Power, interests and trust: explaining Gorbachev's choices at the end of the Cold War

This article argues that the end of the Cold War can be told as a story of the development of trust. Despite its centrality as a political concept, tr ust has only recently received focused attention in the field of internatio nal relations. Development of trust cannot be reduced to changing relations hips of power or redefinitions of interests but requires communicative elem ents. The argument is demonstrated through a comparison of German-Soviet an d Japanese-Soviet relations at the end of the Cold War. The key point is th at trust and the lack of it, respectively, were a major factor in the profo und transformation of the former relationship and led to stalemate in the l atter.