Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T02:48:35.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Identity and the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

By
Robert Jervis
Edited by
Melvyn P. Leffler  and
Odd Arne Westad
Melvyn P. Leffler
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Odd Arne Westad
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

The question for this chapter is how Soviet and American national identities shaped and were shaped by the Cold War. Defining identity is not easy, however. Is it the same as self-image or self-perception? How does it relate to ideology and political culture? Can we treat national identity as singular in the face of internal differences? What evidence can establish the content or even the existence of identities, and how do we go about determining their causes and effects?

Although in the end perhaps we have to settle for the Potter Stewart definition of knowing it when we see it, more formally national identity can be seen as the set of values, attributes, and practices that members believe characterize the country and set it off from others. Identity is the (shared) answer to central if vague questions: Who are we? What are we like? Who are we similar to and different from? Identity is at work when people say “We must act in a way that is true to what we are,” as Jimmy Carter did in his 1978 state of the union address when he declared that “the very heart of our identity as a nation is our from commitment to human rights.” Identities thus carry heavy affective weight, and this helps explain why scholarly arguments about the Cold War are often very bitter because the stakes include what the Soviet Union and the United States are like or should be like.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Cold War , pp. 22 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdelal, Rawi, Herrera, Yoshiko, Johnston, Alastair Iain, and McDermott, Rose, “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics, 6 (2006).Google Scholar
Aron, Raymond, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. by Howard, Richard and Fox, Annette Baker (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966),Google Scholar
Cruz, Consuelo, Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua: World-Making in the Tropics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
English, Robert, Russia and the Idea of the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fursenko, Aleksandr and Naftali, Timothy, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1997).Google Scholar
Garthoff, Raymond, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994).Google Scholar
Gould-Davies, Nigel, “Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 1 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955).Google Scholar
Hopf, Ted, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow 1955 and 1999 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 41.Google Scholar
Hough, Jerry, The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American Options (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1986).Google Scholar
Hunt, Carew, “The Importance of Doctrine,” in Dallin, Alexander (ed.), Soviet Conduct in World Affairs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960).Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Political Power: USA/USSR (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982)Google Scholar
Isaacson, Walter, Kissinger (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).Google Scholar
Jacobson, Jon, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert, “Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?” Journal of Cold War Studies, 3 (2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), ch. 1.Google Scholar
Jervis, , System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Kramer, Mark, “Ideology and the Cold War,” Review of International Studies, 25 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Littleton, Taylor and Sykes, Maltby, Advancing American Art: Painting, Politics, and Cultural Confrontation at Mid-Century (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968).Google Scholar
McMahon, Robert, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
,Memorandum of conversation, June 3, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. V
Mueller, John, “What Was the Cold War About? Evidence from Its Ending,” Political Science Quarterly, 119 (2004–2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oren, Ido, Our Enemies and Us: America’s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Paine, Thomas, Basic Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: Willey, 1942).Google Scholar
Rogin, Michael, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).Google Scholar
Sestanovich, Stephen, “American Maximalism,” The National Interest, no. 79 (2005).Google Scholar
Soares, John, Jr., “Strategy, Ideology, and Human Rights: Jimmy Carter Confronts the Left in Central America, 1979–1981,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 8 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suri, Jeremi: Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
,US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. XII, Soviet Union, January 1969–October 1970 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006) (hereafter, FRUS, with year and volume number).
Waltz, Kenneth, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999),CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Zubok, Vladislav and Pleshakov, Constantine, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×