scholarly journals Deterrence theory and strategy in the international system from the Cold War to the multipolar era. Towards a new strategy of ‘extended deterrence’ in Greek-Turkish relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Nicolas Papanastasopoulos ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
The Cold War

Deterrence is the key concept for understanding the strategy and diplomacy of the age (Kenny, 1985). Its various versions — or better yet — its main manifestations appear during the Cold War period (Brodie, Wolfers, Viner, at A. Lupovici, 2010), initially through competition, especially in the field of scientific discoveries and then in the balance between the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. This article, using a historical and conceptual perspective, analyses the philosophy and dynamic of the deterrence theory, both in the conventional and especially in its Cold War and the multipolar era dimension. This article revisits the concept of deterrence and defends a more plausible deterrence theory — the ‘extended deterrence’ conception. Drawing on insights from the IR theory and security studies, we are going to use Greek-Turkish relations as a case study of this approach. This approach supports an implementation of the extended deterrence by the enrichment of the NATO’s article 5. The findings of this study can help members of the academic community familiarize themselves with this new concept of deterrence. Keywords: deterrence, strategic theory, doctrine, IR theory, nuclear weapons.

scholarly journals EXPLORING AND EXPLAINING THE ECONOMIC POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND PAHLAVI ERA EMPHASIZING THE SYSTEM THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.

The Indian Ocean Creole Islands: Geo-politics and Decolonisation

1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Houbert
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Radical Transformation

Decolonisation was a policy of the West, as well as a process reflecting the radical transformation of the configuration of power in the international system. The Soviet Union, perceived as poised to dominate Eurasia, had to be ‘contained’ lest it expanded into the Rimland and challenged the West at sea. This geo-political obsession was reinforced by the ‘loss of China’ and the outbreak of the bitter struggle between North and South Korea. But the cold war was about ideology as well as military power, and containment was therefore not just a question of building pacts but of fostering the ‘right’ kind of political régimes.

Indian Power Projection in the Greater Middle East: Tools and Objectives

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 417-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prithvi Ram Mudiam
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International System ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Regional Environment ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractIndia's approach to the Middle East during the Cold War years was weighed down by the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan on a religious basis, the dispute with Pakistan over the Muslim majority province of Jammu and Kashmir and its own large Muslim minority. Hence, its policy towards the region tended to be defensive and reactive, and a general policy of support to the Arab causes, particularly that of the Palestinians, and a non-relationship with Israel were considered necessary to serve India's broad interests in the region. India's projection of secularism into the region was meant to prevent Pakistan from organizing an anti-Indian Islamic bloc in the region, and its projection of nonalignment was meant to scuttle the Western attempts to build anti-communist alliances there. However, the transformation in the superpowers relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union, changes in the regional environment in the Greater Middle East (GME) as well as South Asia and changes in India's domestic sphere created a new strategic and economic context for India to pursue its interests in the GME in the 1990s. There is an increasing convergence of strategic interests between the two regions and a growing complementarity of their economies in the post-Cold War world. Iran and Israel have become the two lynchpins of India's policy toward the region and, as an emerging global player, India, unlike during the Cold War, is in a strong position to promote its own interests as well as those of the international system in the region, which largely seem to coincide in the post-Cold War milieu.

American Political Culture and the End of the Cold War

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Thorne
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Environment ◽  
The Cold War

The ending of the Cold War, represented by the extraordinary changes that have been taking place within the international system since 1989, has finally, it seems, put an end to a situation wherein two armed and tightly organised blocs confronted one another and perceived each other as being, in essence, a threat that was immediate and potentially mortal. Given, too, that it was the Soviet bloc and then the Soviet Union itself that fell apart, it is understandable that this should be widely perceived as a victory for the West; and it is perhaps inevitable that attention should now fall on how the United States will relate to the international environment in which the country may well find itself in the early decades of the coming century.

Reexamining Threat Perception in Early Cold War Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-112
Author(s):  
Eitan Oren ◽  
Matthew Brummer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Threat Perception ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses whether Japanese military and political elites perceived the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) as threats during the Cold War. Realist scholars have argued that Japan's security alliance with the United States and the global balance of power were such that most Japanese officials did not perceive either of the Communist giants as a serious military threat. Reaching a similar conclusion but for starkly different reasons, constructivist scholars have argued that cultural, normative, and identity factors explain why Japanese elites did not perceive the Soviet Union or China as militarily threatening. Neither of these arguments holds up. Archival data and oral history collections from Japan's Self-Defense Force and National Diet Library reveal that Japan's defense establishment and political leaders perceived both the Soviet Union and the PRC as extremely threatening and that these perceptions fluctuated in intensity over time, across sectors, and among actors. Psychological factors, including affect, behavioral tendencies, and cognitive beliefs (the ABC model), may better explain why Japanese judged the intensity and source of perceived threats in the manner that they did. These findings underscore why threat perception in the international system is best evaluated by aggregating individual judgments and their distribution among larger groups.

Nuclear Deterrence, Counterforce Strategies, and the Incentive to Strike First

1991 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Harrison Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rational Behavior ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

I use the theory of games to investigate issues about how to understand the use of nuclear counterforce strategies by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The function of the counterforce strategies I model is not to enable a state confidently to launch a nuclear attack but to convince its adversary that the probability that it might do so as a last resort is greater than zero. The models allow one to investigate rational behavior when information is incomplete and there is an incentive to strike first, and therefore provide a way to explore controversies about the effect of counterforce strategies on both the credibility of extended deterrence and the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war. The models suggest, contrary to the claims of a number of writers, that the use of nuclear counterforce strategies is not necessarily inconsistent with rational behavior and provide some insight into the relation between counterforce strategies and brinkmanship models of deterrence.

Bipolarism and Its End, From the Cold War to the Post-Cold War World

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Nadkarni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
System Structure ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

Bipolarity was viewed both as an empirical condition and as a central explanatory concept, albeit contested, during the Cold War (1945–1989), when two superpowers dominated the international system. The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) confronted each other as military and ideological rivals heading competing alliance systems—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in 1949, and the Warsaw Pact established in 1955. Nuclear weaponry added a new wrinkle to the global superpower competition, particularly after the Soviet Union broke the American nuclear monopoly in 1949. A rich literature around these themes emerged as scholars sought to grapple with the explanatory dynamics propelling state behavior under the systemic constraints of bipolarity and the technological challenges presaged by the nuclear age. Such an academic focus meant that the study of international politics, particularly in the United States, was largely refracted through the prism of U.S.-Soviet competition and centered on the nature and implications of polarity, power, alliances, and nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union imploded, bipolarity in the sense of two predominant powers ended, as did the division of the world into two opposing blocs. In the post-Cold War period, scholars turned their attention to investigating questions regarding the impact on the nature of system structure and the international order of the collapse of one of the poles. Accordingly, during the Cold War, scholars debated the conceptual and empirical understandings of bipolarity as well as its implications and the causal factors on which the expectation of bipolar stability was based. In the post-Cold War period, scholars reflected over whether the end of ideological (capitalism/democracy vs. communism/single party authoritarianism) conflict presaged the end of history or inaugurated a clash of civilizations, with some questioning the salience of the concept of polarity and the viability of the state system in the face of rising subnational and transnational pressures.

“In a Class by Itself”: Cold War Politics and Finland's Position vis-à-vis the United Nations, 1945–1956

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Götz
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South Korea ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Community ◽  
Neutral Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War

From the mid-1950s on, the United Nations (UN) provided a forum for Finland to have an international presence despite its status as a neutral country in the Cold War. But until 1955, Finland's bid to join the UN was blocked by the Soviet Union. The inability to gain admission caused some Finns to favor staying outside the UN, a view that gained its widest circulation in the latter half of 1950 after the UN had been invoked to respond to North Korea's attack on South Korea. Nonetheless, although some Finns were concerned that membership in the UN might cause their country to become embroiled in a superpower Cold War conflict against its will, others believed that entry into the UN would confer prestige and legitimacy on Finland and strengthen its position as a sovereign member of the international community. Although Finns realized that the UN would not provide a security guarantee, the organization did help Finland to consolidate its neutral position in the Cold War international system.

Responding to the Challenges from the Global South

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-159
Author(s):  
Sara Lorenzini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Third Way ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explains how new concepts and strategies had to be devised to face the new North–South divide that seemed to be replacing the classic Cold War conflict. By the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union were conservative status quo powers that had more in common with each other than with the Global South. The Cold War was embedded in the international system and worked at much lower levels of tension than in earlier years. Would an East–West cooperation to deal with the Global South be viable? The Soviet Bloc did not appear to be keen on discussing a joint path out of the global economic turmoil, which it interpreted as the long-awaited crisis of capitalism. It was the European Economic Community (EEC), instead, that stood up as a distinctive actor, claiming to be distant from its members' imperial past and to offer a third way for the Third World, with goals that were not those of the Cold War superpowers.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

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