| International relations cannot easily explain the peaceful decline of a great power of the first order, nor the actions of a rival power to accommodate and, in fact, cushion the impact of its decline. Yet that is exactly what happened in U.S.-Soviet relations. The cold war ended peacefully, and political science began a mad scramble to attempt to understand and explain the events of 1985-1992.;Traditional international relations theory accounts for only part of the change, the decision of the Soviet Union to opt out of the superpower rivalry--the reason why the cold war ended. It cannot explain the eventual peaceful accommodation of the United States to the Soviet condition. To understand how the cold war ended requires the resurrection of an early theory of political psychology, Charles E. Osgood's Graduation Reciprocation in Tension-Reduction (GRIT) in a multidisciplinary analysis, borrowing from political science, history, and psychology.;The pre-existing enemy image of the Soviet Union held by U.S. President Ronald Reagan conditioned his thinking and information processing regarding the Soviet Union so that virtually every Soviet behavior was interpreted in a threatening manner, thwarting the evolution of cooperation. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a foreign policy toward the United States consistent with Osgood's GRIT theory. Its intent was to penetrate the cognitive barriers to cooperative relations erected by Reagan's enemy image, and to change that very image of the Soviet Union.;The results of this study suggest that a consistent application of a comprehensive GRIT strategy can, over time, redraw the cognitive map of foreign policy decision makers, impacting their policy choices. These findings offer additional insights into the study of international relations, demonstrating the role of elite beliefs in explaining change in international relations. It also supports a conclusion that the practice of foreign policy decision making would benefit from an expansion of empathy--an enhanced capacity to understand international behavior and events from the perspective of adversaries. |
