russia and the road to appeasement: cycles of east-west conflict in war and peaceby george liska
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Canadian Slavonic Papers
Russia and the Road to Appeasement: Cycles of East-West Conflict in War and Peace byGeorge LiskaReview by: J. W. ShelestCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 1983), p.583Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40868211 .
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Vol. xxv, No. 4 Book Reviews | 583
George Liska. Russia and the Road to Appeasement: Cycles of East-West Conflict in War and Peace. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xiv, 261 pp. $25.00.
This volume concludes G. Liska's tetralogy on the rise of and rivalry between the two superpowers, and on the classic and now critical problem of the relations be- tween the West and Russia. Liska examines foreign relations from a historical per- spective and has devised a triangular configuration of states as a model to describe cyclical conflict between nations: a continental power with maritime aspirations competing with a maritime power for pre-eminence within the international system, while a wholly continental power acts to effect a balance of power (in the context of World War I, respectively, Germany, Britain, and Russia). In the present-day situation, Liska maintains that the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union could be aggravated by the actions of a third party, and that the US-Soviet con- flict under way since 1945 will dominate the 1980s, while the triangle comprising the superpowers and China will shape up decisively only in the 1990s.
Liska states that he is a conservative but recommends that a more liberal policy be taken towards the Soviet Union than that advocated by radically anti-Soviet American neo-conservatives. The determining factor in policy formulation has to be the organic unfolding of trends rather than ideology: the Soviet Union's ex- pansion, like that of the US, has to be viewed within the global balance of power system and not as a unique event. Soviet policy is not adventurous but assertive; the country's leaders seek to protect its geostrategic, economic, and racial core from perceived external threats. Conflict between the superpowers is reduced when spheres of influence are delimited: the cold wars in Europe and the Middle East were due to the failure of the US to create such a demarcation there.
The goal of American policy should be the maintenance of balance within the process of achieving nuclear-strategic and geopolitical parity with Soviet Russia. If the latter is to play a role in maintaining a mutually acceptable world order, US statesmen have to be concerned with the effect their policies will have on Soviet internal affairs. The pursuit of rational ends by both powers, in Liska's opinion, should lead to Russia's inclusion into an enlarged historic West which would as- similate the Third World (or the farther East) into a restored international system or an incipient world community.
Liska has constructed a model to describe the interstate dynamic which makes the present less novel and thus the future more manageable, the principal goal of a strategy formulator. Such a model allows discussion of foreign policy theory with- in the context of defined assumptions and historical perspectives.
J. W. Shelest, Edmonton
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