THE COLLAPSE OF THE BIPOLAR WORLD. WHITE
HOUSE – KREMLIN RELATIONS BETWEEN 1985-1991
FROM REALISM PERSPECTIVE
Robert LUPIȚU
National University of Political and Administrative Sciences, Bucharest
Tel: 004 – 0746.22.64.91, E-mail: robert.lupitu@hotmail.com
Abstract
The Cold War is a disputed and referencial chapter in the domain of international relations. The analysis of these relations between the two actors, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. reveal certain key moments of the conflict, and the intensification of the dialogue will affect the last stage of the Cold War (1985-1991), in which U.S.- Soviet relations will swing between confrontation and dialogue.
In a theoretical context, the international relations of the Cold War were mainly characterized by defensive realism or neoralism which its main thesis is that a bipolar system (in our case forged by American and Soviet blocks) provides and offers more guarantees of peace and balance of power than a multipolar world. Also, the Cold War period can be analyzed from other realist outlooks, such as clasical realism or offensive realism, but our scientific approach will focus on the theoretical frame of defensive realism.
The period 1985-1991 or the last stage of the Cold War is an important landmark for the international relations, because the conflict will be carried in a different manner by U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.. What is very interesting to observe is that in the following period, both U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. will restore, deliberately or not, an epoch of detente, but which was known in the historiography as the end of the bipolar world (1985-1991) or the end of the Cold War. It is certain that in these final years of the East-West conflict, the U.S.-Soviet relations have never been so close to cooperation as at that time.
Keywords: Cold War, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., defensive realism, bipolar world, balance of power, global order, peace, international relations, cooperation