The End of the Cold War: a Battle or Bridging Ground Between Rationalist and Ideational Approaches in International Relations?

The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reactions to Shifts in Soviet Power, Policies, or Domestic Politics?

“…The second set of arguments that explains the end of the Cold War from America's perspective as primarily a product of Soviet cooperative foreign policies comes from the "costly signals" literature+ The core claim of costly signals arguments is that states' leaders can effectively communicate benign intent to one another if they are willing to adopt policies that are sufficiently costly such that individuals with malign intentions would be unwilling to make them+ Because only leaders who possess benign international intentions are likely to adopt potentially risky international policies such as substantial unilateral reductions in armaments, consistently forgoing opportunities for geopolitical expansion, or renouncing existing territorial gains, when decision makers do adopt measures like these, others in the system will feel reassured about the former's intentions+ 12 Others are, as a result, more likely to reciprocate these cooperative efforts+ 9+ On systemic constructivism, see Wendt 1999;Wendt 1992;and Checkel 1998+ 10+ Wendt 1992, 407, 421, respectively+ 11+ See Wendt 1992Chollet and Goldgeier 2003;Risse 1997;Petrova 2003;andLévesque 1997+ 12+ See Kydd 1997;and Schweller 1996+ To costly signals accounts of the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev's decisions to make disproportionate, often unilateral, reductions in armaments, to allow foreign inspectors on Soviet soil, to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and to terminate the Soviet Union's empire in Eastern Europe, were so costly both to the Soviet Union and Gorbachev politically that the general secretary was able to convince the Americans that he was a trustworthy actor who was genuinely committed to ending the Cold War+ 13 To costly signals arguments, it was the costliness of Gorbachev's policies, not their effects on American leaders' identities, that convinced the latter that the Cold War was over+ Irrespective of the important differences between systemic-constructivist and costly signals theories, both agree with the following hypothesis:…”

The Balkans after Iraq … Iraq after the Balkans. Who's Next?

“…30 Such proclivity towards normative securitisation has been explained through the 'emotional attachment' of the Euro-Atlantic actors to the norms that they promote. 31 Therefore, it is this normative securitisation of the EU's and NATO's responses to the Kosovo crisis which produced their 'European international identity' through conflating the mythic narrative of the European post-war history with the obligations of the role of Euro-Atlantic agents in the international system. 32 The then NATO secretary-general reflected this situation in a speech at the Military Academy of Serbia/Montenegro, indicating that the situation in Kosovo 'threatened to set Europe back to a darker era .…”

Introduction: Background ideas in international relations

“…This line of research is still prominent in Constructivism (Checkel, 2005;Tannenwald, 2007;Zwingel, 2012). The recent turn towards more eclecticism in the discipline links material and ideational forces (Herrmann and Shannon, 2001;Petrova, 2003;Snyder, 2015). But here, too, the focus is on foreground ideas.…”