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International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War, by Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, editors
Preface
To our graduate students
who are struggling to make sense
of the changing world.
The genesis of this book was a 1991 conference on international relations theory and the end of the Cold War at Cornell University. At the last session of our conference, a prominent international relations scholar expressed his dissatisfaction with the proceedings. We had not posed a theoretically interesting question, he insisted. The end of the Cold War was "a mere data point'' that could not be used to test or develop theory. But by that logic, a graduate student countered, we should give up the study of the Big Bang; it too was a data point.
These statements represent two very different ways of looking at recent events. The first maintains that one anomalous case is irrelevant to the testing and development of theory. The second contends that the reconciliation of the two poles of a bipolar system is a remarkable development that is worth studying. The contributors to this volume adhere to the second point of view. Most of us also believe that the reorientation of Soviet foreign policy under Mikhail Sergeievich Gorbachev and the East-West reconciliation it promoted constitute formidable challenges to existing international relations theories. Neither realists, liberals, institutionalists, nor peace researchers recognized beforehand the possibility of such momentous change, and all of them have been struggling to find explanations consistent with their theories.
To improve our theories we need to know how and why they are inadequate. With this end in mind the Cornell University Peace Studies Program held a conference in October 1991 to address the implications of the end of the Cold War for international relations theory. The editors, who were also the conference organizers, invited prominent representatives of different paradigms and theories and asked them to prepare or comment on papers that evaluated the utility of their preferred approach in explaining the transformation of Soviet foreign policy and the end of the Cold War.
The conference was lively and contentious, with sharp disagreements about the purpose of theory, the most useful level of analysis, and the utility of case studies. To the delight of the graduate students, there was also a clash between paradigms. From the opening panel to the final summation, realists and their critics fought a running battle about the premise of the conference (realists in particular had their doubts) and the relevance of realism to the post-Cold War world (critics had their doubts). Equally interesting, and probably more fruitful, was the controversy within paradigms about how much existing theories needed reformulation in light of their failure to recognize the possibility of the kinds of changes that occurred in the world between 1986 and 1991.
With one exception, the conference papers were revised for publication in this volume, and one of the participants, Richard Herrmann, was asked to write a conclusion. The authors met a second time at Columbia University in February 1992 to plan the revisions and talk about how their individual contributions could be recast to fit together better in a book. Four of the revised papers were published in a symposium on international relations and the end of the Cold War in the spring 1994 issue of International Organization.
The book is based on the papers, but the papers and the conference benefited enormously from the observations and criticism of the other participants. These included John Lewis Gaddis, James Goldgeier, Robert Herman, Robert Jervis, Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, Elizabeth Kier, Stephen Krasner, Judith Reppy, Nina Tannenwald, Shibley Telhami, Dan Thomas, Stephen Walt, and Kenneth Waltz.
Neither the conference nor the book would have been possible without the Hewlett Foundation and Cornell University Peace Studies Program. The foundation underwrote the cost of the conference, and the program looked after all the arrangements. Realists and nonrealists alike were unanimous in their gratitude and praise for both organizations. We are also indebted to John Odell, editor of International Organization, and Kate Wittenberg, senior editor at Columbia University Press, for their unflagging interest in our project. Thanks too to the several reviewers for IO and Columbia for their helpful suggestions and sometimes penetrating critiques.
We recognize that we are too close to the event to say anything definitive about the meaning and significance of the Cold War and its demise. But before definitive studies can be written, many less enduring but provocative works must appear. At best, our book falls into this latter category. We hope it will appeal to scholars and students of international relations and encourage some of them to take the next steps along the road of reflection and discovery.
&nbs p; Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen
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