著者

渡辺 昭夫

出版者

JAPAN ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1992, no.100, pp.1-15,L5, 1992-08-30 (Released:2010-09-01)

参考文献数

14

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To commemorate the 100th issue of International Relations, the editorial board decided to compile a special volume on the Cold War and After: Japanese Perspectives.The 14 articles contained in this volume are for the sake of convenience divided into three groups: theory, history and prospects. The article by Yoshinobu Yamamoto gives an overview of the evolutions of international relations theories during the past four decades which, he argues, can be related to the historical developments of international relations in the real world. Since the latter were to an important degree shaped by the Cold War, a dominant paradigm altered from time to time, reflecting the sequence of events in the East-West relations. After tracing the paradigmatic development from the intitial stage of realist domination through the rise of various versions of liberalism during the 1970's to the resurgence of neo-realism in the more recent times, Yamamoto forsees the coming of an age of liberalist-led integration of international theories following the end of the Cold War.This basically sanguine prospect shown by Yamamoto is in line with one of the major theses dealt with by various writers who contributed to this volume. Influenced by John Gaddis' book The Long Peace, they are concerned with the reasons for the continuation of peace between the two superpowers during the Cold War era. Without necessarily denying the idea that such systemic and objective factors as bipolarity and nuclear deterrence were conducive to the long peace, some of the writers for this volume rather emphasized the learning capacity of the policy-makers of the both superpowers as an explanatory factor (Anami, Umemoto and Ishii). To some if not all, the long peace in the Cold War era was part of the longer trend in international relations, i. e. the trend towards no war among the major powers. The lessons of the two World Wars in the 20th century brought about attitudinal change regardiag the issue of war and peace, signs of which were discernible even in the behaviours of the Soviet and American leaders despite their Cold War rhetoric. Democracy is not necessarily regarded as a prerequisite for international peace. In fact, examining the thought of George Kennan on the problems of democracy, one of the contributors (Terachi) casts doubts on the thesis that democracy is by nature conducive to international peace.If one takes a narrow definition of the Cold War with a focus on Soviet-American relations or East-West relations in Europe, the long peace thesis seems largely acceptable, although his or her explanation may differ from the one offered in the above. A more fundamental objection will be raised, however, by those who adhere to the idea that the ‘hot wars’ outside Europe were the essential ingredient of the Cold War. In fact this was the central theme of The Origins of the Cold War in Asia, a volume edited by Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye fifteen years ago. Wit-nessed two hot wars in Korea and Indochina during their life time, many contemporary Japanese (and probably other Asian) historians would choose this broader definition of the Cold War. This thesis is worth remebering, although, apart from a brief reference by Ishii, it was not fully discussed in the present volume. This is so particularly because the relative weight of the Cold War in the entire history of the post WW II era differs from one region to another. Hece the difference in the impact of the end of the Cold War upon the regional international affairs in the years to come, which is the topic of the the third section of the present volume.Koizumi (who deals with the present and future in the latter half of her article) and Ueta are concered with post-Cold War Europe, whereas all others are either with Asia/Pacific (Sakanaka, Kurata, Tamaki, Hara and Purrington) or with more broad themes (Oizumi and Takehiko Yamamoto).