The International System and the Soviet Union.
It seems that over the years Russia has dabbled in just about every international system there is. The most effective lens in which to view the Russian / Soviet international system would be a realist approach which deals with issues of polarity. In the nineteenth century they tried out multipolarity along with Great Britain, Austria, France, and Prussia. And that system worked fairly well for Russia for a while. But the system that the Soviet Union is most well known for is a bipolar system.
The Cold War era is perhaps the best example of a Bipolar system. A Bipolar system simply means that power is divided evenly between two states that together hold the majority of economic strength, military power, and cultural influence. According to our textbook, alliances in a bipolar system tend to be long term and relatively permanent. This can illustrated by the fact that the majority of communist states fell under the influence of the Soviet union and most democratic states (and the majority of Western Europe) fell under the influence of the United States.
Even though fundamental principles between the two key powers in a bipolar system tend to be near opposites, each side preferred negotiation rather than fighting a face-to-face war with each other in this new, nuclear age. Rather than engage the other head on, a series of smaller conflicts arose and were indirect confrontations between the two powers. These smaller conflicts did not run as great a risk of leading to nuclear proliferation as a direct war most certainly would have.
When a bipolar system becomes strong – as it did in the Cold War – our text also explains that international organizations lose their influence and effectiveness. An example of this would be the United Nations during the Cold War. There were three main international organizations during the cold war – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Warsaw Pact, and the United Nations. NATO was one of the many faces of the United States influence while the Warsaw Pact was a representation of the Soviet Union. These two organizations were representations of the alliances that made up each of the great powers. These organizations were prominent during the war because of what they symbolized. However, the United Nations was left in the middle without a side and without real purpose. During the peak of conflict, the United Nations tried, but failed, in making any impact on the conflict. The UN had members from both sides of the conflict that made any sort of decision-making impossible.
In the end (as we all know), the Soviet Union collapsed and took the Bipolar system down with it. But the Cold War does serve as a chilling example of what the Bipolar system is capable of. However many do regard the Bipolar system as the most stable international system. Kenneth Waltz perhaps puts it best in a quote found in our text. The two key powers are “able to both moderate the other’s use of violence and to absorb possibly destabilizing changes that emanate from uses of violence that they do not or cannot control.” It is this that ensures that each power will strive to preserve the balance of power in order to preserve itself and the system as a whole. This is why the end of the Bipolar system was not due to one power overcoming another – it ended because the Soviet Union fell apart from the inside out.
