Soviet reform and the end of the Cold War: Explaining large-scale historical change

Review of International Studies

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 1991, Pages 225-250

  Deudney, Daniel ^a   Ikenberry, G John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84974028796     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210500112136     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. For overviews of Soviet ' foreign policy change under Gorbachev, see Mathew Evangelista, 'The New Soviet Approach to Security', World Policy Journal, 3, 1 (1986), pp. 561–599, Robert Legvold, 'The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy', Foreign Affairs American and the World, 68 (1988/89), and Bruce Parrott, 'Soviet National Security Under Gorbachev', Problems of Communism, 37 (1988), pp. 1–36.
2. Peter Gourevitch, ‘The Second Image Reversed’, International Organization, 32 (1978), pp. 881–912.
3. We only look at theories that try to explain recent Soviet events in terms of patterns operating generally. Thus, unique patterns of Soviet political culture and history are not considered. These varieties are not equal to any one person's view. They might best be thought of as ideal-types, labels for relatively coherent clusters of assumptions, propositions, and expectations. These varieties are meant to capture the range of alternative theoretical propositions, rather than to locate or classify individual theorists. For an alternative taxonomy, see R. D. McKinlay and R. Little, Global Problems and World Order (London, 1986).
4. For other discussions of the varieties of realism, see Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, 1987); and Michael W. Doyle, `Thucydidean Realism', Review of International Studies, 16 (1990), pp. 223–38.
5. Nicholas John Spykman, America's Strategy in the World: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York; 1942); Colin Gray, Geopolitics in the Nuclear Age: Heartlands, Rimlands, and the Technological Revolution (New York, 1977); Colin Gray, The Geopolitics of the Super Powers (Lexington, 1988); Robert E. Osgood and Robert W. Tucker, Force, Order and Justice (Baltimore, 1967); and Edward Luttwak, Strategy (Cambridge, MA, 1987).
6. Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (New York, 1982).
7. For a general discussion of the Soviet military and the Gorbachev revolution, see Bruce Parrott, ‘Soviet National Security Under Gorbachev’, Problems of Communism, 37 (November/December 1988), pp. 1–36.
8. A perfectly consistent hard realist might lament the Gorbachev reforms, for freeing Soviet power of the millstone of communism.
9. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London, 1977).
10. X, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs. 27 (July 1947), pp. 566-582; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Post-War American National Security Policy (New York, 1982). For a useful discussion of theories of Soviet decline, see Robert P. Beschel, Jr., ‘The Long-term Moderation of Soviet Foreign Policy’, in J. S. Nye, Carnesale, and Allison (eds.), Fateful Visions (Cambridge, 1988).
11. For an overview of Soviet foreign policy changes, see David Holloway, ‘Gorbachev's New Thinking’, Foreign Affairs, 68 (1988/89), pp. 66–81.
12. Soft realists are open to Havel's 'paradoxical advice' that the United States should, within limits, assist Soviet reforms. For a discussion of the potential threats to the West stemming from Russian weakness, see Kurt Campbell, 'Prospects and Consequences of Soviet Decline', in Nye et al., (eds.), Fateful Visions.
13. Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and United States Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1978); Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (New York, 1985); G. John Ikenberry, Reasons of State; Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government (Ithaca, 1988).
14. See Charles Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back
15. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York, 1979).
16. Seweryn Bialer has recently noted the possibility of widespread instability in Soviet society: 'By 1989, Gorbachev had lost control over events in all spheres of Soviet life… Moreover, the most dangerous challenge that he faces is not for a coup at the top that may force his resignation, but from spontaneous forces—political, economic and social—generated outside of the power establishment which may sweep away both him and his reforms'. 'The Passing of the Soviet Order?' Survival, 32 (March/April 1990), p. 107.
17. Others have noted the weakness of conventional realist theory in dealing with problems of change. See Robert O. Keohane, ‘Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond’, in Ada W. Finifter (ed.), Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C., 1983), pp. 503—540; R. J. Vincent, ‘Change and International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 9 (1983), pp. 63–70.
18. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York, 1981).
19. Some hold that the international system has adjusted, others hold that its adjustment will require a process of major institutional change, ranging from arms control through deep disarmament through the establishment of intrusive international monitoring and peacekeeping capabilities.
20. Kenneth Boulding, Conflict and Defense (New York, 1963); and John H. Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York, 1959).
21. Hans Morgenthau, ‘The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally about Nuclear Weapons’, in David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf (eds.), Arms Control and Technological Innovation (New York, 1976); George Kennan, The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age (New York, 1982).
22. Although easily confused with the older normative critique of war, nuclear one-worldism has at its root a Hobbesian fear of physical fear of insecurity and assumes that the same imperatives leading to state formation in the pre-nuclear era will push towards global nuclear security in the contemporary period. Since the nuclear one-worldists assume that war as a process of institutional change has been blocked, it is expected that learning and anticipation (by both states and publics) eventually will cause institutional change.
23. An early statement of this position in found in Klaus Knorr, On the Uses of Military Power in the Nuclear Age (Princeton, 1966). See also Evan Luard, The Blunted Sword: The Erosion of Military Power in Modern World Politics (New York, 1988).
24. For an interpretation of detente driven by nuclear interdependence, see Steve Weber, ‘Realism, Detente, and Nuclear Weapons’, International Organization, 44 (Winter 1990), pp. 55–82.
25. Stephen Shenfield, The Nuclear Predicament: Exploration in Soviet Ideology, Chatham House Papers 37 (London, 1987).
26. The nuclear one-worldist position is reflected in Gorbachev's speeches. See Michail Gorbachev, ‘Realities and Guarantees for a Secure World’ (Moscow, 1987). For further discussion see A. Gromyko, M. Heilman, et al. (eds.), Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking (New York, 1988), particularly Alexander I. Nikitin, ‘The Concept of Universal Security: A Revolution of Thinking and Policy in the Nuclear Age’.
27. Leonard Spector, ‘The Nuclear Inheritors’ in Going Nuclear (Cambridge, MA, 1987).
28. In his recent assessment of American strategy, Senator Sam Nunn pointed to this danger. ‘[T]he long-standing danger of unauthorized or accidental nuclear weapons use has been heightened by turmoil and tension in the Soviet Union.’ Aviation Week & Space Technology, 16 April 1990, p. 7.
29. Leonard Woolf, International Government: Two Reports Prepared for the Fabian Research Department (London, 1916); Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (London, 1911); H. G. Wells, The Idea of a League of Nations (Boston, 1919); Ramsey Muir, The Interdependent World and its Problems (1933; Port Washington, NY, 1971).
30. David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics (London, 1975); Ernst Haas, Beyond the Nation-State; Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, 1964); Andrew Scott, The Revolution is Statecraft: Informal Penetration (New York, 1965); James Rosenau (ed.), Linkage Politics: Essays on the Convergence of National and International Systems (New York, 1969); Richard Falk, A Study of Future Worlds (New York, 1975); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston, 1977).
31. Of course, internationalism is not just a recent import from the West, but was an essential feature of Marxism at various stages of its intellectual and political development.
32. For a discussion of the general phenomenon of unofficial diplomacy, see Maureen R. Berman and Joseph E. Johnson, ‘The Growing Role of Unofficial Diplomacy’, in Berman and Johnson (eds.), Unofficial Diplomats (New York, 1977), pp. 1–33.
33. The importance of simultaneous domestic and international ‘modernization’ of politics is stressed in Edward Morse, Modernization of International Relations (New York, 1976).
34. This point is made by Zbigniew Brzezinski: 'Central Europe is ripe for, and badly needs, regional cooperative arrangements of the type that Western Europe takes for granted.' 'Beyond Chaos: Policy for the West', The National Interest (Spring 1990), p. 11.
35. Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century Berkeley, 1967).
36. Harrison Brown, The Challenge of man's Future (New York, 1954); Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York, 1974).
37. Sir Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal, 23 (April 1904). Valuable synoptic analyses of Soviet resource prospects are found in W. H. Parker, The Superpowers: The United States and the Soviet Union Compared (New York, 1972), and George Cressey, Soviet Potentials: A Geographic Appraisal (Syracuse, NY, 1962).
38. Thane Gustafson, Crisis amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet Energy under Brezhnew and Grobachev (Princeton, 1989), esp. pp. 22–62.
39. James R. Millar, 'Post-Stalin Agriculture and Its Future', in Stephen F. Cohen, et al. (eds.), The Soviet Union Since Stalin (Bloomington, 1980), pp. 135–155.
40. Alan S. Whiting, Siberian Development and East Asia: Threat or Promise? (Palo Alto, CA, 1981).
41. An early attempt to think about East-West interdependencies and their implications is found in Walter C. Clemens, Jr., The U.S.S.R. and Global Interdependence: Alternative Futures (Washington, DC, 1977).
42. K. J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Boston, 1985).
43. See Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, 80 (December 1986), pp. 1,151-169.
44. Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’ The National Interest (Summer 1989), pp. 3–17.
45. John P. Diggins, Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History (New York, 1975); Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (New York, 1986).
46. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ‘The United States in Opposition’, Commentary (March 1975).
47. The widely discussed argument of 'Z' emphasizing the Leninist character of the Soviet Union and the undesirability of helping the Soviet Union has been surpassed by events, particularly Gorbachev's epochal move to repeal Article VI of the Soviet constitution. Z, 'To the Stalin Mausoleum', (Winter 1989–90).
48. See Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (1971: New York, 1980).
49. Robert C. Tucker, Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York, 1977).
50. For an early study of these processes, see W. Phillips Davison, International Political Communication (New York, 1965); see also James L. Tyson, U.S. International Broadcasting and National Security (New York, 1983).
51. The capitalist case against socialism has recently been summarized in F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago, 1988).
52. See D. P. O'Brien, The Classical Economists (Oxford, 1975).
53. The classic statement of this view is Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times (Boston, 1944).
54. As Lenin proclaimed: 'In the final analysis the competition and struggle between capitalism and socialism will be resolved in favor of the system that attains a higher level of economic productivity'. Cited in Seweryn Bialer, 'Gorbachev's Program of Change: Sources, Significance, Prospects', Political Science Quarterly, 103 (Autumn 1988), p. 410.
55. Contemporary theorists, on both the left and right, argue that strong states are crucial to the success of market-oriented reform. See Guillermo A. O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley, 1973); and Jagdish N. Bhagwati, ‘Rethinking Trade Strategy’, in John P. Lewis and Valeriana Kallab (eds.), Development Strategies Reconsidered (Washington, DC, 1986), esp. p. 101. For an overview, see Atul Kohli, ‘Politics of Economic Liberalization in India’, World Development, 17 (1989), pp. 1–30.
56. Jack Snyder, ‘International Leverage on Soviet Domestic Change’, World Politics, (October 1989).
57. See the discussion of the ‘socialist’ model in R. D. McKinlay and R. Little, Global Problems and World Order.
58. Shlomo Avineri, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Garden City, NY, 1969).
59. Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1974), pp. 387–415.
60. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974); The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 (New York, 1980); The Modern World System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy (San Diego, 1989).
61. See Theda Skocpol, ‘Wallerstein's World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique’, American Journal of Sociology, 85 (1977), pp. 1,075-90; Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link’, World Politics, 33 (1981), pp. 253-81; Tony Smith, The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain, and the Late-Industrializing World Since 1815 (Cambridge, 1981).
62. As Theda Skocpol describes the model, ‘once the system is established, everything reinforces everything else’. Skocpol, ‘Wallerstein's World Capitalist System’, p. 1,078.
63. For another conceptualization of the Soviet Union's political economy in terms of Wallerstein's world-systems theory, see Timothy W. Luke, ‘Technology and Soviet Foreign Trade: On the Political Economy of an Underdeveloped Superpower’, International Studies Quarterly, 29 (1985), pp. 327–353.
64. For discussion of the distinction between 'capitalist society' and 'industrial society', see Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959). See also 'Anthony Giddens, Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction (London, 1982), pp. 29–53.
65. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World (New York, 1941). See also James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (Chicago, 1943).
66. An early version of these ideas was set forth by Jean-Baptist Say, the famous French political economist whose work Marx polemicized against. Say argued that the progress of industry would produce not a polarization between capitalist and proletariat, but rather a much more complex cluster of largely cooperative classes which he labelled the ‘industriat’. Jean-Baptist Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (1803), trans. by C. R. Prinsep. 2 vols. (Boston, 1821). See also discussion of Say in Edmund Silberner, The Problem of War in Nineteenth Century Economic Thought (Princeton, 1946), pp. 69–91.
67. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Clark Kerr et al., Industrialism and Industrial Man (Cambridge, MA. 1960). This view has been strongly criticized by others, such as Reinhard Bendix, for ignoring national variations in paths to development caused by the persistence of pre-modern social formations that prove to be partially adaptive. See Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York, 1964).
68. Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society (New York, 1971); Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York, 1973).
69. See John A. Hall and G. John Ikenberry, The State (Minneapolis, 1989), 80–83.
70. While the link between late-industrial society and democratic institutions appears to be strong in the contemporary era, the possibility cannot be foreclosed that a country with different historical traditions, class configurations and international pressures might arrive at a non-democratic formation that was at the same time industrially functional. Michael Mann argues that an authoritarian capitalist model was pioneered and widely admired in pre-1914 Germany, that this non-democratic variant of capitalism could well have proved viable, but that it was destroyed by the war. Mann, ‘Citizenship and Ruling Class Strategies’, Sociology, 21 (1987).
71. Walter W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 162–164.
72. This argument has been made recently by several Soviet academics: [A]s the completion of the stage of industrialization in economic development approached and the transition to the next scientific-industrial, technical-technological stage of production began, the administrative economy, devoid of any market elements, became an obstacle to the development of those very economic spheres whose accelerated development had once constituted justification of the system. At the scientific-industrial stage of technological development, the deformed socialist relations of production, of the state monopoly type, clashed with the forces of production engendered by scientific-technological progress'. L. Gordon and A. Nazimova, 'Perestroika in Historical Perspective', Government and Opposition, 25 (Winter 1990), p. 18.
73. Lewis A. Coser, ‘The Intellectuals in Soviet Reform’, Dissent (Spring 1990), p. 183.
74. Soviet scientists were indispensable to the regime and, as a result, had more independence than any other group in Soviet society. The atomic designer, Pytor Kapitsa, was one of the few men to defy Stalin and live to tell about it. And, of course, Andrei Sakharov had similar independence and was therefore able to play a catalytic role in Soviet reform.
75. As Brzezinski and Huntington argued in 1964, the theory of industrial modernism is, 'in effect, anti-Soviet Marxism: the forces of production will shape the social context of production, which in turn will determine the political superstructure'. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR (New York, 1964), p. 10.
76. Noting the difficulties of a return to repression, Lewis Coser argues that '[t]he fact that the intelligentsia is no longer dispensable in the Soviet sphere is among the prime reasons why a return to a totalitarian regime or to military solutions is unlikely', The Intellectuals in Soviet Reform', Dissent (Spring 1990), p.183.
77. Seweryn Bialer, ‘The Passing of the Soviet Order?’ Survival, 32 (March/April 1990). See also Padma Desai, Perestroika in Perspective: The Design and Dilemmas of Soviet Reform (Princeton, 1989), p. 138.
78. For a discussion of the range and logic of state adjustment choices, see G. John Ikenberry, ‘The State and International Strategies of Adjustment’, World Politics, 39 (October 1986); and Michael Mastanduno, David A. Lake, and G. John Ikenberry, ‘Toward a Realist Theory of State Action’, International Studies Quarterly, 33 (Winter 1989), pp. 457–74.
79. Sylvia Woodly, Gorbachev and the Decline of Ideology in Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, 1989). For an analysis of the evolution of Soviet theories underpinning ‘new thinking’ see Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations (Brighton, 1988).
80. This situation is noted by Seweryn Bialer: 'Never in their history have the Russians been as secure from external danger as they are now and will remain in the foreseeable future… A Soviet Union that understands that it is extremely secure may be less hostile to the West”. Bialer, 'Gorbachev's Program of Change: Sources, Significance, Prospects', Political Science Quarterly, 103 (Autumn 1988), p. 459.