical self-respect
Æ physically and spiritually tired population
Æ growing divergence between the great mass of Party members and the men at the top
Æ prediction: the SU would collapse if the oppression would stop
• Forecast: the SU bears in itself the seeds of its own decay
Æ mellowing or break-up will come because the system predicts something that they won’t achieve
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and that can’t go on forever
Æ if the US gives an example of good government (soft power), the SU will collapse sooner or
later
The Kremlin is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry
Æ on the one hand: more sensitive to contrary force, no do-or-die program likeable
Æ on the other hand: cannot be discouraged by a single victory of the US
Æ facts speak louder than words to the ears of the Kremlin, BUT: the US should always remain
cool and collected and leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental for the SU
c) Attitude towards the US’s response
• Kennan saw a cooperation with Stalin as impossible, the US would have to wait until he was gone
and contain Soviet power as good as possible in the meantime
Æ Stalin wasn’t even able to work together with other Communist leaders (e.g. Czechoslovakia),
he tried to rule over them
Æ even within the Communist Party, Stalin’s rule was a cruel and not a cooperative one (he was
responsible for the death of six Politbureau-members)
Æ the US shouldn’t trust signs of negotiation by Stalin
Æ after Stalin’s death, Kennan changed his views in many ways
• Kennan favored the particularized approach to national security:
1. universalistic approach: security through the creation of structures like the UN, goal: harmony
2. particularized approach: thirst for power cannot be solved by anything but counterforce, goal:
balance of power
Æ Kennan: universalism neither feasible nor desirable, armed conflicts sometimes inevitable
(“Peace if possible, and insofar as it effects our interests.”)
• Short-term aim: containment, long-term aim: rollback
Æ three stages of action:
1. restoring the balance of power by restoring Western Europe and Japan (transforming erstwhile
enemies into allies)
2. Exploiting tensions between Communist countries (without assuming responsibility for it)
3. Encourage modification of Soviet foreign policy (combination of deterrents and inducement),
goal: the SU’s toleration or even encouragement of diversity
Æ slow, long-range, patient economic / political strategy that relied on a balance of power (many
others saw balance of power as evil and preferred a military build-up Æ NSC-68, a paper by the
National Security Council, that saw the SU as a military threat)
Æ military forces important but not the only determinants of power, they have distinct limitations
Æ exploiting tension could mean being willing to tolerate, and even cooperate with, other
totalitarist communist governments independent of the SU (e.g. Tito), BUT: not with China
Æ important (especially for the last step): “good form” in foreign affairs (self-confidence joined
with patience, integrity and dignity)
• Important: American patience and prudence in its interactions with the SU, joined with firm and
decided containment
Æ Kennan feared the impatience of the Americans and was sceptical of mass democracy
Æ he already emphasized the important role of “soft power” (= the US as a role model)
BUT: no signs of indecision, disunity or integral disintegration!
• Only “strong point defense”, not “perimeter defense”
Æ not all areas are equally vital to American interest, vitally important are only military-industrial
centers, i.e., Western Europe, Japan, Great Britain, SU
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(! Contrast to typical “everything goes” American foreign policy)
Æ important: to know its country’s interests and protect them (but not more): capabilities are finite,
so interests must be also
Æ internal organization of other states are not in itself a proper matter of concern for the US
Æ dangerous is the combination of hostility with the ability to do something about it
Æ principle follows security (BUT: there need be no conflict)
Three criteria to govern dispensity of American aid:
1. the existence of any local forces of resistance worth strengthening
2. the importance of the challenged areas to our own security
3. the probable costs of our action and their relation to the probable results
Æ the US doesn’t have to resist communism wherever it appears
d) Evaluation
• Kennan was often misunderstood
Æ did not spell out very clearly how to deal with the SU
Æ sometimes he had a poor choice of words: “unalterable counterforce at every point” meaning not
military but political counterforce
Æ he should have been clearer about what he meant with containment
• Contradiction: US as a role model for other nations ⇔ toleration or even cooperation with other
totalitarist communist governments that are independent from the SU
Æ inconsiderate short-term strategy?
• He underestimated the time until the break-down of the SU (10-15 years)
• He overestimated the destructive power of the change in the leadership after Stalin
Æ BUT: there were some problems, it was not an easy matter for the SU (struggle between
Krushchev and Beria)
• Mr. X-article:
Æ doesn’t advance much evidence for his views
Æ doesn’t review other views
Æ wasn’t clear enough about the Soviet threat to Western countries
Æ doesn’t say anything about the time after Stalin
• Kennan was not very concerned about the Third World: in his eyes the US couldn’t do much about
societies that were not ready for democracy, people had to come to this point by themselves
• Kennan was critical about supranational institutions like the NATO and the UN
• He doesn’t fit in a category like “dove” or “hawk”
Æ SU = a threat, negative view, blame for the CW on Soviet shoulders
Æ BUT: a patient, sometimes even passive policy towards the SU
• Kennan saw himself as a “gardener”, in contrast to the majority of “mechanics” in the American
political class
Æ a gardener plants, cultivates, weeds, he works patiently with nature, tries to shape things, but
knows that there are things that are not in his power
Æ a mechanic believes in action and intervention, in order to fix, build, reconstruct, and (if
necessary) to destroy, he tries to change everything that doesn’t meet his visions
Æ Kennan always feared the mechanical American temper: a “nation of tinkerers, fixers, doers,
with little interest in what Henry Ford called the “bunk” of history, national character, national
culture. Americans want goals, programs and action, not lectures on the virtue of patience.” (Pfaff)
• A very individualistic thinker
Æ he opposed nuclear weapons and the building of NATO as a shift to the military aspect of the
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conflict
Æ he proposed “mutual disengagement” of the US and the SU
Æ he opposed an engagement in Vietnam and the “Star Wars” initiative
Critical towards the deviation of American policy:
- exaggeration of the Soviet threat
- overemphasis on military build-up
- confusing of Communism and the SU as the enemy
- unclear about vital and peripheral interests
Kennan was a critic of the role of public opinion and congress in American foreign policy
Æ short-sighted, impatient
Æ ambivalent evaluation: Elite view? Or correct view?
He was never afraid to swim against the current or to say unpopular things
He never stuck to his old views if he thought changed circumstances required a change of views
Æ Article: “Containment Then And Now” (1987)
Æ Kennan saw a totally changed, even reverse situation: no more an ideological-political threat but
a military one
Æ BUT: not because of a current and actual threat but because of the sheer seize of their armed
forces establishment
Æ AND: above all critical towards the weapons race itself
Æ harsh critique of America: “much of our own life […] needs early containment”: environmental
destructiveness, tendency to live beyond our means, inability to reduce a devastating budgetary
deficit, inability to control immigration
3) The nature of the Cold War
a) Reasons / Causes: Why did it happen?
• Helpful distinction by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.: causes and excesses
• Schlesinger sees the power structure after WWII and the opposite ideologies of both superpowers
as the main reasons or causes for the CW:
1. Power structure / geopolitical rivalry
Æ Axis states vanished, Western European allies spent, colonial empires in tumult and dissolution
Æ great gapping holes appeared in the structure of world power
Æ only two nations had the military strength and the political will to fill these vacuums
2. Ideological rivalry
Æ the two nations were constructed on opposite and profoundly antagonistic principles:
fundamental disagreements about human rights, individual liberties, cultural freedom, the role of
civil society, the direction of history, and the destiny of man
Æ each state saw the other as irrevocably hostile to its own essence
Æ given these two rivalries, it would have been a surprise if there had been no CW! (Schlesinger)
Æ it is unlikely that the CW could have been prevented as it was due not to misunderstandings or
misjudgments but to values deeply embedded in the two political systems and interests of supreme
importance to the leaders on each side (Bialer/Mandelbaum)
• BUT: Who “began” the CW? No one? Both superpowers? Or one more than the other?
Æ Traditionalists: the SU was responsible for the CW because of its anti-capitalist, hostile ideology
that led the US to resistance even before there was a military threat by the SU
Æ Revisionists: the US was responsible for the CW as the SU was no real threat to the US in the
beginning of the CW and was used more or less as an excuse for American expansionism
Æ Post-revisionist synthesis: structural dilemmas (e.g. security-dilemma, “tectonic” forces etc.)
were responsible for the CW, both superpowers had concerns that led to the CW
• My view: Evidence best supports the traditionalist view
Æ the Soviet ideology was indeed hostile towards the West, even long before the CW began
Æ no comparable ideology can be found in the US: changing governments and the democratic
dynamics precluded a static and lasting ideology like the Soviet one
Æ before WWII the US was more an isolationist nation that wanted to keep out of international ties
Æ after WWII the US was hesitant to accept the SU as an opponent, many kept the hope to
preserve the companionable relationship of the war period
Æ the Europeans, especially the British (Churchill), tried to convince the US not to make too much
concessions to the SU
Æ even if the SU had no military potential to threaten the US after WWII, their behavior was
alarming for the US in a political dimension (e.g. Stalin’s imposition of Soviet-style governments in
Eastern Europe (1944-48), Stalin’s election speech in February 1946, his refusal of the Baruch Plan
(1946) and the Marshall plan for Eastern Europe (1947), the Berlin blockade (1948))
Æ The American reaction came after that: Truman doctrine (1947), containment of Communism
and support for threatened countries
b) Excesses of the Cold War: Why did it last for so long? Why got it so bad?
• Six fallacies of the CW (Schlesinger):
1. overinterpreting the enemy (master plans, diabolic efficiency in executing these plans)
Æ both should have known better from their own experience
2. overinstitutionalizing the policy (hard-liners on each side fed one another)
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Æ ideas crystallized in bureaucracies resist change
3. arrogant prediction (many actions were only based on presumed actions of the other side)
Æ history has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes
4. national self-righteousness
Æ only rare attempts to understand the other side led to a disproportion between causes and
excesses
5. reduction of the CW to a bilateral game
Æ European countries and other allies were often strongly involved and influential
6. perception of the CW as a zero-sum game
Æ led to a disinterest in negotiation and a demand for capitulation of the other side
Personal reasons (Paterson, Kennan, Gaddis, Jervis)
Paterson: Truman liked things in black and white and thus his staff simplified and exaggerated the
Soviet threat
Æ the Truman doctrine was imprecise and universal, though it was clearly aimed at the SU
(“support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside
pressures”), BUT: What about China? (double standard)
Kennan, Gaddis, Jervis: Stalin was a factor that made the CW worse
Æ Personality and ideology reinforced each other in making Stalin hard to reassure (Jervis)
Æ Stalin couldn’t tolerate rival political forces because of a great sense of insecurity (Kennan)
Æ Stalin’s role models (Peter the Great, Ivan the terrible), his cruel character and his high
intelligence strongly influenced the development of the CW (Gaddis)
The division of Europe (Bialer/Mandelbaum)
Æ three main reasons for the SU to dominate Eastern Europe
1. ideology: to spread the revolution abroad
2. security: buffer zone against the West
3. justice: the SU had paid for it in blood
Two linked beliefs ensured that each side’s policies were competitive or even offensive (Jervis)
1. the deterrence theory’s stress on the importance of resolve (to prevent an all-out war)
2. the domino theory (resolve in defending all countries from Communism to prevent adversaries
from being encouraged and allies from losing faith by American inaction)
“Deep security dilemma”: a number of factors put mutual security out of reach (Jervis), e.g. the fear
that the other’s relative power is dangerously increasing, technology, events outside their control,
subjective security requirements
Æ a clash between different social systems that only agreed about the fact that the world could not
last indefinitely “half slave and half free”
Æ even passive actions can be indistinguishable in their effect from expansionism
Decolonization (Bailer/Mandelbaum)
Æ Krushchev tried to take advantage of the tumult and dissolution in the colonial empires and to
spread the Communism in the Third World
c) Why were the relations between the US and the SU such a rollercoaster? What were the forces that
promoted the ongoing change of relations? (Marantz)
c1) Factors pulling the countries together
Æ Factors that influenced both countries
• the will not to start a (nuclear) war
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the costs of the arms race
the relations were no zero-sum game (regional conflicts, trade, China)
allies of both countries were concerned about the CW and tried to gain a moderating influence
on them
Æ Soviet interests in détente
• hope that the improvement of the relationship would lead to a weakening of NATO because of
internal frictions
• hope that a détente would make for demands for a cut in the military expenditures in the
American public
• hope for a certain degree of American ignorance towards the SU / a wider scope of action
• need for imports: grain, technology, investments
• desire of a recognition as a full and powerful member of the international system (summit
meetings as a symbol for such a full membership)
Æ American interests in détente
• a way of winning votes (Nixon’s first visit to the SU was during an election year)
• hope that an increased trade and growing standards of living would make people interested in
material goods and thus in capitalism (critique: “fat communism = good communism”)
• hope that increasing trade would restrain Soviet expansionism (if you have something to lose,
you are not interested in revolution anymore)
• reduced tensions would make it harder for the SU to keep influence over Eastern Europe
• liberal view of the US: harmony is the natural order of things, conflict is both unnatural and
avoidable and thus can be solved (⇔ SU: conflict between workers and bourgeoisie is natural)
c2) Factors driving the countries apart
Æ Factors that influenced both countries
• both countries were competitors for world influence, both felt that stakes were very high (major
conflicts were zero-sum conflicts or at least seemed to be: Cuba, Vietnam)
• mutual suspicions and misperceptions (Schlesinger)
Æ worst-case scenarios, overinterpreting and arrogant prediction on both sides
Æ each side attributed to the other a master plan of world domination
• the arms race
Æ as the military arsenals of both countries were always different, there was always an area in
which one had to catch up
Æ rapid technology change made it hard to regulate the arms race, the pace of technology was
faster than the skills to regulate it
• great changes in the developing world
Æ the SU tried to take advantage of this and to gain influence (Krushchev)
Æ incompatible perceptions: the SU felt entitled to intervene by their ideology and the
interventions of the US in other countries, the US saw the SU’s behavior as evidence for the
Communist blueprint
Æ Soviet contributions to the worsening of the conflict
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Soviet secrecy and Soviet power structure
Æ SU as a “big black box” for the outside world (e.g. no possibility to travel there)
Æ centrally run, only few restraints for the few people who were in power
Soviet sense of insecurity
Æ produced insecurity elsewhere
Æ even defensive actions were not seen as defensive by the outside world
Æ the SU was even very insecure about its own people (rigid internal regulations)
Ideological residues
Æ self-righteousness and ideological black-and-white thinking rejected an acceptance of
concepts of stability and equality
Æ no critical writings allowed
Heavy reliance on military strength (especially under Brezhnev)
Æ Brezhnev: “the more military, the more security”
Æ compensation for Soviet economic and ideological (“soft power”) weakness since the 1970s
The Soviets’ drive for expansion of their power
Æ not only a defensive status quo-state, not only concerned about respect and security
Æ the Soviets had very ambitious goals, derived from their Marxist-Leninist ideology
Æ American contributions to the worsening of the conflict
• Public opinion: quite volatile, tended from one extreme to the other
Æ during times of détente: tendency to overly optimism (then: blowback)
Æ during times of tension: tendency to ovexaggerate the power of the SU, disbelief in a sense
of negotiation
• American leaders
Æ lack of experience: Truman, Carter, Reagan
Æ influences of the (short) electoral cycle: creates dependence on public opinion
• Limited analysis of own policies
Æ active policy in the Third World
Æ no attempts to understand the perception of the US in other countries
Æ double standard for own policies and policies of the SU
• US diplomacy was not enough flexible and creative
Æ slow to realize the tensions between China and the SU (1963), slow to utilize them in the
diplomacy (“triangular diplomacy”)
Æ U-2 incident
• Recurring American tendency to exaggerate Soviet strength
Æ exaggeration of the Soviet gains in the Third World and especially the Soviets’ military
strength (tendency to focus only on this military dimension)
Æ BUT: not always only the fault of the Americans, the Soviet exaggerated their own strength
too
BUT: Why – despite all the excesses – did it never explode into a hot war?
Æ nuclear weapons (Schlesinger, Bialer/Mandelbaum)
e) Key issues of the two countries
Æ Issues of the US
• Nuclear arms race
• Possible military threat by the SU to Western Europe
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Soviet expansionism to the Third World
Soviet domination/suppression in Eastern Europe
Soviet denial of human rights to their own people
Détente: seen as a means to transform the SU into a status-quo-country
Æ Issues of the SU
• Acceptance of the SU’s power and future gains of power by the West
• No interference in domestic affairs
• Objection to the surrounding of their own country by military bases of the US
• Stop of the American gain for military superiority
• Détente: seen as a sign of American weakness / of an acceptance of Soviet gains
e) The end of the Cold War
• Important: the end of the CW came very unexpected, no school of thought had foreseen it:
Æ doves: it’s important for the West to change its policies: only acceptance of the SU as a normal,
legitimate state and of the security concerns of the SU could bring an end to the CW
Æ hawks: the SU could be defeated similar to Hitler/Mussolini, but: no real plan to bring this
about; they were also surprised by the breakdown of the SU as they had always overestimated the
strength of the SU
Æ moderates: expected a gradual easing of tensions, a “step by step” ending through a process of
negotiation and communication; they believed that the SU was here to stay and only negotiation
could solve the conflict
• Gorbachev was not the first Soviet leader who implemented important changes, Krushchev had also
abandoned some principles of the Stalinist world view:
1. basic belief in the inevitability of world war as long as Capitalism existed
2. belief in a Capitalist encirclement from the revolution to the 1950s
3. belief in the impossibility of arms control as long as there was Capitalism
Æ Krushchev revised these formulae and stopped the abundant political terror that had been
established under Stalin
BUT: he was more a gambler than the cautious Stalin, changes stopped in 1960 (U-2 incident),
Krushchev always remained a strong believer in the primary characteristics of the Soviet ideology:
1. class-based view of international politics
2. two-camp view (Communism and Capitalism)
3. unilateral view of security / equation of security with military strength
4. isolationist attitude towards the West: economic self-sufficiency, non-exchange currency
• The “New Thinking” led to the end of the CW / the end of the SU
Æ three formulae were abandoned with the New Thinking (Dallin):
1. the ‘two camp-view’
2. the zero-sum approach
3. the class approach to international relations
Æ priority on ‘all-human’, ‘global’ interests, on political rather than military solutions
• Three dominant categories of explanation of the New Thinking (English):
1. crisis: the SU was an overextended, bankrupt empire, they had to react to this
2. leadership: handiwork of a rare visionary statesman (Gorbachev)
3. ideas: the détente-era international ties and supporting domestic networks
• English (+Dallin) : none of the dominant categories addresses a critical, earlier, process: the
emergence of a Soviet intellectual elite holding sharply unorthodox beliefs about the SU
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Æ the thaw era (~1956) and the Prague Spring (1968) created and mobilized a liberal-reformist
domestic community in institutes, editorial boards, and consultant groups
Æ exchange with the West, study of reforms in Eastern Europe
Æ détente fostered links between these new thinkers and a small group of reform-minded senior
Party officials (leader: Gorbachev)
Bialer: the New Thinking was a coincidence of
Æ domestic sources: systemic crisis (‘crisis of effectiveness’), economic imperatives (e.g.
extensive model of growth, economic infrastructure), social imperatives (low work ethic, political
alienation from party and regime, no representation of the growing middle class, inefficient but
costly Soviet welfare state)
Æ International sources: advantage of the Western countries in economic developments (‘Third
Industrial Revolution’), deteriorating soft power of the SU in the 1970s and 1980s, erosion of
strategic balance to the US (‘Star Wars’), overextended international involvement, deteriorated
economy in Eastern Europe
Æ BUT: intense perception of the need for change had to combine with a catalyst: Gorbachev
Marantz: Gorbachev’s main changes
1. no focus on (class) differences anymore but on universal interests (avoidance of war,
safeguarding of the environment, prevention of diseases,…)
2. view of mutual security: it is not in the interest of the SU to make the West feel insecure
3. reasonably sufficiency: the SU doesn’t need superiority, it doesn’t even need parity; it only needs
a reasonable and affordable sufficiency (e.g. reasonable deterrents)
e) Lessons of the Cold War
• Three lessons of the New Thinking (English):
1. “strength won the Cold War” = greatly oversimplified
Æ most of the New Thinking preceded the Reagan challenge
Æ liberalization was hardly necessary, collapse was anything but imminent, a repressiveconfrontational turn was also possible as reaction to Reagan
2. intersection of power and ideas
Æ declining power of the SU was a catalyst for both reformist and reactionary forces
3. links between international and domestic forces of change were essential in this development
• Schlesinger: democracy won the political argument, the market won the economic argument
• Heisbourg: What did work and what did not?
- hard power worked in ensuring containment but not in rolling back communism
- (value-based) alliance building played a major role in extending US influence
- soft power eventually reigned supreme, whether market driven (economic performance, consumer
choice) or state sponsored (democratic values, human rights)
Æ a Western alliance of values is important for solving future security matters
Æ too high value on short-term expediency and an excess of realism will result in a blowback:
supporting repressive regimes will exacerbate anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism
Æ permanent and value-based alliances (even non-political ones) are important and should make
the coalition