How Rivalries End- Ch. 1: The Problem of Rivalry De-escalation and Termination

Abstract

The demise of the Cold War caught many, if not all, observers and participants alike by surprise. For much of the time between the end of World War II and the late 1980s/early 1990s, analysts and policymakers alike assumed that the East-West structural cleavage in world politics would remain unvarying. This cleavage was so paramount that it permeated and influenced world politics at all levels. In fact, for many observers every competition appeared, rightly or wrongly, as if it were a proxy struggle for the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Then, abruptly, the central cleavage no longer existed. As a consequence, analysts and decision makers alike lost their conceptual anchor for deciphering how the world worked. The "world still worked," but a basic key to unlocking the secrets of how it worked had disappeared for good.