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24 - Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests

from Part II - Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Ted Hopf
Edited by
Ronald Grigor Suny
Ronald Grigor Suny
Affiliation:
University of Chicago and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

‘A great power has no permanent friends, just permanent interests’, an oft-heard aphorism about international politics, assumes these interests are obvious. In Britain’s case it was to prevent the domination of continental Europe. For Great Powers in general, it has been to maintain a balance against emerging hegemonic threats, such as Napoleonic France, Hitler’s Germany or the post-war Soviet Union.

Advising states to balance against power, the aphorism also warns against treating other states as natural allies, as an enemy today might be a friend tomorrow, as Britain found with the Soviet Union in June 1941. But aphorisms are rarely more than half-truths. States’ interests are no more permanent than their allies or enemies. Threats and interests are not obvious or objective. There is nothing about French and British nuclear weapons that make them objectively less threatening to the United States than Chinese warheads.

How, then, does a state become a threat? Realism tells us that power threatens. No Great Power feels threatened by Togo. But power is only necessary, not sufficient, to threaten. Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and France did not balance against Hitler’s Germany before the Second World War. Britain and France did not balance against the United States after the Second World War. Britain, France, China and Russia have not balanced against the United States since the end of the Cold War.

Keywords

cold warsingle foreign policy institutionMoscow's Communist alliesnew soviet manStalinismSoviet identitySoviet interests
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Russia , pp. 662 - 705
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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