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1. Weaker States and Windows of Opportunity?
A window of opportunity means a period during which a state possesses a
significant military advantage over an adversary (Lebow 1984: 147). Throughout the
Cold War, western defense experts and intelligence had worried that the Soviet Union
had a window of opportunity because of its military capability and expansionist ambition
(Johnson 1983; Rush 1982/83; Gray 1978; Pipes 1977; Mearsheimer 2001). They even
feared that the Soviet economy would eventually generate greater wealth and cause a
power shift against the United States. Picking up this theme, President Ronald Reagan
warned that a window of vulnerability was opening, and he attempted to justify his call
for new and more strategic weapons.
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However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
peaceful end of the Cold War proved that the Soviet Union was much weaker than the
United States and was just a declining challenger (Wohlforth 1994/95). The Soviet
Union appeared to rise in the 1950s and 1960s but soon began to fall and never achieved
power parity with the U.S. In economic area, the Soviet rarely achieved a GDP of even
half that of the U.S. (Lemke 1997). Even in military area in which the Soviet Union
appeared to have a relative advantage, it was not so strong enough to take an offensive
war against the U.S. and its allies (Mearsheimer 1982; Posen 1984/85). Rather than use a
window of opportunity and initiate a war, the Soviet Union turned out to be so untenable
that it collapsed in the late 1980s.
Also in the Korean peninsula, many scholars have argued that North Korea has
had a window of opportunity and has been ready to initiate a second Korean War at any
moment due to its military capability and offensive intentions (Betts 1994; Levin 1990:
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Robert Scheer, 1982. With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, New York: Random House,
cited in Richard Ned Lebow, 1984. “Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them?”
International Security, 9(1), p. 148.
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