the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

great power politics: the cold war and bipolarity 71communist superiority and capitalist downfall. Hence one should takeno expressions of trust and accommodation at face value but view themas tactics in the battle for long-term domination. Soviet officials were like‘toy automobiles’ unable to break from the party line and ‘unamenable toargument or reason which comes to them from outside sources’ (Kennan,1947: 574). Kennan’s remedy was an unwavering containment of theSoviet Union ‘at every point where they show signs of encroaching uponthe interests of a peaceful and stable world’ (Kennan, 1947: 581). Othersargued that the Soviet Union took a much less aggressive stance. Thefounding father of Neorealist theory, Waltz held, for example, that theSoviet Union had ‘assumed a posture of passive deterrence vis-à-vis hermajor adversary, whom she quite sensibly does not want to fight’ (Waltz,1964: 885). Waltz came to a different view of the Soviet Union, not becausehe held a more amiable view of Soviet ideology and its leaders, but becausein his theory, bipolarity exerted a disciplining effect on the leaders of greatpower states that ‘will strongly encourage them to act in ways better thantheir characters might otherwise lead one to expect’ (Waltz, 1964: 907).Two further assumptions underlay Waltz’s structural analysis. First wasthat international polarity held a stronger explanatory power than unitlevelfactors like ideology or the composition of a state’s leadership. Secondwas the view that the Soviet Union was fundamentally a rational actorcapable of understanding that managing nuclear bipolarity rather thanembarking on an expansionist military policy would be in its own bestinterest.In the later period of the Cold War, the debate over rationality wasinfluenced by a growing concern with the extent to which the SovietUnion was in several important respects a different type of actor fromthe US, with different concerns and understandings (Kolcowicz, 1971;Ermarth, 1978; Snow, 1979; Gray, 1980; Holloway, 1980; Erickson, 1982;Hanson, 1982/3). Was the Soviet Union ruthless, expansionary and drivenby revolutionary fervour, or was it essentially defensive and moved byfeelings of inferiority to the West? What difference did Russian militaryculture and tradition make, and did the Soviets understand conceptssuch as deterrence in the same way as Western theorists and policymakersdid? Did the Russian language, indeed, have a word for deterrence?Could the Soviets be trusted to pursue apparent joint interests in survivaland accident avoidance, or was the Kremlin not to be trusted to keepagreements, and to be assumed as always seeking strategic advantageunder the guise of arms control? Did they calculate ‘unacceptable damage’in the same way as Americans did, or was the Soviet Union, and even