Kramer Mark - The legacy of the Cold War: perspectives on security, cooperation, and conflict

The Legacy of the Cold War

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The legacy of the Cold War : perspectives on security, cooperation, and conflict / edited by Vojtech Mastny and Zhu Liqun.

pages cm. -- (The Harvard Cold War studies book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-8789-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-8790-6 (electronic)

1. Cold War--Influence. 2. World politics--1945-1989. 3. National security--History--20th century. 4. Security, International--History--20th century. 5. International cooperation--History--20th century. 6. Military history, Modern--20th century. I. Mastny, Vojtech, 1936- II. Zhu, Liqun.

D843.L324 2014

355.0209'04--dc23

2013041663

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Mark Kramer

Previous books in the Harvard Cold War Studies book series have looked at Europe or Asia or North America, but this latest book, edited by Vojtech Mastny and Zhu Liqun, covers Europe and Asia in equal measure. The contributors discuss the alliances and other security arrangements that existed in these regions during the Cold War, and they seek to determine whether the earlier experiences can help us understand key security challenges in Europe and Asia in the twenty-first century.

Political scientists, scholars of international relations, and historians have offered varying explanations of why states form alliances. Kenneth Waltzs structural theory of international relations depicts alliances as a means of external balancing for states, as opposed to the internal balancing of military spending and defense preparations. Waltz argues that states are most inclined to balance against more powerful states, aiming to achieve a balance of power. Stephen Walt has offered a significant modification of Waltzs argument, arguing that states seek alliances against other states they perceive as most threatening, regardless of how powerful they are. Powerful states that are seen as friendly are deemed to be good candidates as allies. For Walt, the dynamic of alliance formation is a balance of threat, not a balance of power, as suggested by Waltz. Walt and Waltz agree, however, that alliances are usually transitory, and both of them predicted in the early 1990s that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would soon cease to exist.

The chapters in this book bear out Walts argument about the balance of threat, but they contravene his (and Waltzs) notion that alliances are inherently evanescent. Not only has NATO continued to exist, it has nearly doubled in size since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have been similar to NATO in their longevity. All these cases suggest that liberal and constructivist theories of international relations, emphasizing the importance of domestic political arrangements and the collective identities of allied leaders, have considerable merit. In addition to serving as a military alliance, NATO gradually evolved into a community of democratic states (a pluralistic security community, as Karl Deutsch called it more than fifty-five years ago), and much the same is true about U.S. alliances with East Asian and Pacific countries. Even though a few of these allies experienced periods of authoritarianism during the Cold War (South Korea, Turkey, and Greece), all U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia in the postCold War era have been democratic, and a democratic polity has been mandatory for all new members of NATO. The alliances that have been most transitory are those between authoritarian states, such as the Soviet Union and China, whose brief fraternal alliance in the 1950s is discussed below.

Larger and more amorphous international bodies, such as the United Nations and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), both of which are covered in chapters here, have never been effective as collective security mechanisms. The UN and CSCE (which in 1992 was renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE) have had a role in peace-keeping operations and sundry nonmilitary activities, but neither the UN nor the OSCE is a substitute for the alliances and other security arrangements sponsored by the United States in both Europe and East Asia. Some fledgling regional security institutions in East Asia and the Pacific may eventually reduce the importance of the U.S. alliances there (and perhaps ultimately replace them altogether), but that seems unlikely in the near future. Only if the regional institutions become robust and reliable, and acquire effective military content will the raison dtre of the U.S. alliances come into question. Until then, U.S. allies in East Asia and the Pacific will undoubtedly be averse to changing their security relations with the United States.