Richard K. Betts Quotes
If the Cold War is really over, and the West really won, then continuing implicit deterrence does less to protest against a negligible threat from Russia than to feed suspicions that aggravate political friction. In contrast to during the Cold War, it is now hard to make the case that Russia is more a threat to NATO than the reverse.
Richard K. Betts, Professor and Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and Columbia University “The Lost Logic of Deterrence: What the Strategy That Won the Cold War Can—and Can’t—Do Now”, Foreign Affairs, March / April 2013
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Ironically, at the time she wrote this column, Mrs. Roosevelt was being accused of being a communist by some Southerners who associated her strong views against racism and segregation. Some in the North thought she was a communist because of her active role in the New Deal, Yet here she was, willing to use military force to prevent Soviet expansion.
The issue of unilateral or multilateral foreign policy efforts faced America after WWII.
Most experts believe that this objective was sustained all through the Afghanistan War in the early 21st century.
Bush wanted to expand NATO to include Poland and Hungary. However the German and American governments had previously (before the collapse of the Soviet Union) given promises to the Russians that NATO would never be expanded Eastward from East Germany. See {32678}. Bush went ahead and violated those promises anyway using the excuse that the agreement had not been part of a treaty. That decision had implications for Russian attitudes towards the United States and Western Europe. The Russians repudiated their agreements in 2014 and invaded the Crimea and took it from Ukraine. The Russians however had broken promises many time whereas the United States reversals of promises, like this were few. Bush’s logic however was not in keeping with traditional American standards. We made a deal with Russia when they were a strong superpower who could easily damage many of our national interests. However, when they were weak, we no longer have to do anything we agreed to when they were strong. The great irony was that reacting against Westernization of Ukraine, Premier Putin, by seizing the Crimea and successfully supporting ethnic Russian separatists in Ukraine put Russia back on the map as a major power in the world who could act with impunity against the interests of the West, Europe, the United States and the NATO countries. Most Russians rejoiced that Russia was again an empire that could not be dictated to.
Richard Kevin Betts is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who centers on U.S. foreign policy. He is currently the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and former director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies.
