Abstract
The subject of US perceptions of the Soviet threat would not have attracted the pathological interest it has if changes in US policy towards the Soviet Union since 1917 had been unambiguously related to fluctuations in Soviet words and actions. What requires explanation (and concern) is not good sight, but distorted vision; and in the superpower relationship there has been a widespread and justified diagnosis that the Soviet threat has been frequently misperceived. The outcome has been a mismatch between Soviet behaviour and US assessment of it.
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Notes
Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1948, p. 449.
Two works favouring the expansionist interpretation of Soviet policy are Richard Pipes (ed.) Soviet Strategy in Europe, New York, Crane Russak, 1976
Robert Conquest, Present Danger: Towards a Foreign Policy, Stanford, CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1979.
See M. P. Gehlen, The Politics of Coexistence — Soviet Methods and Motives, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1967.
The standard works on this approach were Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1956
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, World, 1951.
See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategics of Containment, New York, Oxford University Press, 1982, ch. 4
Samuel F. Wells Jr., ‘Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat’, International Security, vol. 4(2) (Fall 1979), 116–38.
Standard works include W. W. Rostow, The Dynamics of Soviet Society, New York, Norton, 1952
Robert Conquest, Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R., London, Macmillan, 1961.
Two standard works are Nathan C. Leites, A Study of Bolshevism, Glencoe, IL, Free Press, 1953
Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, New York, Norton, 1971
This was most famously explained by Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, New York, Knopf, 1965, 3rd edn, esp. chs 3 and 7.
See, inter alia, Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1953
Ivo J. Lederer (ed.) Russian Foreign Policy, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1966.
For three models of Soviet intentions with respect to expansion see Thomas Milburn, Philip Stewart and Richard Hermann, ‘Perceiving the Other’s Intentions’, in Charles Kegley and Pat McGowan (eds) Foreign Policy USA, USSR: Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, 1982, vol. 7, Beverley Hills, CA, Sage, 1982, pp. 51–64.
The structural interpretation of affairs is most associated with Kenneth Waltz. See his Theory of International Politics, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 1979.
Their problems are discussed in Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Threat, London, Macmillan, 1977
See, for example, Michael MccGwire, ‘Deterrence: The Problem — Not the Solution’, International Affairs, vol. 62 (1) (Winter 1985/6) 55–70
Ken Booth, ‘Nuclear Deterrence and “World War III”: How Will History Judge?’, in Roman Kolkowicz (ed.) The Logic of Nuclear Terror, Boston, Allen and Unwin, 1987, pp. 251–82.
Alan Wolfe, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Threat, Washington, DC, Institute for Policy Studies, 1984.
Joseph F. Nye (ed.) The Making of America’s Soviet Policy, New York, Yale University Press, 1984, p. 2.
Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy. Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs, New York, Knopf, 1983.
See, inter alia, Glydon Van Dusen and Richard Wade (eds) Foreign Policy and the American Spirit, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1957
Stanley Hoffmann, Primacy or World Order, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1978
George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950, London, Secker and Warburg, 1953
Dexter Perkins, The American Approach to Foreign Policy, New York, Atheneum, 1961
Frank Tannenbaum, The American Tradition in Foreign Policy, Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1955.
Ibid., p. 66. On the general subject see Alexander L. George, Presidential Decision Making in Foreign Policy, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1980.
See, for example, Lloyd Etheredge, ‘Personality Effects on American Foreign Policy, 1898–1968: A Test of Interpersonal Generalization Theory’, American Political Science Review, June 1978, pp. 434–51; and Ralph White, Fearful Warriors: A Physiological Profile of U.S.—Soviet Relations, New York, Free Press, 1984.
Ole Holsti and James Rosenau, American Leadership in World Affairs: Vietnam and the Breakdown of Consensus, Winchester, MA, Allen and Unwin, 1984
Ole Holsti et al., Change in the International System, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1980.
See, for example, Richard J. Barnet, Roots of War. The Men and the Institutions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy, New York, Atheneum, 1972.
See, for example, Bruce M. Russett and Elizabeth C. Hanson, Interest and Ideology, San Francisco, CA, W. H. Freeman, 1975.
Ken Booth and Phil Williams, ‘Fact and Fiction in U.S. Foreign Policy: Reagan’s Myths about Detente’, World Policy Journal, vol. 293 (Summer 1985) 501–32.
See, inter alia, C. W. Pursei (ed.) The Military-Industrial Complex, New York, Harper and Row, 1972
S. Rosen, Testing The Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex, Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, 1973
S. C. Sarkesian (ed.) The Military-Industrial Complex: A Reassessment, Beverley Hills, CA, Sage, 1972.
Most are discussed at more length in Ken Booth, ‘New Challenges and Old Mind-sets: Ten Rules for Empirical Realists’, in Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.) The Uncertain Course, New York, Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1987, pp. 39–66
Mike Bowker and Phil Williams, Misperception in Soviet-American Relations, Faraday Discussion Paper no. 6, London, Council for Arms Control, 1986.
Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, London, Croom Helm, 1979, chs 3 and 4.
This concept is discussed by William T. R. Fox, ‘E. H. Carr and Political Realism: Vision and Revision’, Review of International Studies, vol. II(I) (January 1985) p. 13.
A notable example of this was Arnold Wolfers, ‘The Atomic Bomb in Soviet—American Relations’, in Bernard Brodie (ed.) The Absolute Weapon, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1946, pp. 111–47.
Henry A. Kissinger, Necessity for Choice, Prospects for American Foreign Policy, London, Chatto and Windus, 1960, p. 194.
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© 1990 Carl G. Jacobsen
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Booth, K. (1990). US Perceptions of Soviet Threat: Prudence and Paranoia. In: Jacobsen, C.G. (eds) Strategic Power: USA/USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20574-5_4
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