The Cold War Re-Visited: Explaining and Understanding of the End of the Cold War in Light of Neo-Realism

Abstract

Neorealism is certainly the most analyzed and criticized theoretical approach. This study is no exception. The Cold War was unexpectedly ended in the 1989- 1991 period. One of the main criticisms of neorealism is that it failed to predict an end to the Cold War. In international relations discipline, theories have rarely predictive ability. For the neorealist theorists, especially Waltz claims that the prediction issue is not a major criticism because neo-realism does not aim to predict the behavior of individual states at any given time. The main objective of neorealism is to explain the logic of individual relationships in the international state system. This article aims to offer new ideas whether neorealism tells us about the Cold War in terms of explanation about the events that may reemerge in global political scene almost twenty-five year later. Another important contribution of this article is to analyze the success and failure of the neorealist explanation and understanding of the Second Cold War of 1979-1985 in order to shed lights on the future the Third Cold War that is a political reality in terms of a Russian threat and a West response after the 2014 Crimean Crisis. It should be stressed that neorealism has the explanatory rather than the predictive power.

Keywords

• Cold War
• Neo-Realism
• Explaining and Understanding

The Cold War Re-Visited: Explaining and Understanding of the End of the Cold War in Light of Neo-Realism

Abstract

Neorealism is certainly the most analyzed and criticized theoretical approach. This study is no exception. The Cold War was unexpectedly ended in the 1989- 1991 period. One of the main criticisms of neorealism is that it failed to predict an end to the Cold War. In international relations discipline, theories have rarely predictive ability. For the neorealist theorists, especially Waltz claims that the prediction issue is not a major criticism because neo-realism does not aim to predict the behavior of individual states at any given time. The main objective of neorealism is to explain the logic of individual relationships in the international state system. This article aims to offer new ideas whether neorealism tells us about the Cold War in terms of explanation about the events that may reemerge in global political scene almost twenty-five year later. Another important contribution of this article is to analyze the success and failure of the neorealist explanation and understanding of the Second Cold War of 1979-1985 in order to shed lights on the future the Third Cold War that is a political reality in terms of a Russian threat and a West response after the 2014 Crimean Crisis. It should be stressed that neorealism has the explanatory rather than the predictive power.

Keywords

• Cold War
• Neorealism
• Kenneth Waltz
• Soviet Union
• United States
• Third Cold War

References

1. Referans 1 Deudney, Daniel and John Ikenbery, “The International Sources of Soviet Changes”, International Security, vol. 16, no. 3, Winter 1991-1992, pp. 74-118. http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~lorenzo/Deudney%20and%20Ikenberry%20Inter national%20Sources.pdf (access date 03.12.2016).