The Scoop on Russian Foriegn Policy

“Is Russian Foreign Policy Taking an Unsetting Turn?”

The Cold War was a very unsettling time in our US history. The world was very hostile and suspicious of every neighbor. The United States, arguably, had the worst time in The Cold War era, as they not only were fighting the Vietnam War but also needing to worry with Russia’s constant need to be ‘better than’ America. This logic of who was the mightiest, led to a huge nuclear stockpiling that even today haunts Americans and Russians alike. Still, those feelings of competition and the need to defeat Americans should not be ignored or brushed aside. Russia’s foreign policy has taken an unsettling turn and America needs to be on guard.

Despite our efforts to intimidate Russians in The Cold War period, they still kept building their arsenal and standing prepared for a fight. Although it has been argued that US military superiority led to an age of cooperation with Russia, new findings are telling a different story. Richard N Hass points to new findings in his book, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After The Cold War, that it was not really military superiority that led to cooperation, but an acknowledgment that the Russian economy could not survive in the Cold War for much longer. James M. Goldgeier of The Hoover Institute for Policy Review agrees with this assessment of Gorbechov and Russia’s agreement to decrease armament. He states, “Gorbachev quickly realized that to have any hope of achieving his goal of restructuring the Soviet economy, he needed a more benign international environment. A less hostile world would mean that he could shift money out of the defense sector to raise the standard of living in an economy that had slipped from second to third, behind that of Japan.” Thus their economy is the driving force behind their ability to succeed on the international stage. If this is in deed the case, the Unites States should be alarmed now.