the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

the loss of a meta-event: surviving the soviet union 161the communist system, but this showed pressure being applied on theeconomic sector through the military sector and thus the military as thecausal factor impacting the economic. Furthermore, nuclear deterrencemight be said to have worked in the sense that Gorbachev could havechosen to remain within a US–Soviet competitive and mutually deterringlogic, but that this would have run the risk of escalating confrontationto the point where the nuclear threshold was passed, or that domesticturmoil would eventually become so severe that nuclear weapons wouldbe procured by opponents of the regime (for actual use or for bargainingpower). According to this line of reasoning, nuclear deterrence did, inshort, apply external and internal pressure and the fact that Gorbachevrealised this shows that state leaders can make rational decisions, not thatthey are utopian, altruistic or motivated by world peace.A slightly different line of Realist defence moved from the secondlevel of analysis – the foreign policy of the Soviet Union – to the third,structural, level arguing that the case of the peaceful dismantling of theSoviet Union may be explainable, but nevertheless unusual. It should notin other words be interpreted as a fundamental break with the dynamics ofinternational relations or as a sign that one had now progressed beyondthe power struggles of an anarchic system. International politics goesthrough periods of accommodation and fewer wars, but there is alwaysthe lurking shadow of conflicts to come, and if states do not preparefor this – the lesson of the inter-war period – they will learn the hard waythat others do (Mearsheimer, 1990; C. S. Gray, 1992, 1999; Waltz, 2000b).By making claims about the future, but not specifying how long it mighttake before conflicts reoccurred, this Realist ontology became in principleimmune to empirical challenges.Did the ending of the Cold War challenge the understanding of securityas concerned primarily with external threats? Yes, in that the endingseemed to stem as much or more from internal dissolution and transformation,not only of the Soviet Union, but throughout the Eastern blocas Hungarians crossed the border into Austria and the Berlin Wall fell.No, in that these events could be seen as linked to the external pressureapplied. Looking past the explanation of the end of the Cold War andinto the events – particularly the military conflicts – that were to be at thetop of the political and ISS agenda in the 1990s, the need to shift fromexternal threats to internal ones was, however, apparent as evidenced bythe upsurge in so-called ethnic or civil conflicts, and in the ensuing seriesof humanitarian interventions discussed below. The Strategists’ responsewas not to relinquish intra-state wars to Peace Researchers, sociologists or