ABSTRACT
International relations basically comprise the actions and interactions of states. If South Korea had fallen without American intervention in 1950, there would have been no rash to try military adventures in Europe. The American perception of Soviet aims in the formative years of the Cold War was very simple: a relentless drive for communist world domination. While Americans focused their outrage on the consequences of the Soviet military action, the Soviets focused on the facts of deep penetration of their sovereign airspace unexplained except as espionage, and of the immediate United States seizure of the initiative in using the incident to mount sharp attacks on the Soviet system. American perceptions of Soviet aims are changing, at least in part owing to changing realities. There remain, however, divergent schools of thought about policy depending on an amalgam involving different American outlooks and objectives, as well as different perceptions of Soviet aims.
