Why did neorealism have difficulty accounting for the end of the Cold War?

Neorealism, a theory of international relations popularized by Kenneth Waltz, struggled to account for the end of the Cold War primarily due to its structural focus and analytical reductionism.1

By emphasizing the anarchic structure of the international system and the distribution of power as the primary drivers of state behavior, neorealism largely dismissed the significance of domestic institutions, internal political transformations, and ideological shifts. Because neorealism viewed the international system as defined by remarkable continuity, it was ill-equipped to explain the systemic transformation that occurred when the Soviet Union collapsed.12

Critics have faulted neorealism for:
* Neglecting internal factors: It ignored how domestic social, economic, and nationalistic pressures within the Soviet Union—such as the rise of an educated middle class and the failure of the command economy—precipitated the regime's decline.134
* Analytical reductionism: By treating states as unitary rational actors, it failed to capture how internal political changes and the discrediting of communism fundamentally altered state interests and capabilities.14
* Structural rigidity: It struggled to explain why institutions like NATO persisted and adapted after the bipolar structure that created them had vanished.2