Origins and Ending: The Historical Debate

Joseph Smith is reader in American diplomatic history at the University of Exeter. Some of the material in this article appears in his book, The Cold War, 1945–1991 (Blackwell, 1998).

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was the dominant issue in international affairs during the second half of the twentieth century. Over several decades, the two superpowers engaged not in direct military combat but in a “war of words” in which they ritually denounced each other for both causing and perpetuating the conflict. Historians also took part in the battle. During the actual period of the Cold War the writings of Soviet historians were strictly censored, and consequently adhered faithfully to their government’s “official” version of events. A much more diverse approach was forthcoming from American historians, reflecting their country’s pluralistic and open society. Although Western European scholars have also made a valuable contribution to the debate, historical research and publication on the Cold War has largely been conducted by American historians, with the result that an American perspective—placing the United States at the centre of events—has dominated the historical literature on the subject.

American writers have been attracted to the idea that the Cold War possesses special significance in modern history because it coincided with the period in which their own country emerged from isolation to become the world’s leading superpower. Moreover, the United States is regarded as an exceptional nation whose rise to global power was historically inevitable. The French political scientist, Alexis de Tocqueville, predicted as early as 1835 that the destiny of the world would ultimately fall under the sway of the peoples of America and Russia. According to this linear view of history, the United States was simply assuming the leadership of Western civilisation against the forces of Eastern barbarism. Western European scholars have acknowledged the material power and the pre-eminent international role adopted by the United States after 1941, but are less inclined to regard the Cold War as a discrete period of world history. From their longer historical perspective it appears as yet another interlude in the struggle for power and territory that has been a prominent feature in the history of modern Europe. The importance of European events in contributing to the end of the Cold War has given added validity to this view.

There is considerable debate over the exact timing of the beginning of the Cold War. For those American writers who consider the struggle as primarily an ideological battle of liberal democracy versus communism, the crucial date is the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Fundamental significance is assigned to the hostile reaction of the United States in the form of President Woodrow Wilson’s public condemnation of the Bolshevist government and his sending of American troops to Russia in 1918 to assist the futile efforts of the Western powers to restore the imperial regime. The collaboration between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin during the Second World War is seen as an aberration which derived solely from the mutual US–Soviet desire to defeat Nazi Germany. Ideological rivalry resumed once this objective was achieved and took on an increasingly military aspect after the war when American and Soviet armies came face to face with each other in Central Europe.

The Orthodox Interpretation

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union seriously contemplated going to war with each other during the 1920s and 1930s. Consequently, their ideological differences did not threaten world peace. While acknowledging the background of unfriendly relations dating from 1917, most historical investigation on the origins of the Cold War attaches central importance to the events that occurred in Europe during the second half of the 1940s. The conventional wisdom among American politicians and diplomats at the time was that the Soviet Union sought world hegemony. Stalin was suspected of masterminding a monolithic communist conspiracy, starting with the ruthless imposition of communist political control throughout Eastern Europe and threats to the governments of Iran, Turkey and Greece. In response, the United States formulated the policy of “containing” communist expansionism. Containment was exemplified in the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This contemporary view that Stalin’s aggressiveness was directly responsible for causing the Cold War was subsequently endorsed by many historians in the West and is known as the “orthodox” or “traditional” interpretation. The importance of the Truman Doctrine in articulating American aims and values has caused President Harry Truman’s celebrated speech to Congress in March 1947 to be cited as representing the actual beginning of the Cold War. It was also in 1947 that the term “Cold War” first emerged in the West as the result of a book with that title written by the influential American journalist, Walter Lippmann.

Soviet writers agreed on the importance of the Truman Doctrine in contributing to the conflict between East and West, but they regarded their country’s response as defensive. In their opinion, American imperialism was the cause of the Cold War. This view reflected an official line which was consistently maintained throughout the Cold War. For example, only a day after the Truman Doctrine was enunciated, Soviet news agencies criticised it as part of a calculated strategy to expand the capitalist system throughout Europe. The Marshall Plan was similarly condemned as an American plot to encircle the Soviet Union with hostile capitalist states. In addition, the United States was accused of endangering Soviet security by creating NATO and proceeding to remilitarise West Germany. The Soviet Union reacted accordingly to American provocation by creating its own bloc of political, economic and military alliances in Eastern Europe.

Revisionism

In the United States, the orthodox view reflected the public consensus in favour of containment and was not challenged until the emergence of the “revisionist” school of American historians during the 1960s. The new interpretation reflected the findings of researchers who had been able to take advantage of the opening of American diplomatic archives covering the 1940s. With the Vietnam War very much in mind, the revisionists raised an uncomfortable analogy with the past by equating Truman’s calculated use of the communist bogey in his appeal for aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947 with President Lyndon Johnson’s invocation of the same bogey in justification for the vigorous escalation of the Vietnam War. The writings of the revisionists were sharply critical of American foreign policy and brought into question many of the pro-American and anti-Soviet assumptions underlying the orthodox view of the origins of the Cold War.

A prominent revisionist theme is the adoption of a markedly sympathetic view of Soviet behaviour and the contention that Stalin’s policies were seriously misunderstood by the Truman administration. Revisionists stress that Stalin, far from being untrustworthy, had repeatedly proved himself a reliable wartime ally of the United States. Nor was the Soviet Union a great military threat to the United States. Indeed, the revisionists drew attention to the grave military and economic weakness of the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. So great was Soviet insecurity, and the memory of previous invasions from the West, that it was strategically necessary for Stalin to insist on the establishment of friendly governments in neighbouring states. Stalin, therefore, was motivated by cautious realism rather than aggression. According to the revisionists, it was the action of the United States that provoked him into hostility towards the West and was directly responsible for precipitating the Cold War.

Revisionists see Roosevelt’s succession by Truman as especially significant. Whereas Roosevelt cultivated a friendly personal relationship with Stalin, Truman was quick to adopt an abrasive attitude in his dealings with Soviet diplomats in Washington. Truman put economic pressure on the Soviet Union by abruptly cancelling Lend–Lease aid, while administration officials prolonged discussions and effectively frustrated Soviet hopes for financial assistance in the form of German reparations or a large American loan. Conversely, revisionists note, American financial assistance was liberally given to right-wing regimes in Greece and Turkey with the evident aim of establishing anti-communist governments on the very borders of the Soviet Union. It is even contended that Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 not so much to defeat Japan but to frighten the Soviets into making concessions to the United States on Eastern Europe. The thrust of these arguments is similar to the Soviet official line in depicting Truman and his “get tough” policy as the cause of the Cold War.

Economic Explanations

By concentrating on the importance of the actions and motives of the Truman administration, the revisionists find themselves obliged to explain the dynamics of American foreign policy. In the resulting analyses particular stress is placed on the significance of economic factors. It is argued that throughout the history of the United States, American diplomacy has sought to serve the needs of American capitalism by seeking an “open door” into overseas markets. Moreover, in 1945 American officials were fearful that the post-war world would suffer a recurrence of the Great Depression of the 1930s. They believed that American prosperity and even the survival of capitalism depended upon the creation of a liberal international economic order that would secure and guarantee the principle of the “open door”. This aim clashed not so much with Soviet economic needs as with Stalin’s security considerations. His desire for protection from external military invasion resulted in the creation of a Soviet closed sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. The state of cold war arose because the Truman administration exerted diplomatic and economic pressure in an attempt to keep the region open.

Advocates of the orthodox interpretation complain that the revisionists uncritically adopt double standards. While Stalin is granted legitimate national security needs which explain, if not excuse, his actions no matter how aggressive or expansionist, US actions are judged by an impossible standard of virtuous international behaviour. It is also argued that revisionist claims concerning the American perception of the magnitude of the Soviet military threat reflect the benefit of hindsight. Although there was considerable demobilisation of the Red Army after 1945, later research has revealed that this was not apparent to American officials at the time. American military experts acknowledged that the Soviet Union was incapable of launching a direct military attack on the United States, but they believed the Soviets could speedily overrun a weak and unstable Western Europe. Neither was this anxiety a solely American preoccupation or fabrication: European leaders were also fearful of the Soviet threat. In his celebrated speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, Britain’s ex-prime minister, Winston Churchill, had sought to alert American public opinion to the creation of an “Iron Curtain” in Europe. Indeed, the British Foreign Office considered that US State Department officials were too passive and trusting towards the Soviet Union.

There is also considerable controversy over whether Truman actually initiated a real change of direction in American policy towards the Soviet Union. Despite his desire for conciliation and compromise, Roosevelt did not fully trust Stalin and deliberately chose not to inform him of the American development of the atomic bomb. Annoyed by Stalin’s refusal to broaden the composition of the Polish government, Roosevelt told Churchill shortly before his death in 1945 that he intended to take a tougher line with the Soviet leader. In contrast to his predecessor, Truman was inexperienced in foreign affairs and more receptive to the advice of anti-communist advisers. Nevertheless, his decision to send Harry Hopkins on a private mission to Moscow in May 1945 was reminiscent of Roosevelt’s style of personal diplomacy and showed that Truman was not intent on forcing a confrontation with Stalin.

Orthodox historians also deny that Truman was the unwitting tool of military or business interests. They argue that the revisionists have greatly overestimated the power of such interests. The American military–industrial complex had grown enormously during the Second World War, but its post-war ambitions were limited by congressional resistance to increased military spending and the public’s expectation of rapid demobilisation. The development of the atomic bomb was a great scientific achievement, but provided little immediate military advantage given that the number of available atomic bombs was virtually nil. The Truman administration was certainly keen to help American business and promote exports and overseas investment, but the economically devastated region of Eastern Europe was hardly the most inviting market in this respect. In fact, implementation of an alleged grand design for the United States to dominate the world economy would have been severely constrained by domestic political factors. Congress even baulked at granting a post-war loan to Britain, America’s closest ally. The Marshall Plan was scrutinised line by line by congressmen who were more concerned with its real costs and what these would mean for the American taxpayer than with its vague future benefits.

Post-Revisionism

Despite the claim made during the 1980s that a “post-revisionist” synthesis had emerged among American historians, the controversy over the origins of the Cold War remains unresolved. If there is common ground, it is agreement that American policymakers were acutely suspicious of the intentions of the Soviet Union and irritated by its refusal to co-operate in reconstructing the post-war world in the American image. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the political vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe, together with the presence of large military forces, made Europe the centre of diplomatic attention and the focus of superpower conflict. At this point historical interpretations in the West diverge.

Orthodox writers argue that Stalin was bent on world conquest and had to be resisted. Revisionists single out Truman as the instrument of economic forces and conclude that Stalin was a victim of unreasonable American pressure to concede a global “open door”. Post-revisionists contend that both leaders pursued pragmatic policies and were equally to blame for mistakes and misperceptions that broke up the wartime alliance and initiated a state of cold war. Stalin was reluctant to embark upon another full-scale war in Europe, even though, as recently opened Soviet archives reveal, he was keen to extend Soviet borders at the West’s expense. While Truman was a fierce critic of communist aggression, his tough rhetoric disguised the lack of a systematic American strategy to contain the perceived threat. West European countries, especially Britain, were perturbed by what they considered to be the failure of American political leaders to appreciate the seriousness of the Soviet military threat. This has raised the question of the particular contribution of European powers to the outbreak of the Cold War. Indeed, the desire and evident success of West European leaders in persuading the United States to become directly involved in Europe’s political and military affairs have led some historians to argue that America acquired an “empire by invitation” rather than by conscious design or forceful diplomacy.

The role of countries beyond Europe has also come to be examined by historians researching the origins of the Cold War. The friction over Iran in 1946 actually predated the Truman Doctrine and can be seen as the first real test of strength between Truman and Stalin. Similarly, the establishment of communist regimes in China and North Korea worried officials in the Truman administration and served to confirm their suspicions of the global nature of the communist threat. The inclusion of events in Asia during the late 1940s in studies of the evolving US–Soviet Cold War points the way to a wider international perspective. Consequently, the communist victory in China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 do not appear as sudden and inexplicable international events.

No matter which leader, country or system is held responsible or whether all were equally culpable, the historical record shows that the United States and the Soviet Union ended the Second World War as allies but had become adversaries by 1947. The resulting conflict was notable in assuming the peculiar form of “cold” war, which emphasised propaganda rather than bullets. More ominously, each side also built up systems of alliances extending all over the globe and openly embarked on a series of hugely expensive arms races in preparation for a “hot” war that never actually materialised.

The End of the War

More than forty years after it began, the Cold War came to an end with a rapidity which contemporary observers found hard to comprehend. The perplexity was understandable and has been shared by historians. Although Soviet economic and military prowess had always been clouded in secrecy, it was generally believed in the West that, whatever its many deficiencies, the system of a centralised command economy would enable the Soviet Union to maintain the status of superpower for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the Cold War had lasted for so long that it had become an accepted state of international affairs. There were also too many powerful vested interests at stake for its end to seem imminent. The bipolar conflict appeared to serve the purposes of the two superpowers very well by providing a rationale for them to lead and dominate their respective alliance systems. In material terms, both the United States and Soviet Union possessed military–industrial complexes whose wellbeing was linked to the prolongation of economic and military competition. Many political leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain had built their careers around their credentials as cold warriors. Although there had been periods of thaw in the 1950s and détente in the 1970s that evinced a mutual desire to discuss arms control and defuse tensions, a negotiated end to the Cold War had never been given serious consideration. Instead, more attention had been paid to the prospect of the conflict ending in a nuclear holocaust in which both sides would suffer “mutually assured destruction”.

In 1989, however, the structure of international relations underpinning the Cold War was dramatically transformed, not from “above” but from “below” by the unfolding political revolutions in Eastern Europe. The most momentous single event was the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, which had stood for almost three decades as the highly visible symbol of the Cold War in Europe. Western governments looked on in amazement as the peoples of Eastern Europe spontaneously took the initiative in peacefully rolling back the Iron Curtain.

A critical factor in their success was undoubtedly Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision not to resort to military intervention to prop up the communist regimes, as had occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Soviet leader hoped that his policy of perestroika (reconstruction) would be received positively in the satellite states. The peoples of Eastern Europe, however, opted not for the Soviet Union but for the West as their preferred model of political, economic and moral progress. In fact, the communist bloc was in terminal economic decline. The Czech dissident, Vaclav Havel, likened the revelation of communist weakness and unpopularity to the story by Hans Christian Anderson in which the boy cries out that “the emperor is naked” and thereby compels everyone to acknowledge the truth that had been denied for so long. Although communism would continue to prevail in the People’s Republic of China and in Cuba, the “ideological” Cold War was resolved to the satisfaction of most of the world in 1989 in favour of the Western values of liberal democracy and free market economics.

The loss of Eastern Europe in 1989–90 significantly reduced the geopolitical influence of the Soviet Union. It formed part of a general Soviet retreat from overseas commitments exemplified in the military withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the substantial reduction of financial subsidies to Cuba. According to Gorbachev, the Soviet Union wanted to be a friend and not an enemy of the West. His intentions were translated into deeds as the Soviet Union entered into a number of arms control agreements with the West, most notably the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty in 1987 and the Start I treaty in 1991. At the same time, provision was made for regular and direct consultation between senior commanders in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. At the November 1990 Paris meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), delegates from the two military alliances jointly issued a public statement that they were no longer adversaries. If there was no military conflict, the Cold War, logically, was over.

The CSCE statement appeared to be contradicted by the fact that both superpowers continued to maintain massive nuclear arsenals directed mainly at each other. In 1991, however, the Soviet Union collapsed as a sovereign state. In its place emerged a new entity known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was so troubled by grave economic and political difficulties that it could hardly be regarded as a superpower. The CIS possessed large conventional and nuclear forces, but its military capabilities were severely undermined by internal demoralisation and the defection of the East European states from the Warsaw Pact, which was officially dissolved in 1991. By contrast, NATO remained intact and was actually strengthened by the inclusion of the new, reunified Germany.

Reagan versus Gorbachev

When the political disintegration of the Soviet Union became a reality, a mood of triumphalism seized the West. Experts on military strategy had traditionally regarded Cold War politics as a zero-sum game in which a gain for one side was by definition a loss for the other. The collapse of the communist system was therefore naturally interpreted as a victory for the West over the East. Personal credit for the turn of events went to the United States and especially President Ronald Reagan, who was publicly acclaimed as “the man who ended the Cold War”. Under Reagan’s leadership the United States had regained the mood of national self-confidence and purpose that had been severely undermined during the harrowing years of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. Reagan had also effected a substantial military build-up which, his admirers argued, had enabled him to negotiate from “a position of strength”. This had scared the Soviets into offering major concessions on strategic arms control and into withdrawing from ambitious military operations in the Third World.

To what extent Reagan caused or simply accelerated the demise of the Soviet Union is a matter of contention among historians and political commentators. During the 1980s the Soviets certainly fell behind the United States in terms of military and economic might. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union remained a formidable nuclear power. In fact, with Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985, a Soviet leader once again assumed a prominent role in world affairs, reminiscent of Nikita Khrushchev during the 1950s. Gorbachev’s boldness of vision and action provided the catalyst for a series of momentous changes which not only dramatically challenged but also confounded diplomatic attitudes that had become fixed by nearly four decades of the stultifying Cold War. In order to achieve radical internal reforms, the new Soviet leader sought to terminate the confrontational relationship between East and West. This resulted in sweeping proposals to abolish nuclear weapons, the renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (which legitimised Soviet military intervention in the affairs of other East Bloc countries), and the remarkable declaration that the United States was no longer an enemy of the Soviet Union. In effect, by signalling his country’s withdrawal from the conflict, Gorbachev unilaterally brought the Cold War to a peaceful end.

Despite his undoubted ability and personal magnetism, some writers believe that Gorbachev was the prisoner rather than the master of events. Critics acknowledge that the Soviet leader was ambitious and energetic, but they contend that he was motivated more by personal weakness than strength of purpose and that his policies represented a forced retreat. For example, the decision to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan is interpreted as a belated recognition that, after almost a decade, the war of attrition was lost. The rejection of military intervention in Eastern Europe similarly reflected not far-sighted statesmanship but an inherent flaw in Gorbachev’s diplomacy. Intervention to suppress political reforms in the satellite states was not feasible because it would damage both perestroika in the Soviet Union and the attempt to seek a new co-operative relationship with the West and NATO. The image was of an increasingly forlorn Gorbachev helplessly presiding over a nation that was falling apart.

Even though the history of the Cold War has revolved around the activities of notable leaders ranging from Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in the 1940s to Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s, few writers attribute the ending of the Cold War simply to the merits or deficiencies of two individuals—Reagan and Gorbachev. In fact, their policies were not as “new” as their admirers maintained. The military build-up associated with Reagan actually began during the Carter administration in 1979. Gorbachev’s perestroika was, strictly speaking, a continuation of the policy of “acceleration” introduced by his predecessor as Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov. It could even be argued that Reagan was following the policy of rearmament outlined more than three decades earlier by the Truman administration in NSC-68 (the National Security Council memorandum that became the blueprint for containment), or that Gorbachev was imitating the diplomatic initiative to meet with Western leaders which had been proposed by Georgi Malenkov after Stalin’s death in 1953.

The end of the Cold War has not substantially affected the historical debate over the origins of the conflict. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union appears to vindicate the strategy of containment pursued by America’s leaders, the revisionist view still retains relevance because the new states that emerged from the former Soviet Union quickly granted an “open door” to American trade and investment. It can also be argued that the “new world order” that emerged during the 1990s reflects the essentially pragmatic attitude that post-revisionist writers have regarded as the salient feature of Cold War diplomacy. The debate will continue and will undoubtedly be subject to further refinement and change as new documentary material is released and the passage of time gives researchers a greater historical perspective on the events of the past.