realism and the cold war

Question 1

what ways can the cold war be described as?

Answer 1

• global arms race for nuclear weapons
• political military rviality
• ideological rivalry
• interstate conflict

Question 2

stressed relations in 1945

Answer 2

• the end of the 2nd world war a serier of agreements between states were made to create pace: the cold war is a signification that this failed
• the soviets were suspious of the west and the west wer suspicious of the south

Question 3

what was the policy of containment

Answer 3

US policy to contain communism in eastern europe though the truman sdoctinine in 1947 and th marshall plan offering economic invstment to wester countries to prevent them from being communist

Question 4

what issue did china create

Answer 4

china falling under communism posed a large threat to democracy and the west, this created the ehgith of the red scare in the USA especially.
- made the west worry about the domino theory’ and all other states falling with china

Question 5

what was the khruchev era

Answer 5

cooling off period with de-stalinsation policies
- however the secodn berlin crisis, bay of pigs and 11 day cuban missile crisis soured relations!!!

Question 6

detente

Answer 6

nixon and bhreznev
- salt 1 and 2 tratis as well as test ban treaty
- came about due to US weakness in the vietnam war

Question 7

why did detente end?

Answer 7

detente was a policy of actors, once nixon and bhreznev were goen the cold war re-strated again

Question 8

who ended the cold war?

Answer 8

bhreznew with his new thinking allwoing for democratic rescutiing in eastern europe

Question 9

what did hertz argue about foreign policy

Answer 9

• foreign policy must be a ‘conscious balance of power policy’ as opposed to being driven by emotion or ideology
• wars are only beneficial if they benefit the interest of a country

Question 10

what to realists believe about human nature

Answer 10

humans are egotistical and self interested and therefore conflict is always possible
- therfore a balence of power is needed in an anarchichal state to avoid conflcit

Question 11

why did walz create his theory of structures?

Answer 11

to study the international in a systemic way

every states has the same goal of security therofr the strucute of anarchy detemines ho wstates act

Question 12

neo-realism rationality

Answer 12

all states have a monopolistic nature acting on an unchaing rationality motiviated by protecting state intersts.
- every state is the same as they all have the same interest

Question 13

conceptialisation of power

Answer 13

worlds can either be monopolar or bipolar depednign on how many world powers there are and this then alows preditions at to how other states will behave

Question 14

balencing

Answer 14

states creating a alliance to counteract the growing power of another state

Question 15

waltz’s balenc of power threat theory

Answer 15

looks how how states percieve thereats
- includes examining variables that neo-realists say dont matters causing conflict

Question 16

bandwaggoning

Answer 16

smaller state attaching itself to a large state for saftey

Question 17

collective action problems

Answer 17

due to self intersts ther is only a limited amount of co-operating which can be achieved

Question 18

back passing

Answer 18

as states are self intersted they wont get involed in conflict if they dont have to and instread will back pass it on to other states (such as the US and soviets in ww2)

Question 19

chaingaining

Answer 19

in a multi-power world alliance systems are rife
- meaning a smll conflcit can involve many more states than it needs to

Question 20

nuclear weapons and realism

Answer 20

walz would argue that nculear powers are a stabilising force as it erases the powtntional of wars due to MAD
- if iraw got nuclear wepon sit could stabilies the middle eat