U.S.-Soviet Cooperation: The Role of Third States

Abstract

U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the developing world must be pursued within a multilateral setting since neither, alone or together, is capable of defining regional security systems. In eliciting the cooperation of regional states in defining peaceful security regimes around the globe, the United States and the Soviet Union should base their cooperation on the following assumptions or principles. First, current understandings should be codified to establish a solid foundation for future cooperation. Second, impediments to further cooperation should be clearly delineated to limit misunderstandings. Third, both should be sensitive to the limits of their power as a function of the demands of other states to have a say in regional security. Fourth, these limits should not hinder cautious but optimistic expectations of advancing cooperation because both Washington and Moscow, whether under centralized or federated authority, have powerful incentives to continue to expand the scope and depth of their cooperation at the regional level.

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References

1. These are delineated at length in Roger E. Kanet and Edward A. Kolodziej , eds., The Cold War as Cooperation: Superpower Cooperation in Regional Conflict Management (London: Macmillan; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

2. Anton DePorte , Europe and the Superpowers, 2d ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).

3. Galia Golan , “Superpower Cooperation in the Middle East,” in The Cold War as Cooperation, ed. Kanet and Kolodziej , pp. 125-126. See other chapters in this volume for a discussion of U.S.-Soviet regional cooperation in other regions. The appendix provides a complete list of instances of U.S.-Soviet cooperation identified by the authors.

4. This was one of the principal objectives of Kanet and Kolodziej , eds., Cold War as Cooperation.

World Politics, 37(1) (Oct. 1985), a symposium on the prospects of cooperation under so-called conditions of anarchy.

6. Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E. Kanet , ed., The Limits of Soviet Power in the Developing World: Thermidor in the Revolutionary Struggle (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

For a parallel, though more contemporaneous, analysis of declining Soviet influence, see Paul Dibb , The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

8. Paul W. Schroeder , “The Nineteenth Century System: Balance of Power or Political Equilibrium,” Review of International Studies, 15:135-253 (1989).

9. Axelrod and the World Politics group also contend that cooperation increases in inverse proportion to the number of participants. Whatever the logical attractiveness of this proposition may be, research on U.S.-Soviet relations with developing states suggests that enlarging the scope of peace negotiations and increasing the number of interested parties can have positive results.

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10. For an excellent overview of why North Africa has been largely insulated from the Cold War struggle, see I. William Zartman , “Superpower Cooperation in North Africa and the Horn of Africa,” in Cold War as Cooperation, ed. Kanet and Kolodziej , pp. 147-170.

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11. See Edward A. Kolodziej , Making and Marketing Arms: The French Experience and Its Implications for the International System (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 367-383.

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12. E.g., Jean-Pierre Cot, as minister of cooperation in the first Mitterrand government, whose insistence on a global strategy contributed eventually to his ouster.

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13. For a nostalgic interpretation of the Cold War as stable and under the control of the United States and the Soviet Union, see John Mearsheimer , “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security, 15(1):5-56 (Summer 1990).