Realism and the End of the Cold War

Abstract

iNlodern realism began as a reaction to the breakdown of the post-World War I international order in the 1930s. The collapse of great-power cooperation after World War II helped establish it as the dominant approach to the theory and practice of international politics in the United States. During the Cold War, efforts to displace realism from its dominant position were repeatedly thwarted by the continued salience of the U.S.-Soviet antagonism: although indirect, the connection between events and theory was undeniable. Now, the U.S.-Soviet antagonism is history. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and with hardly a shot fired in anger, Russian power has been withdrawn from the Elbe to the Eurasian steppe. A central question faces students and practitioners of international politics. Do the rapid decline and comparatively peaceful collapse of the Soviet state, and with it the entire postwar international order, discredit the realist approach? Scholars have answered this question in two ways. Most argue that the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s utterly confound realism's expectations, and call into question its relevance for understanding the post-Cold War world.' Others-realist and non-realist alike-disagree, maintaining that the