Threatlessness and US Grand Strategy

摘要

As the Soviet Union was in the process of collapsing, Georgi Arbatov sent a letter to the New York Times that contained a warning for the United States. Arbatov, who was one of the Kremlin's leading 'Amerikanists', wrote that the Soviets were unleashing a 'secret weapon', one 'that will work almost regardless of the American response'. It was not the stuff of Cold War nightmares, some sort of last-minute deus ex machina from the Academy of Sciences that would rescue the Soviet Union from oblivion. No, in this instance, the weapon was psychological and unequivocal: the Kremlin was about to deprive America of the Enemy.