In this paper we will discuss the relationship between the United States and the USSR in the 1950S, showing how diplomacy during this period was one of mutual mistrust and an ongoing attempt to destabilize satellite nations on both sides. To this end, we will explain how the relations during the Cold War were the ultimate expression of realism. Realistic intellectuals have a very different view of international relations in the bipolar scenario.
The realism theory represents the traditional paradigm of the international system. Their assumptions are that:
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a) Nation-states, in a system centered on the states, are the key agents;
b) Domestic policy cannot be clearly separated from foreign policy;
c) International politics is a struggle for power in an anarchic environment;
d) There are gradations of capacities between nation-states-large powers and minor states-in a decentralized system of international organization where states that have legal equality or sovereignty (Waltz, 2000).
For the realists, the international system is composed of numerous forces. Most of them are unchangeable. Waltz (2000) puts a greater emphasis on the military power as an instrument of maintenance of the peace and considers that the main mechanism for the regulation of conflicts is the balance of power between different states. Herein, the Cold War is seen as a balance between the big two superpowers; the relationship between both powers as a marked correlation of forces fundamentally from military strategy. After a period of alliance with the heat of the Second War World, there is the crisis and subsequent rupture that was consolidated in 1947 with the Truman doctrine and its fight against communism.
From there, successively, there are going to be stages of distension and an open conflict for four decades, such as the one that occurred in 1962 in what is known as the missile crisis , among others. During the bipolar conflict, the state of the relations between Great Two is the only thing that allows us to distinguish the phases of the diplomacy for the simple reason that those responsible, at least consciously, thought about their actions and the world by reference to the communist danger. This was a war, since diplomats could not and did not want to fix their differences through negotiations; cold, since they did not want and could not fix them by force. American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt's attitude in seeking a consensus with the USSR was centered on the idea of continuity with legalism and universalism. However, his actions responded to the desire to fulfill the grand design of the United States, and that military cooperation with Russia was vital to guarantee post-war peace. We have to analyze the real reason for the rupture between both powers: differences in territorial and economic interests, in addition to the ideological factor. Nevertheless, the actions of the Soviets in Eastern Europe during 1945, together with the change of tactics of international communism, made the United States begin to see her former ally as a potential enemy whose aim was a program of unlimited expansionism that threatened the very survival of the United States as a system. This policy of The Truman doctrine, in March 1947, was formally led to the Cold War.
According to this perspective, both powers wanted peace, but the strong external influences led to the conception of a contradictory form. That is why the Cold War was the result of an ironic paradox, since the simultaneous searches of peace led to what was not wanted, bipolarity. It was the divergent political objectives that buried any attempt to consolidate the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Waltz (2000) agrees on seeing bipolarity as a system of balance of power. Although before there were balances in which alliances were concentrated around two States, the two countries had never been to such point above the rest in terms of their own power resources. In conclusion, the role that the United States had after World War II did not seek a territorial empire or a hegemony that would keep the losing nations from the conflagration of 1945 in servile positions. On the contrary, it stimulated its economic revitalization and its strategic partnership to balance Soviet power. This is why the Cold War can classically be explained using the theory of realism.
Reference
Waltz, K. N. (2000). Structural realism after the Cold War: International security , 25 (1), 5-41.
