Abstract
The United States differs from other Western countries in its policy toward the Soviet Union in two basic ways. The structural differences are obvious. The United States is a superpower and the leader of the Western Alliance. It has the world’s largest GNP and more than 25,000 nuclear weapons. Naturally, that external situation has an effect on domestic attitudes. For small powers, the external environment tends to provide clear signals but, for a large country such as the United States, the environment is less constraining. Americans have more room for choice, and where there is room for choice, there is an opportunity for contention.
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Notes and References
Edwin S. Corwin, The President’s Office and Powers (New York University Press, 1940), p. 200.
John L. Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States (New York: Wiley, 1978), pp. 41 and 46.
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 219.
Ernest May, “The Cold War”, in Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (ed.), The Making of America’s Soviet Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
See the final chapter in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy.
“What is Distinctly American about the Foreign Policy of the United States?” in Glyndon Van Dusen and Richard Wade (eds), Foreign Policy and the American Spirit (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957).
William Schneider, “Public Opinion”, in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy.
Public Agenda Foundation, Voter Options for Nuclear Arms Policy (New York, 1984).
Ernest May, “The Cold War”, in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy, pp. 227–8.
See I.M. Destler, Leslie Gelb, and Anthony Lake, Our Own Worst Enemy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), Ch. 2.
See Richard Pipes, Survival Is Not Enough (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1986.
Alan Wolfe, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Threat (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1979).
John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband, Congress and Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
I.M. Destler, “Congress”, in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy.
See New York Times, March 3, 1983 and July 16, 1986.
Alexander George, “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy”, in Ole Holsti, Randolph Siverson and Alexander George (eds), Change in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980).
Graham Allison and Peter Szanton, Remaking Foreign Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983); and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
May, “The Cold War”, in Nye The Making of America’s Soviet Policy.
Alan Wolfe, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Threat (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1979).
Stanley Hoffmann, “Detente”, in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Renewed Hostility”, in Nye, The Making of America’s Soviet Policy, p. 289.
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© 1990 Gregory Flynn
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Nye, J.S. (1990). Systematic Problems: American Policy Toward the Soviet Union. In: Flynn, G., Greene, R.E. (eds) The West and the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20985-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20985-9_7
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