Dalby, Simon. "Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet Union As Other". Alternatives, Vol.13, No.4 (1988): 415-442.

Dalby, Simon. "Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet Union As Other". Alternatives, Vol.13, No.4 (1988): 415-442.

• The criticisms of detente with the Soviet Union during the 1970s were based on the massive political and military threat allegedly posed by the Soviet Union. Many of these arguments came from the Committee on the Present Danger [CPD], whose theories based on nuclear strategy, international relations [IR] realism, and Sovietology constructed the Soviet Union as a dangerous 'Other' which would respond only to militarization, not progressive policies (415).
• Many of themes of geopolitics used in political discourse in the 1940s and 1950s have been resurrected during the 1970s by the CPD. The preeminent importance of spacial control in these theories allows for an organically antagonistic conception of the Soviet Union, which threatens by existing and therefore threatening to expand (415-416).
• Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault, the author looks at how discourses -- including academic discourses -- are exercises of power, which mobilize rules and conceptions of 'proper' knowledge to make distinctions. Power discourses in security studies divide territory and identities into 'us' and the 'other', which must be physically separated (416-419).
• Once the 'other' is constructed, identities can be divided and reinforced between them with the 'self' defined in opposition to the 'other'. The other cannot share core characteristics with the self, meaning that a peaceful, democratic 'free world' must be mirrored by an aggressive, un-democratic, un-free world (417-419).
• A full discussion of the concept of 'otherness', drawn from Mr. Foucault's work, as well as other later scholars, is given from page 416 to page 419.
• The 'Modern' era of history began with the spread of capitalism and the closure of political space into the sovereign nation-state. Whereas, feudal societies allowed for a multiplicity of authorities and loyalties, the modern state demands absolute sovereignty and focuses on individuals, rather than semi-autonomous societal groupings (419-420).
• The modern conceptions of bourgeois citizenship, state, and property are already present in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, and his ideas of contract theory concerning protection and private property. This conception of states securing physically-based private property reifies the physical boundaries of the state, and constructs those outside of that defined state-protected space as the 'other' on a territorial basis (420).
• The concepts of peace and security which are derived from modern statehood and bourgeois citizenship are negatively defined in terms of preventing conflict. Under this conception states are expected to protect their systems of property from foreign threats, usually requiring some form of nationalism to take form to encourage communal protection (420).
• Politics and IR have been complicated since the end of the Second World War since two dominant social systems have emerged alongside the superpowers, each claiming the absolute dominance of historical process and morality. The contests pits together two rival modernities, each engaged in otherization (420-421).
• Domestic support is necessary to maintain the security systems required for national defense. This support is mobilized by the production and dissemination of nationalist narratives which construct artificial distinctions between the 'self' and the 'other'. The otherization reinforced by these narratives warps conceptions of the 'other' as constituting an existential threat to security, further increasing the need for securitization (421).
• The rapid growth of state responsibilities, both as 'welfare states' and 'security states', since the Second World War has increased the need to justify these new roles. The primary solution has been the specialization of knowledge, turning political questions into technical discourses within scientific fields which deal with 'facts', rather than ideas, leading to the perpetuation of unchallenged assumptions which support the present regime of that state (421).
• Elements of the security forces and government in many states use the blurred distinction between 'legitimate' free speech and 'illegitimate' protest to silence political critics of certain actions. Furthermore, the constructed 'necessity' of national unity on security matters discourages dissent on those topics, for fear of posing a threat to the nation (422).
• The systems of knowledge employed by the US government about the Soviet Union justifies and legitimates the doctrines of deterrence and containment. Realist IR theory assumes inevitable warfare when interests compete and constructs systems of knowledge in which security is paramount and domestic politics are irrelevant. Strategy discussions selectively mobilizing game theory, but not detailed sociopolitical analysis, 'proved' the aggressive nature of the Soviet Union. Sovietology encouraged views of the Soviet Union as an ideal dictatorship, controlled by a purely ideological party elite, driven inexorably towards global domination (422-423).
• Within all of these theories and disciplines are implicit understandings of the world as a political space whose primary contest is between Soviet-led Communism, and the American-led 'Free World'. The common use of concepts such as the Heartland-Rimland divide demonstrate an obsession with physical space, and the necessity that the expansion of the USSR to 'strategically important' areas be associated with national security (423).
• "As will be seen below, the totalitarian interpretation of sovietology relies on a determinist interpretation of Russian history to preclude the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet regime. Realism assumes that conflict in the pursuit of interest is what is ultimately important in political matters, providing for the deferment of the political objectives of development, environment and justice, giving primacy to 'power politics'. Strategy moves considerations of security out of the realm if politics to technical considerations of weaponry and scenarios for their use. Geopolitics reduces mamas to the military control of territory and operates to reduce political matters to a zero sum game between the superpowers squeezing out the concerns and aspirations of the peoples whose territory 'projected a section of cartographic space in which each superpower's 'projected power seeks spatially to contain that of the other" (423). 
• The ultimate goal of the CPD is the removal of political questions from debates on nuclear deterrence and armament, turning the issue of nuclear strategy entirely into an 'objective' science based on security assumptions, with the details of plans built from those assumptions decided by experts via technical non-political discourses (437).
• The CPD has successfully mobilized selective forms of understanding, such as the theories of geopolitics and IR Realism discussed above, so that from their resources, deterrence and containment of the USSR become 'common sense'. The technical and expert nature of its claims discourage alternative understandings, which can be dismissed as uninformed or naive (424).
• The version of the Soviet Union conceived by the CPD is aggressive by nature, and entirely amoral in its quest for political power. The constructed 'amorality' of the USSR provides a reason for the US to be aggressive towards Soviet interests, as the 'moral actor'. Failure to act would mean the continued growth of Soviet power, unavoidably leading towards increased aggression and consolidation of power until the regime is unstoppable (424).
• The 'present danger' posed by the Soviet regime, because of the threat to all core American interests and values, overrides other political concerns. Contemporary disputes over 'liberal' causes like human rights, environmentalism, and economic development must be halted until the military threat is dealt with (424).
• The discourses of sovietology mobilized by the CPD stress that the different nature of the USSR make it threatening, as specific assumptions about Soviet history, geography, and culture construct a deterministic and unquestioned narrative of aggressive and 'natural' antagonism with the 'free world' (425-426).
• Geographic factors, because of their essentialism, are major points in the construction of sovietology narratives of history and politics. Modern Soviet behaviors are linked to Russian behaviors, and ultimately to some essential factor of expansionism and aggression linked to the nature of the geography or climate of the area (426).
• The deterministic history of the Soviet Union provided by sovietology creates that illusion that relations with the USSR are historically set, naturally developing along the same lines as previous relations with Russia. The possibility of alternative situations through political action is dismissed entirely (427).
• The power politics dialogues of Realist IR theory, which privilege state-level factors, are employed by the CPD to encourage beliefs that Soviet power equals Soviet threat. Realist theory has designated the Soviet Union as 'revisionist power', as compared to the 'status quo power' of the USA, meaning that conflict becomes both inevitable and driven by Soviet aggression (427-428).
• Realist IR theory uses historical examples to make predictions of how modern actors will behave. Specifically, the comparison of the USSR to Nazi Germany creates the impression of impending warfare if any weakness were to be demonstrated by the USA (427-428).
• The discourses of knowledge used by Realist IR theory emphasize historical knowledge and measures of power in territorial and military terms. The 'interests' of the Soviet government are of no concern, because they do not represent the 'real knowledge' created by 'scientific' processes of Realist theory (428-429).
• Realist theory assumes a domino effect for all Soviet actions, explicitly claiming that Soviet rivalry with the USA will lead to Soviet pursuit of power through expansion to 'outflank' American interests so that eventually gains in Africa will lead to gains in Europe, and then the collapse of American power. In this way, American interests become expanded to the complete containment of Soviet expansion, and the Third World becomes reduced to a place of competition between superpowers (429).
• Geopolitical concerns underlie all the publications of the CPD, specifically the Heartland-Rimland divide. These conceptions of geopolitics create deterministic ideas of Soviet action, assuming that any Eurasian heartland-power will try to control the rimland, regardless of prior interests (429-431).
• The assumptions of geopolitics are that geographic factors which are naturally set and unchangeable affect and often determine political behaviors, thereby implying that political roles are predetermined and not a result of political choices (430-431).
• The CPD argued that Soviet strategy on nuclear warfare was profoundly different from the US in its conception of victory; claiming that the USSR believed nuclear war could be won in the same casualty-filled way that the Second World War was won by the USSR. (432).
• All evidence to the contrary of this argument, like Soviet publications proclaiming that the government views nuclear war as fundamentally unwinnable, is dismissed as lies made for Western consumption. The totalitarian ideal constructed about the Soviet Union means that these documents cannot be trusted, and therefore all counter-arguments are delegitimized as enemy propaganda (432-433).
• The conclusions drawn from the idea of Soviet strategy as depending on a 'punching bag' mentality of being able to absorb more economic and military punishment than the West, mean that neither political and economic sanctions can bring down the USSR. Rather, the only way to ensure victory becomes military defeat by eviscerating Soviet command structures and encouraging rebellion in the periphery (434).
• All of the security discourses mobilized by the CPD construct the same conceptions of security as the spacial containment of the 'other', and push non-security concerns away to a time when the Cold War has ended. The discourses repeat the past of the Cold War through practices, and seek to create a post-Cold War scenario in which the 'other' is not only weakened, but destroyed and assimilated into the 'free world' (435).
• The conceptualizations of the Soviet Union as the other contain a number of simplistic and mistaken dualisms, which introduce constraints on our understandings of the world. In them, the world is reduced to a zero-sum game wherein two actors project power on a passive world, power is the only tool of IR theory, with domestic political and economic developments being irrelevant, and an unchanging historically and geographical constrained goal (435).
• The conception of the USSR advanced here prevents any hope of a different political situation, because all of the factors 'naturally' point towards unavoidable conflict. The rejection of any alternative theories is supported by the legitimization of the CPD's forms of knowledge as 'scientific' as opposed to 'idealist' or 'propagandistic' alternative theories derived from 'illegitimate' sources (435-436).
• The patterns of colonization, through both political and military domination as well as ideologically, addressed by Edward Said are repeated by the USA in the Cold War. The Soviet Union is the last remaining 'other', so the West is driven to subdue it, colonize it, and reform it into a nation like ourselves, sharing our identity, values, and forms of knowledge (436).
• The success of the 'other' is a threat to the dominance of the universalizing conception of Western modernity, as questions the supremacy of the Western system. Therefore, it must be contained and separated from the 'free world' in a negative conception of security which divides the 'other' from the 'self' (436).
• The conceptions of the Cold War and militarization created by the NPD and other neoconservative narratives are profoundly harmful to progressive political causes in the US. The dismissal of non-security causes from foreign affairs to detrimental to liberal progressivism, as it the implicit increase of unsupervised military activity and intelligence activities encouraged by the implementation of these neoconservative world views (438).