The relationship between militarization and state formation in the West has been the subject of considerable scholarship,1 and there is thus some temptation to simply transfer concepts and arguments from that domain to the study of Third World militarization. Yet state formation dynamics in the two contexts were and are quite different, with important implications for the nature of national security threats. In the West threats tended to be external, rooted in anarchical competition between relatively equal states possessing domestic legitimacy, which meant that militarization could be understood primarily in terms of the political realist focus on security dilemmas and action-reaction dynamics. In contrast, Third World state formation has occurred in a largely dependent context in which relative external security contrasts with domestic insecurity.2 In this case the external environment, rather than being a source of threat, becomes a source of opportunities for elites lacking domestic legitimacy to gain support against internal security threats. In short, national security problems look very different in the First and Third Worlds because of different trajectories and contexts of state formation. Very different mechanisms may therefore account for militarization, suggesting the need for concepts and theories different than those that dominate security studies in the West.

The implosion of the Soviet idea over the course of 1989 to 1991, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, promises to reshape the region along lines of historic ethnic, and even religious division. That development requires those interested in American-Russian relations to take a more historical approach to analysis than might have been the case hitherto. The past is, of course, not necessarily a guide to events in the present or future. None the less, current debates about how deeply the United States should be involved in Russian affairs should benefit from better familiarity with the historical record, in particular of that period before the relationship between the two countries suffered from mutual ideological and geopolitical animus. It is sometimes forgotten, or else too briefly remembered, that relations between the United States and Russia extend back to the dawn of an independent American diplomacy. Similarly, it is not always recalled that for much of the nineteenth century, especially prior to the Civil War, those relations were relatively amicable, although also distant and detached. An overview of the period may therefore be useful today, for the degree to which the United States can afford o t detach itself from Russia is again of main concern. A related area of interest and debate is the role of public opinion in possibly forcing confrontation on issues where national elites might prefer to maintain cordial relations. This essay seeks to cast light on these areas of current interest, by focusing on the interplay between public enthusiasms in the United States for diplomatic intervention in Russia, and official political calculations in American diplomacy prior to 1865. It argues that the resulting policy had mostly to do with a detachment from Russian despotism, born of the physical isolation of the United States, its lack of truly significant contacts with Russia, but also its own deeply flawed republicanism.

In 1977 at the instigation of the Carter Administration, the United States and the Soviet Union opened negotiations aimed at concluding an agreement to control conventional arms transfers. Four rounds of talks were held over a period of twelve months and expectations were raised in both countries that the negotiations would be successful. However, at the fourth round of talks these expectations were dashed by the abrupt termination of negotiations. It is the contention of this article that the immediate fate of the talks and the timing of their collapse can be understood only in the context of the bureaucratic battles within the Carter Administration over the issue of arms transfer control and the wider question of relations with the Soviet Union and China.

A theory, writes Anthony Wilden, like any other adaptive system, must have a survival value. It is impossible, he continues, ‘for a theory not to have a referent or a goal outside itself, since “pure truth” not only does not exist, it has no survival value whatsoever.’ Wilden's reference to the ‘external’ goal of a theory suggests that theories carry subliminal messages which exceed the strict boundary of their textual content. An effective technique for identifying the political and normative undertones communicated by theories is an inquiry into those areas which supposedly of peripheral significance to them.

Contemporary theorists of international politics do not see the world in the same ways nor do they agree on what is important to know, or how to know it. Disagreements are partly due to the increasing complexity of the world, but also derive from the development of many different viewing points. Some are geographic and cultural (Americans often view the world differently than, say, Japanese), but other perspectives come from different epistemological starting points and from different assumptions as to what constitutes reliable or useful knowledge, and how to create it. Debates in the 1960s revolved around problems of methodology. Today, we see in addition arguments over metaphysics, the purposes of theoretical activity (understanding versus praxis, for example), and a whole host of other divisive questions.

The last fifty years were bloody and dismal for many war-torn regions of the world. The end of the Second World War ushered in a new era of local and ‘limited’ wars throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. Hardly a day went by without a war, civil or international, claiming its victims somewhere on our planet. Yet Europe experienced a ‘Long Peace’ (J. L. Gaddis). The direct confrontation of the superpowers, the Soviet and US tanks on either side of the inner German border, immunized Europe from the plague of war. In the great wrestling match between East and West, Europe was the prime prize, and too much was at stake for all sides to allow any wars, even minor wars, to erupt anywhere on this continent.1