International relations theory in recent years has witnessed a wide-ranging debate between rationalist and constructivist approaches to strategic action. Much of international relations theory has been premised on the assumption of rational action, with actors pursuing an instrumental logic (Elster 1989). Other work has focused on the effect of normative rules in constraining behavior, with actors pursuing a logic of appropriateness (March and Simon 1998; Finnemore 1996, Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink 1999). Recent work in international relations theory (Risse 2000, Checkel 2001) has suggested that actors employ a third mode of argumentative behavior, based on the logic of communicative action (Habermas 1984). My paper investigates the extent to which these different three modes of action have been at play in democratic Russia’s debates about strategic arms control. I suggest new ways of establishing which mode actors are likely to employ. I argue that by operationalizing the concepts of uncertainty, history, and rationality, we can more concretely specify the conditions under which actors are most likely to act instrumentally, follow rules of appropriate behavior, engage in communicative action, and switch between modes. I demonstrate this argument through an analysis of how democratic Russia has defined its national interest in strategic arms control and missile defense with regard to the United States. The Russian elite over the much of the post-Soviet period has coalesced around a definition of Russia’s core interest as maintenance of its great power status, and has based its current position on its past status to determine its approach to arms control issues. From 1994-2000, elite reliance on logic of appropriateness prevented the Russian state from rationally learning from its weakness to secure arms control agreements and decreased Russia’s ability to engage the US on these issues. A democratic developmentalist segment of the elite has consistently employed the mode of communicative action to undermine consensus on Russia’s great power status, arguing in the language of Western rationalism for regarding Russia as a regional power rather than a global one. They have gradually reduced the Russian elite’s uncertainty about its strategic security environment and its new democratic structure and undermined action based on the appropriateness of Russia’s great power status. The result since 2001 has been a change from Russia’s pursuit of status to a more rational evaluation of costs and benefits in strategic arms control. Constructivist and game theoretic approaches that rely on the logic of reciprocity suggest that states form their identities and their security interests (Wendt, 1999) or their strategies (Axelrod, 1984) by mirroring the behavior of other states. My approach highlights the fact that when the logic of appropriateness reigns, Russia’s interests in strategic arms control is defined as much by its image of its past self as by the past actions of other states. It also specifies the mechanisms through which the standards of appropriateness can be undermined through communicative action, ironically producing a much more rational discourse regarding security interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]