| 이곳은 정대성의 학술적 일기입니다. 학술적인 근거는 없습니다 |
| 정대성/노트로 돌아가기 |
Why have most political scientists failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union?
One of the most precious lessons in the history of political science is the cold war. The Cold war shows how politics can bias political scientists. U.S policymakers in the early age of the cold war emphasized the power of the soviet union and understated its known weaknesses on the assumption that doing so made for a more effective American foreign policy.
Exaggerating the strengths while underestimating its defects had obvious consequences, the most important one being that political scientists, in general, came to regard the Soviet Union as having far greater capabilities than it actually possessed.
However, even the leftists did not believe the entire system would disintegrate. One reason is, clearly, that many on the left were either very sympathetic to or had residual faith in the Soviet project. Their political beliefs sometimes reinforced the view that the Soviet Union was more stable than it actually was.
Therefore, the real cause of the failure to anticipate the end of the Cold War mostly lay in a political intervention in political science, which led to collective failure to recognize the Soviet Union for what it was.