Brinkmanship

The policy of pushing a situation to the brink of disaster to gain the most advantageous position against an adversary. The practice of brinkmanship, which had emerged during the Cold War and the age of nuclear weapons, marked a significant change in the conduct of foreign policy. Whereas the interaction between states was previously predicated on the balance of power—largely based on a state's economic and military power and the desire to prevent any major shifts in the status quo—the advent of the nuclear weapon created an entirely new set of foreign policy tools with which a nuclear-armed state could work. Brinkmanship was one of these tools, characterized by aggressive, risk-taking policy choices driving the conduct and [Page 93]interaction between states to the threshold of tolerance to obtain the maximum objectives.

The tense relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War were indicative of the changing face of foreign and diplomatic relations. Perhaps the most well-documented case of brinkmanship was the Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 and the U.S. response, now referred to as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, was notorious for carrying out extreme policies and making bold decisions to secure the most advantageous bargaining position. Similarly, Khrushchev's calculation in Cuba had been to extend Soviet strategic power and gain a leveraged position with regards to the United States. The Cuban Missile Crisis, however, while precipitating to a point on the brink of nuclear disaster, finally concluded with President John F. Kennedy's successfully standing down the Khrushchev brinkmanship and forcing the Soviets to withdraw their missiles from Cuba.