Imagining the Enemy: A Constructivist Deconstruction of Daniel Yergin's Riga Axioms

This thesis is a constructivist analysis of James F. Byrnes and George F. Kennan, who were both key foreign policy figures in President Harry S. Truman’s administration. Specifically, this thesis critically analyses and deconstructs Daniel Yergin’s 1977 book Shattered Peace: the Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Yergin argues that the origins of the Cold War can be traced to the actions of a group of policy officials of the United States Department of State, who subscribed to a common view of the Soviet Union. In his book Yergin categorises the view of these State Department officials as the Riga axioms due to their views being formed in Riga, Latvia. This thesis argues that Yergin’s theory is too simplistic when explaining the motivations of these officials. It uses Byrnes and Kennan as two case studies and examines them using the theory of constructivism, which looks at non material factors, to understand their motivations. This work also uses the theory of epistemic communities to better define whether a group of adherents to the Riga axioms even existed. This thesis concludes that in reality these foreign policy officials were motivated by their personal perceptions of the world, individual motivations, and interpersonal relations; and that aligned interests do not necessarily mean aligned beliefs.