As the uncertainty of the contemporary international landscape makes us look back on the Cold War-era international system with a certain admiration and nostalgia, it must be pointed out that the 1946-1991 epoch was no time of peace. Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, explores the nature of the Soviet-American competition and its relevance for world affairs in our day and age.
This year, 2026, marks the eightieth anniversary of the beginning of the Cold War—the politico–ideological and military–economic confrontation between the blocs led by the United States and the USSR—and, at the same time, the thirty-fifth anniversary of its definitive conclusion, brought about by the disappearance of one of its participants (1991). Because the parties to the conflict had, within the first decade and a half, already developed the technical capacity to annihilate not only one another but potentially a substantial part of humanity, the Cold War proved to be one of the most dangerous confrontations in history. And yet it never acquired the character of a “hot” war—that is, a direct armed clash between the principal adversaries. This was so, in large part, precisely because the creation of murderous nuclear weapons compelled the USSR and the United States to be considerably more cautious in their practical decisions than might otherwise have been the case.
It was precisely this caution—whose practical consequence was that the two sides restrained one another rather than confronting each other directly—that gave rise to a unique system of norms, rules and practices, allowing one to speak of the emergence of a distinctive order: one of the most stable and secure, from the standpoint of the likelihood of general war. In other words, although the situation was always fraught with menace, it was precisely this menace that compelled the leading military powers to create the greatest number of mechanisms safeguarding their relations against a slide towards dangerous escalation. This is why many observers see in the Cold War era an example of how relations between great powers ought to be built.
Current world events do much to nurture this kind of nostalgia, given that a whole series of important powers can hardly be said to remain committed to political and legal safeguards. Although the amount of deadly weaponry in the world has not merely failed to diminish but has actually increased, the leading powers of the West show no readiness to create such mechanisms, or even to sustain those already in existence—quite the opposite, they are dismantling them. At the same time, we recognise that the uniqueness of any historical situation precludes speaking of the likelihood of reproducing even those models of relations between powers that proved effective in the past.
This is why an important question arises: what was it about the uniqueness of the Cold War that made it possible, precisely then, to create the international orders we now look back on with such nostalgia? For if we are honest with ourselves, then, from the standpoint of the readiness of the leading nuclear superpowers to enter into a decisive clash, the world of that time was no less—and perhaps even more—alarming a place than it is now. Yet it avoided universal catastrophe, if only for a relatively brief span by historical standards. And it would be important for us to understand the extent to which the practices of the Cold War era can be reproduced at all under present–day conditions.
In the first place, we should not forget that the Cold War was indeed a war, not a peace, from the standpoint of the goals the two sides pursued: each proceeded from the long–term aim of the actual destruction of the other as an independent political system. The differences lay only in the particular features of the foreign–policy cultures of the USSR (Russia) and the United States (the Anglo–Saxon segment of Western civilisation). Reflecting in one of his books on the nature of the confrontation of 1946–1991, the American diplomat Charles Hill observes that his compatriots—the foreign–policy strategists of the United States—“saw themselves as engaged in a colossal struggle against revolutionary communism, an ideology aimed at destroying and replacing the established international system and world order.” The central idea of the concept of containment, formulated by another distinguished American thinker, George Kennan, is that the nature of Soviet—in reality, Russian—foreign policy makes a strategy combining hostility with engagement a necessity.
In other words, for American diplomacy and strategy, the mechanisms and practices of the Cold War were forced expedients for waging a conflict with the USSR without creating a mortal threat to themselves. But this in no way amounted to a recognition of the legitimacy of the adversary, which might have formed the basis of some conditional “cold peace.” Yet whereas, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the refusal of the European monarchies—including the empire of the Romanovs—to recognise Napoleon Bonaparte as the legitimate emperor of France meant inevitable war with him, during the Cold War the West’s deliberate non–recognition of the USSR—by the United States and other Western countries alike—was accompanied by efforts towards peaceful coexistence with it.
From the standpoint of the USSR, the situation looked somewhat simpler. The paramount task of the Soviet state from the moment of its emergence, as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917, was physical survival amid a hostile environment of powers far stronger than itself, both militarily and economically. In essence, the second half of the twentieth century was the era of Russia’s greatest strategic solitude, a period when the conflict within the West had been resolved through Europe’s defeat in the war of 1939–1945, while the new independent centres of power represented by China, India and the world majority as a whole had not yet emerged.
During the Cold War, Russia—as never before, and, one hopes, never again—fought for its very existence and independence, without any possibility whatsoever of turning to outside help. This is why, for the Soviet leadership, the model of mutual containment proposed by the United States—especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis—looked like the best use of limited coercive resources. All the more so since it reflected, to the greatest possible degree, the particular features of Russian foreign–policy culture, which is capable of combining diplomatic and military actions simultaneously with relative ease, without drawing a sharp dividing line between them.
Over the centuries of its history, Russia—especially in its earlier period—was obliged to deal with adversaries far stronger than itself. This gave rise to a style of foreign–policy thinking that, in George Kennan’s perceptive observation, is “neither schematic nor adventuristic.” Yet an equally distinctive feature of Russian political culture is the absence of any direct link between an adversary’s strength and its legitimacy. Indeed, right up until Moscow’s acknowledgement of its defeat took the form, in the mid–1980s, of the policy of “new thinking,” the American—and, more broadly, Western—socio–economic system was subject in the USSR to unequivocal condemnation.
One can identify several explanations, the most widely accepted in the scholarly literature, for what was decisive in shaping the unique nature of the Cold War as a distinct stage in the development of international politics. In the first place, there are, of course, the military capabilities of the principal participants already mentioned above, bound up with the invention of nuclear weapons. This, in turn, rendered their relations altogether distinctive and different from any other relations between powers. And the accumulation, by the 1970s, of substantial stockpiles of such weapons allowed theorists to conclude that a direct clash between nuclear powers was devoid of political meaning, since it could not lead to victory for either side, and was therefore irrational.
In the second place, historians single out the ideological confrontation between two ideas—communism and liberalism—as a characteristic of international relations in the Cold War period, one that likewise qualitatively distinguishes them from other historical stages. And, finally, there is the matter, already mentioned above, of mutual containment—that is, the particular type of relationship between nuclear superpowers, entailing simultaneous hostility and avoidance of direct confrontation, alongside elements of cooperation. This manner of interaction between manifest adversaries is likewise singled out as entirely unique and specific to the Cold War period.
Part of this system was a distinctive ethic governing relations between the principal adversaries. And, in truth, what most observers writing on the subject regret is the loss of that particular, responsible style of dialogue between the great nuclear powers, characteristic of at least the second stage of the Cold War (after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962). Whether a revival of this ethic is possible, or the emergence of some analogous, informal system of rules of the game, is difficult to say at present. It may well be that those outstanding minds in our own country are right who insist on the need to restore in Western elites a physical fear of nuclear catastrophe. One thing is clear: the international relations of the Cold War era cannot themselves be regarded as having been so orderly that one could credit certain rules and institutions as the foundation of international stability in that very difficult epoch.
