The puzzle of NATO's persistence is best addressed as part of a larger inquiry into institutional change. Institutions persist because they are costly to create and less costly to maintain, but this ...institutionalist argument is incomplete. Whether institutions adapt to change depends on whether their norms, rules, and procedures are specific or general assets and on whether the asset mix matches the kinds of security problems faced by their members. Assets specific to coping with external threats will not be useful for coping with problems of instability and mistrust, so alliances with only the former will disappear when threats disappear. Alliances that have specific institutional assets for dealing with instability and mistrust and general institutional assets will be adaptable to environments that lack threats. I assess these hypotheses in a test case of NATO's institutional assets during and after the Cold War.
Several hundred thousand members of the Red Army were stationed in East Germany when that state was reunited with its western counterpart. The peaceful transfer of these soldiers to their homeland ...produced a welcome outcome to a potentially explosive situation. Through an investigation of the strategies of German and Russian decision-makers, Celeste A. Wallander explores what conditions facilitate or hinder international cooperation in security matters. Wallander spent the months and years after the fall of the Berlin Wall interviewing officials and politicians from Germany and Russia. She reveals how these individuals assessed and responded to potential flashpoints: the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Germany, the implementation of arms control treaties, the management of ethnic and regional conflicts. She also examines the two states' views on the enlargement of NATO. The first detailed account from both countries' perspectives of the extraordinary contraction of Russian power and the implications of German unification, Mortal Friends, Best Enemies clearly depicts the important role European and global institutions played making the military disengagement possible. Wallander draws on these findings to develop a new institutional theory of security relations. In it she defines the techniques that international institutions can use to help states solve obstacles to security.
A fruitless debate has emerged over whether Russia is a post-imperial power that seeks global cooperation or a neoimperial one that seeks to control weaker countries. Russian strategy is shaped by ...modern, or transnational, & imperialist causes. In other words, it is a new, transimperialist power requiring new strategies. Adapted from the source document.
RésuméGrâce à ses ressources énergétiques, la Russie est de retour dans l’économie mondiale dans son voisinage proche, et dans le rapport global des puissances. Elle n’est ni post-impériale, ni ...néo-impériale. Elle peut plutôt être qualifiée de trans-impériale, en ce sens qu’elle tente de reproduire à l’échelle internationale le système des relations patrons-clientèle qui structurent l’actuel pouvoir à Moscou. Ce trans-impérialisme appelle une réponse coordonnée entre Europe et États-Unis.
RésuméLa Russie est de retour dans l’économie mondiale, grâce à ses ressources énergétiques, dans son voisinage proche, et dans le rapport global des puissances. Elle n’est ni post-impériale, ni ...néo-impériale. Elle peut plutôt être qualifiée de trans-impériale, en ce sens qu’elle tente de reproduire à l’échelle internationale le système des relations patrons-clientèle qui structurent l’actuel pouvoir à Moscou. Ce trans-impérialisme appelle une réponse coordonnée entre Europe et États-Unis.
Russia: Power in weakness? Rumer, Eugene B.; Wallander, Celeste A.
The Washington quarterly,
12/2003, Letnik:
27, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Russian leadership faces internal political, economic, societal, and defense challenges that will preclude Russia from achieving great-power status in the near future. What is notable is not Russia's ...power but its weakness.
Fifteen years ago, Gorbachev encouraged "new thinking," a set of ideas that overturned the Leninist theory of international relations underpinning Soviet foreign policy. What happened to them? After ...September 11, are they coming back?
The role of Western governments in the disintegration of the Soviet Union was complex. The two most important factors that undermined the Soviet state were the deepening economic chaos under Mikhail ...Gorbachev and the rapid growth of internal political dissent. Western policies tended to magnify both of these factors. This is not to say, however, that Gorbachev’s original decision to embark on an economic reform program was simply the result of pressure created by Western defense spending and military deployments. The Soviet economy was plagued by severe weaknesses, of which the misallocation of resources and excessive military expenditures were only a small part. Gorbachev’s initial economic reforms were spurred by his awareness of the country’s general economic problems. After the first round of reforms failed, he sensed that arms control and reductions in military spending would be helpful for the next stage. Even so, the belated cuts he made in military spending (beginning in 1990) were of relatively little consequence. The West’s refusal to pour money into the Soviet system without evidence of structural reform in the last years of the Soviet regime, and Western pressure on Gorbachev not to crack down on political dissent and separatism, did hasten the Soviet collapse. These policies denied the Soviet system resources that might have prolonged its survival, and they helped to deter Gorbachev from using decisive force against elements that were splitting the Soviet Union apart.
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