The Russian-Soviet empire: A test of neorealism

Review of International Studies

Volumn 27, Issue SPEC. ISS., 2001, Pages 213-235

  Wohlforth, William C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 23044531644     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Rein Taagepera, 'Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia', International Studies Quarterly, 41:3 (1997), pp. 475-504.
2. Jeffrey Tayler, 'Russia is Finished,' The Atlantic Monthly (May 2001), pp. 35-52.
3. A more graphic example of popular turn-of-the century views of Russia is the following from John Robson, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Ottawa Citizen, 'Normal for Russia is filthy, corrupt, menacing and hollow. Nothing good has ever happened there, nor will it. Russia is a lump of dung wrapped in a cabbage leaf hidden in an outhouse.' Cited in Dmitry Mikheyev 'Russia: Myths and Reality', Johnson's Russia List, no. 5292 (10 June 2001).
4. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). It is important to stress that here I evaluate not the whole family of neorealist theories, but the central aspects of the theory set forth in Waltz's text that bear on the explanation of expansionism.
5. For reviews of this literature, see Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein (eds.), The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993);
6. Richard Rosecrance, 'Overextension, Vulnerability, and Conflict: The "Goldilocks Problem" in International Strategy', International Security, 19:4 (1995), pp. 145-63.
7. Premier examples include: Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984);
8. Snyder, Myths of Empire; Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
9. and Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
10. On Russia, see Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, chs. 6-7.
11. On the Soviet Union, see Matthew Evangelista, 'Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strategy: The Soviet Case', in Rosecrance and Stein (eds.), Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy;
12. Snyder, Myths of Empire, ch. 6.
13. Ted Hopf, Peripheral Visions: Deterrence Theory and American Foreign Policy in the Third World, 1965-1990 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994);
14. and Richard D. Anderson, Jr, Public Politics in an Authoritarian State: Making Foreign Policy During the Brezhnev Years (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
15. Waltz, Theory of International Politics;
16. and Waltz, 'International Politics is Not Foreign Policy', Security Studies, 6:1 (Autumn 1996), esp. pp. 54-57.
17. Cf. Colin Elman, 'Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist Theories of Foreign Policy?', Security Studies 6:1 (Autumn 1996), pp. 7-53.
18. In other words, this is what Stephen Van Evera calls a 'hoop test', because neorealist theory is very likely to fit the Russian-Soviet case of expansion. 'To remain viable, the theory must jump through the hoop this test presents, but passage of the test still leaves the theory in limbo'. See Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 31.
19. It is a less rigorous version of Harry Eckstein's 'most likely' test. See Eckstein, 'Case Study and Theory in Political Science,' in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (eds), Handbook of Political Science, vol. 7: Strategies of Inquiry (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975): pp. 79-137.
20. Paul W. Schroeder, 'Historical Reality versus Neorealist Theory', International Security, 19: 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 108-48;
21. John A. Vasquez, 'The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs', American Political Science Review, 91:4 (1997), pp. 899-912.
22. Paul Pierson, 'Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics', American Political Science Review, 94: 2 (2000), pp. 251-68.
23. Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 4.
24. For a review of this debate, see Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, 'Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited', International Security, 25:3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 128-161.
25. Stephen G. Brooks, 'Dueling Realisms', International Organization, 51:3 (1997), pp. 445-77.
26. Stephen M. Walt, 'The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Research Tradition', in Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner (eds.), Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: The American Political Science Association, forthcoming 2002).
27. William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600-1914 (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
28. Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
29. Jack Snyder, 'Russian Backwardness and the Future of Europe', Daedalus, 123:2 (1994), pp. 179-87;
30. Alexander Gershenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962).
31. Snyder, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective ibid.,
32. and Myths of Empire.
33. Military capabilities do offer some ability to offer rewards to elicit desired behaviour, just as commercial capabilities can be used to coerce. However, military capabilities yield relatively more coercive power than commercial capabilities. The interaction between these different kinds of power is a central tenet of social exchange theory. See David A. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
34. This is a theme in William Curti Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions During the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
35. Snyder, 'Russian Backwardness'.
36. See John Shelton Curtiss, Russia's Crimean War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979, pp. 148-150.
37. Hermann Wentler, Zerstörung der Großmacht Rußland? Die britischen Kriegsziele im Krimkrieg (Göttigen and Zürich: Vandenhoek and Rupprecht, 1993).
38. William C. Fuller, Jr., provides a brilliant analysis of this constraint in Strategy and Power In Russia.
39. See David A. Lake, 'The Rise, Fall and Future of the Russian Empire', in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds.), The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective, (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997);
40. Carlo M. Cipolla (ed.), The Economic Decline of Empires (London: Methuen, 1970);
41. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
42. and Alexander Motyl, 'From Imperial Decay to Imperial Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Empire in Comparative Perspective', in Richard L. Rudolph and David F. Good (eds.), Nationalism and Empire: The Hapsburg Empire and the Soviet Union (New York, 1992).
43. See S. E. Finer, The History of Government from the Earliest Times, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
44. and Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).
45. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 15.
46. Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (London: John Murray, 2000), p. ix.
47. This is a central theme in Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
48. He carries it to the Soviet period in Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001).
49. For a brilliant analysis of the Europe-Asia identity tension, see Marc Bassin, 'Russia Between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geography', Slavic Review 50: 1 (1991), pp. 1-17.
50. Walt, Revolution and War.
51. I trace this process in Elusive Balance.
52. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
53. Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954);
54. Edward Hallet Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1950).
55. Francine Hirsch, 'Empire of Nations: Colonial Technologies and the Making of the Soviet Union, 1917-1939', Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1998.
56. Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
57. See, for example, Michael Rywkin, Russia in Central Asia: How Soviet Colonial Policy Operates and What it Portends (New York: Collier, 1963).
58. 'Confronted with the Soviet design for a world state', another scholar wondered in 1960, 'can the non-Soviet world confine itself to a precarious patchwork of expedients or must it not ... hammer out some common plan for its own survival, which might ultimately foster the genuine integration of all nations?' Elliot R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. xviii.
59. Carr, History of Soviet Russia.
60. Stephen Kotkin, '1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks', The Journal of Modern History, 70:2 (1998), pp. 384-425.
61. Waltz states unequivocally that his 'theory requires no assumptions of rationality', Theory of International Politics, p. 131.
62. My claim here is simply that the theory is not one of strict rational choice in the two senses discussed in the text below. There is considerable debate on this issue, much of which revolves around how narrowly to construe the concept of rationality. Cf. Robert O. Keohane, 'Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond', in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
63. and Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravscik, 'Is Anybody Still a Realist?', International Security, 21:2 (Fall 1999), pp. 5-55;
64. with Miles Kahler, 'Inventing International Relations: International Relations Theory After 1945', in Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry (eds.), New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997)
65. and Randall Schweller and William Wohlforth, 'Power Test: Updating Realism in Response to the End of the Cold War', Security Studies, 9:2 (2000), pp. 60-107.
66. Kenneth N. Waltz, 'Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics', in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics, p. 118.
67. Stephen G. Brooks, 'Dueling Realisms', p. 454. Other scholars contend that the 'possibilistic' assumption Brooks identifies as intrinsic to Waltz's neorealist theory actually only assumes this role in 'offensive' neorealist theory.
68. Stephen G. Brooks, Dueling Realisms Ibid., pp. 447-50.
69. A concise description is Snyder, 'Russian Backwardness'.
70. See also Fuller, Strategy and Power.
71. Lieven, Empire, p. 262.
72. Fuller, Strategy and Power.
73. See, for general discussions, Marc Raeff, 'In the Imperial Manner', in Raeff (ed.), Catherine the Great: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972);
74. Raeff, 'Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy Toward the Nationalities', in Edward Allworth (ed), Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971);
75. and S. Frederick Starr, 'Tsarist Government: The Imperial Dimension', in Jeremy R. Azrael (ed.), Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices (New York: Praeger, 1978).
76. Hoskings, Russia, p. 4.
77. Waltz, 'Reflections on Theory of International Politics', p. 118.
78. On late imperial Russia, see especially David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press: 2001).
79. Compare, however, Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of all the Russias (London: John Murray, 1993), which stresses the path dependency problem highlighted here.
80. On Brezhnev's Soviet Union, see Anderson, Public Policy in an Authoritarian State;
81. and Hopf, Peripheral Visions.
82. Lindsey Hushes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 61.
83. Lindsey Hushes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great 1998, Ibid.,
84. M. S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978).
85. See Mark Kramer, 'The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Spheres of Influence', in Ngaire Woods (ed.), Explaining International Relations Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996);
86. Mark Kramer, 'Ideology and the Cold War', Review of International Studies, 25:4 (1999), pp. 539-76;
87. and Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
88. Feliks Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotvym: Iz dnevnika F Chueva (Moscow: Terra, 1991), p. 54.