Bulletin n. 1/2009 | ||
July 2009 | ||
Cesa Marco |
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Realist Visions of the End of the Cold War: Morgenthau, Aron and Waltz | ||
in British Journal of Politics & International Relations , Vol. 11, Issue 2, May , 2009 , 177-191 | ||
Although realist theory did not predict the end of the cold war, prominent realist scholars such as Hans Morgenthau, Raymond Aron and Kenneth Waltz did give some thought to the conditions under which the cold war might be settled. Both Aron and Morgenthau characterised the cold war as a combination of traditional power politics and ideological competition, but they differed on the relative weight of each component. For Morgenthau, a diplomatic settlement would deactivate the unsettling potential of the ideological conflict; for Aron, only the disappearance of the ideological conflict could pave the way to some lasting diplomatic settlement. For Waltz, ideology had little impact; the bipolar structure of the international system was the main variable on which both the cold war and its end depended. | ||