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CONTINUING DEBATE AND NEW APPROACHES IN COLD WAR HISTORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

MICHAEL F. HOPKINS
MICHAEL F. HOPKINS*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
*
School of History, University of Liverpool, 9 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7W2m.hopkins986@btinternet.com
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Abstract

The Cold War lasted for almost fifty years and ended nearly twenty years ago. A vast historiography continues to grow. In explaining the past and continuing debate, this article is necessarily selective. It has three aims. The first is to locate the main phases and trends in the debate about the Cold War. The second is to analyse the growing literature on the end of the Cold War. Thirdly, it attempts to identify a number of major themes by looking beyond geopolitical issues to various aspects of the cultural Cold War, to espionage and intelligence, and to the economic dimension. The review has three main conclusions. First, diplomacy and strategic issues have been extensively explored, though more is needed on the Soviet Union and especially on China. Secondly, analysis of the economic and intelligence dimension has improved, though, again, knowledge of the Soviet Union and China remains thin. Lastly, the growing coverage of cultural issues has deepened our understanding but needs to be integrated into political and strategic narratives.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 913 - 934
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (London, 2005).

2 George-Henri Soutou, Guerre de cinquante ans: les relations est-ouest, 1943–1990 (Paris, 2001), p. 10.

3 See for example, Herbert Feis, Between war and peace: the Potsdam conference (Princeton, NJ, 1960).

4 For a good recent summary of debates, see Ann Lane, ‘Introduction: the Cold War as history’, in Klaus Larres and Ann Lane, eds., The Cold War (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1–16.

5 Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, ‘The Soviet Union’, in David Reynolds, ed., The origins of the Cold War: international perspectives (New Haven, CT, 1994), p. 53.

6 Valerian Zorin and Andrei Gromyko, eds., History of diplomacy (5 vols., Moscow, 1959–79). The Cold War is covered in volume v. Other studies include: A. G. Mileykovsky, ed., International relations after the Second World War (2 vols., Moscow, 1965); G. A. Trofimenko, SshA: politika, voyna, ideologiya [USA: politics, war, ideology] (Moscow, 1976); and N. Sivachev and N. Yakovlev, Russia and the United States (Chicago, IL, 1980).

7 Zubok and Pleshakov, ‘The Soviet Union’, p. 54. There is a substantial excerpt from the speech in an excellent collection of documents and witness accounts: Jussi Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cold War: a history in documents (Oxford, 2003), pp. 50–2.

8 Zubok and Pleshakov, ‘The Soviet Union’, p. 53.

9 The pioneers in this interpretation were W. A. Williams, The tragedy of American diplomacy (New York, NY, 1962), and D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and its origins, 1917–1960 (2 vols., Garden City, NY, 1961). Other significant revisionists include: David Horowitz, The free world colossus: a critique of American foreign policy in the Cold War (New York, NY, 1965); Gabriel Kolko, The politics of war: the world and United States foreign policy, 1943–1945 (New York, NY, 1968); Lloyd Gardner, Architects of illusion (Chicago, IL, 1970).

10 Daniel Yergin, The shattered peace (New York, NY, 1977), p. 7.

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17 The earliest studies included Roy Douglas, From war to Cold War, 1942–1948 (London, 1982); Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 1941–1947 (London, 1982); Elisabeth Barker, The British between the superpowers, 1945–1950 (London, 1983); Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: foreign secretary, 1945–1951 (London, 1983); Michael Dockrill and John W. Young, eds., British foreign policy, 1945–1956 (London, 1989); Anne Deighton, ed., Britain and the first Cold War (London, 1990). Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 1945–1991 (Basingstoke, 2000), is an adept recent study of the British role.

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19 John W. Young, France, the Cold War and the western alliance, 1945–1949 (Leicester, 1989).

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21 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The end of history’, The National Interest (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18; idem, The end of history and the last man (London, 1992).

22 Zubok and Pleshakov, ‘The Soviet Union’, pp. 54–5. See also the special issue of Diplomatic History, 21 (1997) which contains articles by R. D. English, Raymond Garthoff, Jonathan Haslam, R. C. Tucker, Odd Arne Westad, W. C. Wohlforth, and Vladislav Zubok.

23 Garthoff, Raymond, ‘Some observations on using Soviet archives’, Diplomatic History, 21 (1997), pp. 243–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation at p. 245.

24 See, for example, Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA, 1996), and Vojtech Mastny, Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalin years (New York, NY, 1996). On Soviet difficulties with its allies, see Odd Arne Westad, The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times (Cambridge, 2006).

25 John Lewis Gaddis, We now know: rethinking Cold War history (Oxford, 1997), p. 292.

26 Garthoff, Raymond, ‘Foreign intelligence and the historiography of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 6 (2004), pp. 25–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Shuguang Zhang and Chen Jian, eds., Chinese communist foreign policy and the Cold War in Asia: new documentary evidence, 1944–1950 (Chicago, 1996). See also various issues of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin that began publishing Soviet, East European, and Chinese documents and commentaries on them from 1993 onwards. For China see issues 6–7 (1995/6) and 8–9 (1996/7).

28 On Mao see Mao Zedong waijao wenxuan [Selected diplomatic papers of Mao Zedong] (Beijing, 1994); on Zhou (Chou En-lai) see Zhou Enlaiwaijao wenxuani [Selected diplomatic writings of Zhou Enlai] (Beijing, 1990). See also Pei Jianzhang et al., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijaio shi [A diplomatic history of the People's Republic of China] (Beijing, 1994).

29 Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001). See also Chen Jian, ‘In the name of the revolution: China's road to the Korean War revisited’, in William Stueck, ed., The Korean War in world history (Lexington, KY, 2004), pp. 93–125. In addition, see the pioneering study by a Russian, an American, and a Chinese scholar, Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (Stanford, CA, 1993).

30 Gould-Davies, Nigel, ‘Rethinking the role of ideology in international politics during the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 1 (1999), pp. 90–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kramer, Mark, ‘Ideology and the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, 25 (1999), pp. 539–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Soutou, Guerre de cinquante ans, p. 17.

32 Ibid., p. 15.

33 Michael Hogan, A cross of iron: Harry S. Truman and the origins of the national security state (Cambridge, 1998).

34 Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 3, 18, 427, 429, 443.

35 See Lawrence Freedman, The evolution of nuclear strategy (London, 1983); John Lewis Gaddis et al., eds., Cold War statesmen confront the bomb: nuclear diplomacy since 1945 (New York, 1999).

36 John Lewis Gaddis, The long peace (Oxford, 1983).

37 Gaddis, Cold War, p. 78.

38 David Miller, The Cold War: a military history (London, 2001); David Stone, Wars of the Cold War: campaigns and conflicts, 1945–1990 (London, 2004).

39 Jeremy Black, War since 1945 (London, 2004), p. 8.

40 See the useful review article: Suri, Jeremi, ‘Explaining the end of the Cold War: a new historical consensus?’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 4 (2002), pp. 60–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a new era (2nd edn, Baltimore, MD, 1998). There were also two other impressive early studies: Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the highest levels: the inside story of the end of the Cold War (New York, 1994); and Raymond L. Garthoff, The great transition: American–Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC, 1994).

42 Ibid., pp. 478–81.

43 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the end of the Cold War (Oxford and New York, NY, 1992), pp. 131, 165–6.

44 Peter Schweizer, Reagan's war: the epic story of his forty year struggle and final triumph over communism (New York, NY, 2003), pp. 4, 283–4. See also his earlier book, Victory: the Reagan administration's secret strategy that hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, NY, 1994).

45 Frances FitzGerald, Way out there in the blue: Reagan, star wars and the end of the Cold War (New York, NY, 2000), pp. 474–5.

46 Soutou, Guerre de cinquante ans, pp. 658–9.

47 William E. Odom, The collapse of the Soviet military (New Haven, CT, 1998), p. 88.

48 Robert McMahon, The Cold War: a very short introduction (Oxford, 2004), pp. 160–2.

49 Jack F. Matlock, Autopsy on an empire: the American ambassador's account of the collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, NY, 1995); idem, Reagan and Gorbachev: how the Cold War ended (New York, NY, 2004).

50 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, pp. 4, 5–7, 9, 320.

51 Ibid., pp. 307, 312.

52 FitzGerald, Way out there in the blue, pp. 467–8, 473.

53 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, p. 316.

54 Warren I. Cohen, America's failing empire: US foreign relations since the Cold War (Oxford, 2005), pp. 14, 35.

55 Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a new era, p. 481.

56 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, pp. 321, 25.

57 Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a new era, p. 480.

58 Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvyn A. Goodman, The wars of Eduard Shevardnadze (London, 1997), p. 101. This is the work of two former CIA analysts.

59 Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a new era, p. 479.

60 Saki Ruth Dockrill, The end of the Cold War era (London, 2005), pp. 205, 106, 114, 212.

61 David Caute, The dancer defects: the struggle for cultural supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford, 2003), pp. 1–6 (quotation at p. 3).

62 For a flavour of the debate and a critical view of CIA behaviour, see Frances Stonor Saunders, Who paid the piper? The CIA and the cultural Cold War (London, 1999).

63 Scott Lucas, Freedom's war: the American crusade against the Soviet Union (Manchester, 1999).

64 Soutou, Guerre de cinquante ans, pp. 224–5.

65 Saunders, Who paid the piper? pp. 5, 415.

66 Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British left and the Cold War: calling the tune? (London, 2003), pp. 299–301, quotation at p. 301.

67 Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Rumours as evidence’, in Ljubica Erickson and Mark Erickson, eds., Russia: war, peace and diplomacy. Essays in honour of John Erickson (London, 2005), pp. 276–7.

68 Ibid., pp. 344–5n.

69 Ibid., p. 277

70 Volker R. Berghahn, America and the intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton, NJ, 2001), pp. xii, 287, 290.

71 Stephen J. Whitfield, The culture of the Cold War (2nd edn, Baltimore, MD, 1996), p. 231.

72 See, for instance, Richard Wagnleitner, Coca-colonization and the Cold War: the cultural mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994). See also Richard Pells, Not like US: how Europeans have loved, hated, and transformed American culture since World War Two (New York, NY, 1997), who suggested influence was not all one way.

73 Rana Mitter and Patrick Major, eds., Across the blocs: Cold War cultural and social history (London, 2004).

74 Ibid., pp. 42–3.

75 See the special issue, edited by Tony Shaw, ‘Britain and the cultural Cold War’, Contemporary British History, 19 (2005).

76 See, for example, Peter Beck, ‘Britain and the Cold War's “cultural olympics”: responding to the political drive of Soviet sport’, Contemporary British History, 19 (2005), pp. 169–86.

77 Whitfield, The culture of the Cold War, p. 87. See also, on this theme: Dianne Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War (London, 2003); and Rotter, Andrew J., Dean, Robert, Buzzanco, Robert, and Hill, Patricia R., ‘Roundtable: culture, religion and international relations’, Diplomatic History, 24 (2000), pp. 593–640CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 On the role of John Paul II, see Gaddis, Cold War, pp. 192–7.

79 Preston, Andrew, ‘Bridging the gap between the sacred and the secular in the history of American foreign relations’, Diplomatic History, 30 (2006), pp. 783–812CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the relations between religion and politics, see Michael Burleigh, Sacred causes: religion and politics from the European dictators to Al Qaeda (London, 2006).

80 Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red star over Hollywood: the film colony's long romance with the left (San Francisco, CA, 2005).

81 Tony Shaw, British cinema and the Cold War: the state, propaganda and consensus (London, 2001), quotation at p. 196

82 See, for example: Christopher Andrew, Secret service (London, 1985); idem, KGB (London, 1990); Richard J. Aldrich, The hidden hand (London, 2001).

83 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In denial: historians, communism and espionage (San Francisco, CA 2003), p. 231.

84 Ibid., pp. 49, 68, 86.

85 Martin Walker, The Cold War (London, 1993).

86 Two early celebratory studies were Howard S. Ellis, The economics of freedom: the progress and future of aid to Europe (New York, NY, 1950) and Harry B. Price, The Marshall Plan and its meaning (Ithaca, NY, 1955).

87 Hogan, Marshall Plan. Participants' experiences were gathered in Stanley Hoffman and Charles Maier, eds., The Marshall Plan: a retrospective (London, 1984).

88 Robert A. Pollard, Economic security and the origins of the Cold War (New York, NY, 1985).

89 Alan Milward, The reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (London, 1984). See also John Killick, The United States and European reconstruction, 1945–1960 (Edinburgh, 1997).

90 Diane Kunz, Butter and guns: America's Cold War economic diplomacy (New York, 1997), pp. 1–5.

91 Ibid., p. 331.

92 Alan P. Dobson, US economic statecraft for survival, 1933–1991: of sanctions, embargoes and economic warfare (London, 2002), pp. 9, 87. See also the neat summary in Alan P. Dobson and Steve Marsh, US foreign policy since 1945 (London, 2001), pp. 46–55.

93 Dobson, US economic statecraft, p. 86.

94 Ian Jackson, The economic Cold War: America, Britain and east–west trade, 1948–1963 (London, 2001), quotation at p. 6.

95 Ibid., p. 184.

96 Dobson, US economic statecraft, p. 213.

97 Ibid., p. 349n.

98 Ibid., pp. 305, 306.

99 Westad, Odd Arne, ‘Secrets of the second world: the Russian archives and the reinterpretation of Cold War history’, Diplomatic History, 21 (1997), pp. 268–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Westad, The global Cold War, quotation at p. 396.

101 David C. Engerman, ‘The romance of economic development and new histories of the Cold War’, Diplomatic History, 28 (2004), p. 53.

102 Westad, The global Cold War, p. 402.

103 Caute, The dancer defects, pp. 614–17.

104 Melvin Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., Cambridge history of the Cold War, i: Origins, 1917–1962; ii: Crises and détente, 1962–1975; iii: Endings, 1975–1991 (Cambridge, forthcoming).

105 Gaddis, ‘Emerging post-revisionist synthesis’, p. 190.