ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the idea of conceptualizing international systems in terms of rules of the game or conventions, and describes how the rise of the two peripheral powers to dominant positions changed the nature of the international game. It discusses the assumed knowledge, studying in particular the role historical analogies play in the construction of such background knowledge. The question of responsibility for the Cold War consequently boils down to the problem of what was the knowledge about interstate affairs when the crucial decisions were made on both sides. The conventions of the European state system had provided decision-makers with a common stock of assumed knowledge in light of which the policy moves of their opponents could be assessed. The foundation of the Cominform, with its emphasis on ideological uniformity, “left no doubt as to the close links between domestic Soviet developments and the reassessment of the East European scene.”
