Constructive Illusions: Misperceiving the Origins of International Cooperation by Eric Grynaviski

Author:Eric Grynaviski [Grynaviski, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, United States, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, 20th Century, Political Science, History, General
ISBN: 9780801454646
Google: qEsCBAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 56098569
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2014-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Counterfactuals

In the previous section, I traced the process through which the ABM Treaty was reached. Kissinger offered to negotiate ABMs because of a mistaken assumption that the Soviets would reject the offer. The pattern of concession making that led to the May 20 agreement, which broke a deadlock in the negotiations, resulted from a critical ambiguity that led each party to publicly commit to the treaty. At the eleventh hour, when Nixon considered canceling the summit and the signing of the treaty, a misperception of Brezhnev’s position led him not to cancel. In each case, imagined intersubjectivity was useful in moving the superpowers toward cooperation.

The evidence from process tracing has shown the role of imagined intersubjectivity in reaching the ABM Treaty. Process tracing can show the process through which a cause leads to an effect; however, to demonstrate that the cause is a necessary condition requires counterfactual analysis to show that other pathways to the same effect are improbable. To provide more evidence that imagined intersubjectivity was a necessary condition, I engage in two forms of counterfactual analysis. First, how would the negotiation of the ABM Treaty have been affected by more information at these three critical moments in the process? Second, if the negotiations had stumbled at any of these three moments, would cooperation on ABMs have occurred later, perhaps in the second half of the 1970s?

In asking these questions, I primarily focus on US decision makers. My earlier analysis traced the process through which largely American concessions were made, and these concessions promoted cooperation. The Soviet Union usually responded to American offers; only the May 20 agreement involved Soviet offers to which the United States needed to respond. Moreover, there is enough of a historical record within the Nixon administration to show the likely results of counterfactual levels of information; there is not an equivalent body of work on Soviet decision making, and therefore I have less confidence in potential counterfactuals on the Soviet side.

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