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The New Containment Myth: Realism and the Anomaly of European Integration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Charles W. Kegley Jr.
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Abstract

Kegley, skeptical of the Western perception that Soviet surrender was proof of American superiority in the arms race and the reliance on NATO to “spend the Soviets into submission”-the new containment “myth”-analyzes the origins of the U.S. containment doctrine. He contrasts the harsher realist Hobbsian/Machiavellian views focusing on a stringent containment policy to those of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Kennan, who advocated a gradual opposition to the Soviets through patient political and diplomatic means. Kegley advocates Kennan's argument that the “inevitable triumph of Western liberalism” was certain and the failure of the communist regime was predetermined by its insulation. Empirical tests have not validated the extent of influence of NATO and practice of nuclear deterrence on the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Kegley argues for a focus on promoting the success of Russia while using the relative success European integration as grounds to work within a transnational collaboration framework based on Kennan's initial recommendations.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 5 , March 1991 , pp. 99 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1991

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References

2 Fred Charles Ikle, “The Ghost in the Pentagon,”The National Interest, No. 19 (Spring 1990), p. 14.

3 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 719–32.

4 See Charles W. Kegley, Jr., ed., The Long Postwar Peace: Contending Explanations and Projections (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

5 Ronald Higgins, Plotting Peace (London: Brassey's, 1990), p. 205.

6 This is not to deny that many aspects of the realist and idealist schools of thought overlap, or to conclude that it is safe to draw a strict dichotomy between them. For discussions of these traditions, see John H. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Charles W. Kegley, Jr. and Gregory A. Raymond, When Trust Breaks Down (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 8–45; and Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).

7 Hidemi Suganami, “A Normative Enquiry in International Relations,”Review of International Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1983), p. 35. For a discussion of the consequences for international relations theory, see William R. Kreml and Charles W. Kegley, Jr., “Must the Quest Be Elusive? Restoring Ethics to Theory Building in International Relations,”Alternatives, Vol. 15, May (1990), pp. 155–75.

8 For a description of neorealist beliefs and their relationship to classical realist theory, see Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). In this essay, the term neorealism is used in the broadest sense to refer to different, even incompatible views. The astute reader will be appreciative of these important differences. At the risk of great oversimplification, let us note here that the hardline adherents of neorealism focus almost exclusively on the military and geostrategic structural deteminants of national behavior, and assume that the values of actors are inconsequential as influences on foreign policy decisions. In contrast, classic realism emphasizes the importance of values in defining national interests.

9 “X” (George F. Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,”Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25 (July 1947), pp. 566–82.

10 Ibid., pp. 575. Emphasis added.

11 This is is not to dismiss the fact that many aspects of Soviet behavior at the time (e.g. Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere) seemed to confirm realist expectations and render a confrontational reaction less controversial. At issue, however, was the impact of containment by military means on the genesis and perpetuation of the Cold War, for to some extent Soviet belligerence can be accounted for by America's own militancy. For discussions, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), and Richard A. Melanson, Writing History and Making Policy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983).

12 Robert Gordis, “Religion and International Responsibility,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Moral Dimensions of American Foreign Policy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 36.

13 As cited in Harry P. Davis and Robert C. Good, Reinhold Neibuhr on Politics (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1960), p. 298.

14 George Kennan, Memoirs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 361.

15 Ibid., p. 361.

16 Ibid., p. 356. For a discussion of Kennan's formulation and his dialogue with others about its meaning, which demonstrates that Kennan—in contrast to his critics—was consistent since 1947 in his beliefs about the need for East-West rapprochement and about the futility of military force to resist communist expansionism, see David Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

17 George Kennan, Memoirs, p. 363. Emphasis added.

18 Ibid., p. 365.

19 Ibid., p. 383.

20 See George F. Kennan, “Containment Then and Now,”Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65 (Spring 1987), pp. 885–90.

21 Gerald F. Seib and John Walcott, “Presidential Candidates Differ on How to Deal with the Soviet Union,”The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 1988, p. 1.

22 Richard Perle, “Military Power and the Passing Cold War,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and Kenneth L. Schwab, After the Cold War: Questioning the Morality of Nuclear Deterrence (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, forthcoming).

23 See Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (New York: Warner Books, 1990).

24 Richard J. Barnet, “Reflections,”The New Yorker, March 9, 1987, p. 78.

25 Strobe Talbott, “Rethinking the Red Menace,”Time, January 1, 1990, p. 69.

26 For explorations of this thesis, see Walter Russell Mead, “On the Road to Ruin,”Harper's, Vol. 280 (March 1990), pp. 59–64, and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).

27 New York Times International, May 13, 1989, p. 4.

28 Time, April 2, 1990, p. 47.

29 Kennan, Memoirs, p. 364.

30 See Deborah Stone, “Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas,”Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 104 (Summer 1989), pp. 281–300.

31 Felix S. Cohen, Ethical Systems and Legal Ideals (Ithaca, NY: Great Seal Books, 1959), p. 118.

32 See Karl W. Deutsch, “The Limits of Common Sense,”Psychiatry, Vol. 12, No. 2 (May 1959), pp. 105–112.

33 Cohen, Ethical Systems, pp. 124, 116.

34 John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (London: Longmans, 1843).

35 See John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

36 Joseph S. Nye, “The Long-Term Future of Deterrence,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and Eugene R. Wittkopf, eds., The Nuclear Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), p. 81.

37 Georgi Arbatov, “Spending Too Much on the Military,”World Press Review, Vol. 37 (April 1990), p. 50.

38 Perhaps the Reagan buildup prompted rather than diminished Soviet defense spending. Mikhail Gorbachev remains committed to force modernization, as attested to by the fact that in 1990 the Soviet Union launched one new submarine every six weeks and one new missile every day. See Gerald Frost, “Demilitarization Is a One-Way Street,”Wall Street Journal, July 31, 1990, p. A12.

39 So far, the Bush administration has distanced itself from this aspiration, and there is reason to doubt that the Cold War enthusiasts for a jihad will command a large following; see Eugene R. Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: The Foreign Policy Beliefs and Preferences of the American People (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).

40 One example of old thinking in the face of new realities is the Bush administration's new SIOP, which targets Soviet leaders and prepares for war-fighting with nuclear weapons; see Desmond Ball and Robert C. Toth, “Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes,”International Security, No. 14 (Spring, 1990), pp. 65–92.

41 John Lewis Gaddis, “Coping with Victory,”The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 265 (May, 1990), p. 51.

42 Cohen, Ethical Systems, p. 72.

43 Donald J. Puchala, “The Integration Theorists and the Study of International Relations,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and Eugene R. Wittkopf, eds., The Global Agenda, 2nded. (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 207.

44 For overviews of federalist, functionalist, and neofunctionalist theories, see Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords Into Plowshares (New York: Random House, 1971).

45 See Karl W. Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

46 Claude, Swords Into Plowshares, p. 386.

47 David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1966).

48 Claude, Swords Into Plowshares, p. 386.

49 Talbott, “Rethinking the Red Menace,” p. 69.

50 Mayers, George Kennan, p. 130.

51 This suggests that functionalism can be practiced within a Kennanesque framework of power and ethics; as a basis for this categorization, see Kenneth W. Thompson, Ethics, Functionalism and Power in International Politics: The Crisis in Values (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979).

52 Arnold L. Horelick, “U.S.-Soviet Relations: Threshold of a New Era,”Foreign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 1 (1990), pp. 54–55.

53 Cohen, Ethical Systems, p. 127.

54 “What Should We Do in the World?”The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 264 (October, 1989), p. 85.

55 Michael Banks, “The International Relations Discipline: Asset or Liability for Conflict Resolution?” in Edward E. Azar and John W. Burton, eds., International Conflict Resolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1986), p. 13.

56 See Stanley Kober, “Idealpolitik,”Foreign Policy, Vol. 79 (Summer 1990), pp. 3–24; and Charles W. Kegley, Jr., “Neo-Idealism: A Practical Matter,”Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 1 (1987), pp. 173–97.

57 Cited in Kenneth W. Thompson, The Moral Issues in Statecraft (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), p. 33.

58 Talbott, “Rethinking the Red Menace,” p. 70.