Confronting Soviet Power Confronting Soviet Paul C. Avey Power U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War For many, the behav- ior of the United States in the early Cold War highlights the inºuence of ideas in foreign policy. According to this view, American liberalism directly faced off against Soviet Communism after World War II. This caused the United States to abandon collaboration, deªne the Soviet Union as an enemy, and implement a series of combative policies. In other words, Soviet power became a threat because the Soviet Union was a Communist dictatorship.1 To be sure, works in the realist tradition contend that balance of power concerns motivated U.S. policy. Yet these explanations often sidestep the role of ideas,2 blur the role of power and ideas,3 or incorporate ideas into their analysis.4 In short, many scholars accept that ideas were critical in pushing the United States to confront the Soviet Union and Communism. A close look at early Cold War history, however, suggests that U.S. policy was often inconsistent with the most prominent ideational explanations for U.S. behavior toward the Soviets. For instance, the United States genuinely at- tempted to engage the Soviet Union in the early postwar period despite aware- ness of the totalitarian nature of Soviet Communism. In addition, U.S. policy initially tolerated Communist groups beyond the Soviet Union and later tar- geted them to prevent Soviet expansion. Finally, the United States did not seri- Paul C. Avey is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Notre Dame. The author is grateful to Michael Desch, Sebastian Rosato, and the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and advice. He would also like to thank Robert Brathwaite, Peter Campbell, Charles Fagan, Kirstin Hasler, Keir Lieber, Dan Lindley, and Richard Maass for their helpful com- ments on earlier drafts. He thanks the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, both at Notre Dame, for their generous ªnancial support. 1. See, for example, Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006); Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006); Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002); and Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Collective Identity in a Democratic Commu- nity: The Case of NATO,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 357–399. 2. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 256– 261, 322–329; and Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 146–208. 3. Norman A. Graebner, Richard Dean Burns, and Joseph M. Siracusa, America and the Cold War, 1941–1991: A Realist Interpretation, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2010). 4. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 7th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006 [1948]), pp. 357–376. International Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Spring 2012), pp. 151–188 © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 151 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00079 by guest on 24 September 2021 International Security 36:4 152 ously pursue regime change in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe and sought to engage Communist regimes in Yugoslavia and China. In this article, I argue that U.S. policy was principally directed toward chal- lenging Soviet state power.5 The rise of Soviet power and the collapse of Eurasia beyond initial postwar assessments generated broad concerns in the United States. U.S. policy subsequently moved to block Soviet expansion and restore a balance of power in Europe and Asia. As the relative power situation worsened, the United States increased the scope of its economic and military commitments. My argument builds on existing power-based accounts, but goes beyond them to explicitly engage ideological arguments and demonstrate that speciªc U.S. policy initiatives followed balance of power logic. I do not claim that ideology played no role in the U.S. decision to confront the Soviets: for instance, U.S. ofªcials feared that Communism offered the Soviet Union a novel means to expand its power and used ideology to justify various initia- tives shaped by power concerns. Examining the origins of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the Cold War is important for two reasons. First, there is widespread acceptance across the major international relations paradigms—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—that U.S. policy during the early Cold War went beyond tra- ditional power politics. These arguments turn to ideas to explain U.S. behav- ior. Historians writing across different historiographic traditions, while generally advancing eclectic explanations for U.S. behavior, provide support- ing evidence for the ideational explanations. My argument challenges these ac- counts. Second, U.S. behavior in the early Cold War is an important case for the growing body of literature premised on the inºuence of ideas in foreign policy. Indeed, ideas should play a critical role in this case. The United States has a strong liberal tradition, and Soviet Communism differed substantially. By showing that ideas did not drive U.S. policy, my argument challenges the broader claims built on this case.6 The rest of the article proceeds in ªve sections. First, it deªnes ideology and power, outlines the ideological and power-based logic for the origins of the 5. I do not address Soviet foreign policy. For recent works on this topic, see Vladislav M. Zubok, Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Nigel Gould-Davies, “Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Interna- tional Politics during the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 90– 109; and John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1997). 6. Harry Eckstein, “Case Study and Theory in Political Science,” in Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby, eds., Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 1: Political Science: Scope and Theory (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975); and Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory De- velopment in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 120–123. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00079 by guest on 24 September 2021 Confronting Soviet Power 153 United States’ confrontation with the Soviet Union, and speciªes predictions for each. It also demonstrates the widespread agreement among self-identiªed realists, liberals, and constructivists that ideology played a critical role (if not the most critical role) in spurring U.S. behavior. Second, it discusses the key changes in power and ideology, including ideological perceptions, which should cause changes in U.S. policy. Third, it examines the content and tim- ing of major U.S. initiatives to demonstrate that power, rather than ideol- ogy, primarily drove U.S. policy. Fourth, it shows that U.S. policy toward Communist groups and regimes outside the Soviet orbit primarily reºected concerns about Soviet power. The ªnal section brieºy reviews the key ªndings and concludes with historical and theoretical implications. Ideology, Power, and Confrontation In this section, I outline the ideological and power-based explanations for in- ternational conºict. I show that scholars frequently employ ideology to explain the origins of U.S. Cold War policy. I then use this discussion to generate pre- dictions for U.S. behavior. ideology Ideas provide a useful tool for analyzing international politics and foreign policy, particularly U.S. policy in the Cold War. Given the breadth of concepts implied by the term, however, assessing the impact of ideas is difªcult. Indi- vidual psychology, common beliefs, norms, ideology, identity, and culture are a few examples.7 I employ the concept of “ideology,” which I deªne as a set of shared beliefs within a society through which that society identiªes and interprets events and selects appropriate policy responses. Ideology provides the basis for the proper construction of state institutions, the economy, conceptions of individ- ual and group, the use of force, and identiªcation of “in” and “out” groups.8 Ideology is distinct from internationally constructed culture, but is informed by and at times synonymous with national culture. It generally subsumes, or is 7. For a discussion, see Michael C. Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 150–158. 8. This deªnition draws on Kathleen Knight, “Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the 20th Century,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 4 (November 2006), pp. 619–626; Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 2005), pp. 1–6; Gould-Davies, “Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Poli- tics during the Cold War,” pp. 95–109; and Alexander L. George, “Ideology and International Relations: A Conceptual Analysis,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 1987), pp. 1–21. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00079 by guest on 24 September 2021 International Security 36:4 154 at least consistent with, strategic culture, collective ideas, or national identity.9 I cannot specify the origins of an ideology or why a particular ideology becomes dominant, but ideologies tend to become entrenched, to repli- cate through socialization, and to constrain or even constitute foreign policy thinking.