Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Reading Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century: how the ‘West’ wrote its history of the USSR
- Part I Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
- Part II Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends
- 14 Economic and demographic change: Russia’s age of economic extremes
- 15 Transforming peasants in the twentieth century: dilemmas of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet development
- 16 Workers and industrialization
- 17 Women and the state
- 18 Non-Russians in the Soviet Union and after
- 19 The western republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Baltics
- 20 Science, technology and modernity
- 21 Culture, 1900–1945
- 22 The politics of culture, 1945–2000
- 23 Comintern and Soviet foreign policy, 1919–1941
- 24 Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests
- 25 The Soviet Union and the road to communism
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
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
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Reading Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century: how the ‘West’ wrote its history of the USSR
- Part I Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
- Part II Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends
- 14 Economic and demographic change: Russia’s age of economic extremes
- 15 Transforming peasants in the twentieth century: dilemmas of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet development
- 16 Workers and industrialization
- 17 Women and the state
- 18 Non-Russians in the Soviet Union and after
- 19 The western republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Baltics
- 20 Science, technology and modernity
- 21 Culture, 1900–1945
- 22 The politics of culture, 1945–2000
- 23 Comintern and Soviet foreign policy, 1919–1941
- 24 Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests
- 25 The Soviet Union and the road to communism
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
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
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Russia , pp. 662 - 705Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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