1. Three images of Cold War influence: a review.
- Author
-
Puchala, Donald J.
- Subjects
COLD War, 1945-1991 ,INTERNATIONAL relations ,INTERNATIONAL relations, 1945-1989 ,COMPETITION ,DURESS (Law) ,NEGOTIATION ,POLITICAL movements - Abstract
This article discusses the political influence of the Cold War. If one takes influence to mean the prevalence of one will over another, then one of the facts of contemporary international politics is that the superpowers exert very little influence over each other. This is certainly not very surprising when one recognizes that influence follows from the ability to coerce or threaten coercion, or from the ability to entice by offering rewards. Neither superpower can credibly threaten coercion save in the form of second strike retaliation. Observation reveals that what political movement there has been in superpower relations thus far has been generated in one of three ways: through indirect competition for alignment in the "third world," through slow-moving negotiations, and through confrontation politics at the nuclear threshold. More concretely, the goal of indirect superpower competition is to frustrate the opponent's political will, and realize one's own by shifting the world political status quo to the favor of one's ideological camp. Superpowers no longer act directly upon each other. Each acts instead on weaker "third world" countries and there attempts to thwart or otherwise interfere with the other's attempts to expand its sphere of political-ideological alignment.
- Published
- 1969
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