ABSTRACT
Cold War influences are ideas, understandings, experiences and practices developed during the Cold War or through interpretation of its conclusion. Together they combine in different ways to create the ideational legacies that influence policy by shaping actors’ perceptions about US and Russian identity and their respective roles in the international system. The negotiation and ratification of new strategic arms reduction treaty highlighted the importance of ideas formed during the Cold War and that became institutionalised within policy-maker and bureaucratic thinking, practices and assumptions. Although the primary focus of the book has been to identify Cold War legacies and their influence on US foreign policy towards Russia, the study has also located mechanisms that appear to have played a role in sustaining the legacies. Several of the concepts that Constructivism and Foreign Policy Analysis suggest are important in shaping foreign policy can be located across the case studies.
