Lecture 8

The Cold War

Day 8, April 23, 2015

Winston Churchill, 1946

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

Origins of the Cold War – competing explanations

• Traditionalists• Stalin and the USSR started the Cold War• US wanted a new, free world order, Stalin clung to old-

school territorial control

• Revisionists• CW caused by US expansionism (capitalism!)• World not really bipolar at the end of the CW

• Post-revisionists• Focus on the structural level – no one is to blame• Weakening of Europe had created a power vacuum• Not really about clashing ideologies, but geography

dictated goals

Deterrence and containment

• US policies (policy objectives) in the Cold War

• Deterrence – a strategy taken to dissuade an adversary from taking some action.

• Containment – specific policy of surrounding the USSR with US bases and allies, cutting them off. • Containing communism versus containing the

USSR• Kennan telegram• Domino theory

Precipitating (match strike)

Intermediate (kindling)

Deep (a log)

Gorbachev ‘s Perestroika, glasnost, and “common security” concept (ideas)

a.Transnational, liberal ideas (openness, democracy, etc.)

b.Imperial overstretch (burden of Cold War competition too much)

a.Decline of Communist ideology, and its legitimacy (“constructivist explanation”)

b.Failure of USSR centrally planned economy (“realist explanation)

Causes of the end of the Cold War

Post Cold War

• Liberal optimism, western triumphalism

• Francis Fukuyama “End of history” argument

Post-cold war will be “boring” (no more ideological debate)

“Western liberal democracy is the final form of human government” (Fukuyama,1989)

No alternative to liberal capitalism; other options (fascism, communism) had been tried and failed

“Clash of Civilizations” argument(Samuel Huntington)

Post-Cold War world will be culturally conflictual

Nation-state will still be most powerful actor, but main conflicts will be between nations/groups from different civilizations (ideology and economics downplayed) along fault lines

Captured feeling that incompatible values and beliefs were going to be trouble, esp. West- Islam

Empirically and theoretically problematic, even after 9/11

• 1. 你怎么评论《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》中“米洛斯的谈判”？• 2. 修昔底德认为伯罗奔尼撒战争的根源是“雅典力量的增长及其引起斯巴达的恐惧”。第一次世界大战的爆发在多大程度上是由于德国力量的增长及其引起英国的恐惧？

• 3. 冷战为什么结束？现实主义、自由主义和建构主义是如何帮助你解答这个问题的？

• 4. 为什么自由主义者认为民主可以防止战争？他们的观点有什么缺陷？

• 5. 结合某个国际关系史事件或当前的某个国际热点问题，运用层次分析法（国际体系、国家和个体）来进行分析。

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