Richardson Ian

October 2009

The opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed two world wars, dislocation of the political ancien regime and an erosion of colonialism. A view of history evolved which averred that conflict invariably leads to massive loss of life and social revolution. New imperial powers emerged: the USSR propounding a regime of command economics and limited sovereignty of Eastern Bloc satellite States, countermanded by the reluctant empire of the United States – recently awoken from a protectionist dream and having as its underpinning unbridled capitalism and the dispersal of corporatism beyond domestic markets. De Toqueville had presciently foreseen the emergence of these two hegemonies a century before “called by some secret design of Providence9,1 anticipating the fatalistic attitudes of post war Europe. The Berlin Crisis provided the crucible for the first phase of the Cold War drama – as much a Zeitgeist as a clash of political philosophies.

Truman’s policies were innovative yet combative. His use of nuclear weapons against Japan transformed military theory, extinguished imperial power and provided tools for confrontational geopolitics in addition to, however, sponsoring the United Nations. Partly out of a need to demonstrate convincing change in the United States to stimulate an economy transitioning from war to peace, Truman dramatised his world view. In his first address to Congress, Truman offered contrasting visions: the first was of “the conspiracy of the Axis powers to dominate the world”, the other a conviction that “America may well lead the world to peace and prosperity.” 2 Framed by continuing belligerence with Japan, this set the moral polemic for subsequent nuclear attacks. Stalin, celebrating the defeat of Germany, noted: “The period of war in Europe has closed. A period of peaceful development has been ushered in.” 3 What had not yet materialised was conflicting encounter between the USA and the USSR. Truman and Stalin’s rhetoric targeted a defeated enemy. The “Axis” was overthrown but provided a durable metaphor serving national ambition. The combative nature of both men became increasingly acerbic. Truman’s inaugural address to the U.N. restated his world view: “We still have a choice between the alternatives: the continuation of international chaos – or the establishment of a world organisation for the enforcement of peace.” 4

The USSR and the United States dominated a nascent geopolitical order with the United Kingdom and France denuded by decades of attrition. Key features of this regime would underpin the Cold War. The bellicose ire of Stalin and Truman’s statesmanship found a flashpoint in Berlin. Reconstruction and the emergence of new political parties in Germany provided a volatility wherein competing ideologies could collide. Arguably, the Marshall Plan laid the basis for an attenuated Cold War, rather than a temporary crisis. The U.S. stressed the need for a competitive German industrial base. Molotov, representing the USSR, walked out of the Marshall negotiations. Reportedly, Stalin believed that a weakened Germany posed less of a risk to the new buffer zone of Eastern Bloc States.5 A seminal event took place during the March 1948 meeting of the Allied Control Council: Sokolovsky declared the meeting adjourned after failing to receive a briefing on a prior London conference. Truman noted: “For most of Germany; this act merely formalised what had been an obvious fact for some time…For the city of Berlin, however, this was the curtain raiser for a major crisis.” 6 The walk out precipitated the Soviet blockade of the Allied sectors necessitating the airlift.

Truman advisor Bernard Baruch coined the phrase “Cold War” to encompass enemies both abroad and at home. With the increasing pitch of the Berlin crisis, the term became widely applied to the tension between the “superpowers”.7 The perspective evidenced by both regimes was hegemonic, assuming that political power could be maintained in uncertain equilibrium by global military superiority. This view of history was retrospective, propounding a logistic of conventional military stalemate outside of a formal declaration of war. It created the material substance of the Cold War. This entrenchment was possible in 1948 because both juggernauts conducted their antagonism by proxy. An aversion to new bloodshed further stimulated a conflict of interests expressed in political re-alignment and economic prosperity on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Churchill’s metaphor is apt: the steely veil between superpowers rendered the adversaries faceless. Civil conflict such as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary characterised this first Cold War view of history, one which allowed the implacable nature of mass militarism to be considered as a power asset. Investment in NATO (1948) and the Warsaw Pact (1955), meant that the peace dividend associated with de-militarisation was largely foregone.

The Cold War, plausibly, was perpetuated by a different view of history, founded on resurgent optimism. Its primary exponents, John F Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev: both envisioned mankind’s destiny as enabled by the power of science. Reaching for the stars became a literal objective. “Space programmes” assumed a major propaganda role.

If this view of history was forward thinking and progressive, it was nevertheless directed at discovering improved methods of delivering a nuclear payload. A crucial difference between the retrospective stalemate of Eisenhower and Malenkov on the one hand and Kennedy and Krushchev on the other, was that the emerging political agenda addressed limitless horizons where man’s future was liberated by unleashing individual potential and seizing as its corollary equally boundless military potency. Over the decades succeeding the USSR becoming a nuclear power in 1949, the United States became increasingly concerned about communism as an insurgency and the ability of the USSR to deliver a nuclear first strike. A transition took place underwritten by an Armageddon scenario. This view of history, despite promulgating an atmosphere of boundless scientific achievement, offered the prospect of human annihilation and shifted the military focus away from conventional tactics.

The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 stimulated Cold War power politics on America’s doorstep. Popular media, especially television, created a sense of immediacy augmented by high resolution aerial observation. Kennedy resolved that attacking the missiles was a real option. Declassified transcripts include his remarks: “/ don t think we got much time on these missiles…we can t wait two weeks while we're getting ready to roll. Maybe just have to just take them out, and continue our other preparations…”8 Dobrynin’s report of a meeting with Robert Kennedy reflected the betrayal the President felt at the allegedly short range defensive nature of the planned Russian missiles in Cuba being deployed as medium range weapons capable of striking anywhere in the USA.9 Notably, Krushchev did not consult with Castro on the final resolution of the matter.

The view of history which perpetuated the Cold War was one of apprehension on an unfolding “space age” horizon – as opposed to retrospective fear and conventional military stalemate. The view was futuristic, perhaps reckless. Both Krushchev and Kennedy pursued a policy of brinkmanship with the genuine prospect of nuclear calamity at a time when control systems for these weapons were still unsophisticated. The “arms race” characterising this policy was essentially illogical in that any nuclear strike was likely to escalate to broad based destruction and an arsenal of hundreds of ICBM’s exceeded any tactical requirement. Soviet management of this unstable situation became increasingly introverted as Krushchev was succeeded by internal contention for authority, initially by the “Troika”, then through the short terms of Andropov and Chernenko. Attempts by Breshnev and Carter to promote the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks foundered. The strategic situation was unchanged: both superpowers were breathless in pursuit of nuclear supremacy whilst a chasm developed in global economies: the wealth of the West compared to command economies in the East challenged the historical socialist view that capitalism would inevitably fail. Eastern Bloc States, witnessing this relative deprivation, sought greater autonomy. Breshnev advised the Politburo: “…It is… apparent that we are experiencing a very complicated period in the development of international relations. A serious deterioration and exacerbation of the situation has occurred. And the primary source of this deterioration is the growing aggression of the foreign policy of the Carter government10 As George Kennan advised Truman, Ronald Reagan might have been cautioned that the Soviet Bloc was expansionist and a natural response was “containment”, there being two variables in its modern form. The first was the Warsaw Pact crumbling through over extension and lack of investment. Secondly, a technology was needed to confound nuclear devastation. Reagan’s response was the Strategic Defence Initiative – derided as “Star Wars” – sustaining the view of history which perpetuated the Cold War: an unwavering belief in scientific advancement and yet a readiness to pull the trigger.

The Soviet historiography, also extending the Cold War, shared the sense of stalemate. This perspective, beginning with proletarian revolution, readily expressed the Cold War as a class struggle. Gorbachev, considering nuclear attack less likely, possibly believing the potential of SDI or perceiving its naive foundation, was able to transcend Soviet orthodoxy creating a radical comprehension of past systemic failure. Added to this reassessment of the Soviet world view was the fragmentation experienced in the Eastern Bloc with previously passive satellites like Poland contentiously espousing liberalism. Whereas the United States held to an unyielding perception of Soviet totalitarianism, parts of the Soviet regime understood that change was inevitable.

Gorbachev’s reforms, highlighted by glasnost and perestroika, refuted the command economy and regarded totalitarianism as an unworkable ethic. As the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis represented tipping points in Cold War historiography, the fall of the Berlin Wall, where Gorbachev played a keystone role, marked its demise.

Whether late eighties summits resulted in a meaningful exchange between the folksy Reagan and the emollient Gorbachev is problematic although they did result in the abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons. The view of history which perpetuated the Cold War, driven by equally culpable states harnessed to a technology fuelled race for supremacy, was being re-defined. A new openness was manifest. At the Brandenberg Gate, Reagan called out to Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” Drama has a role to play in international relations and perhaps Gorbachev responded to Reagan’s theatrics by refusing East German requests for Soviet tanks in Liepzig to suppress protestors using the Nikolai Church as the focal point for liberalisation demands. These events, together with Hungary opening its borders, precipitated the collapse of the Berlin Wall by popular action.

Gorbachev’s predecessors viewed the Berlin Wall as emblematic of East West confrontation. Gorbachev’s insights viewed the Wall as largely irrelevant and dispensable. The New York Times cited the Premier: “The wall can disappear when those conditions that created it fall away…I don't see a major problem here.” He went on, ‘7 think we have come out of a period of cold war, even if there are still some chills and drafts… We are simply bound to a new stage of relations, one I would call the peaceful period in the development of international relations.” 11 Gorbachev surpassed a view of history which saw Cold War “conditions” as immutable. He had support from Medvedev, Chemyaev, Yakolev and Shevardnadze – an iconoclastic cell aimed at reform.12

Gorbachev resisted reactionary elements in the Soviet administration, challenged the unrepresentative nature of the public franchise, countered corruption in State enterprises and popularised a view of coexistence eschewing nuclear arsenals. This was a supersession of a world view; a seismic shift in a historical paradigm. In his final speech as President of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev described the world he inherited “ The society was suffocating in the vice of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. It had reached the limit of its possibilities.”13 This was the last gasp of the Cold War. A renunciation of an ideology. Gorbachev blended realpolitik executive authority with considerations of simple social right. This leavening so contradicted the language of the Cold War, that its transcendence provided an alternative view of history which largely persists in international relations today.

Endnotes

1 Alexis de Toqueville: “Democracy in America”, pp.412–413, 1835.

2 Miller Centre of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Multimedia Archive, First Speech to Congress (April 16, 1945)

3 Address to the People, May 9th, 1945. On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1946

4 Miller Centre of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Multimedia Archive. President Truman’s address to the U.N. San Francisco: April 25th, 1945.

5 “The Fifty Years War: the United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991”, Richard Crockatt. Routledge, London, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13554-0. See page 87 for references to Stalin’s ambivalence towards a united Germany and the Eastern Bloc in the years before his death in 1953.

6 “Airbridge to Berlin. The Berlin Crisis of 1948, its Origins and Aftermath” D.M. Giangreco and Robert E. Griffin, Presidion Press. USA. 1988. ISBN 0-89141-329-4

7 For a discussion of William Fox’s notions of the peaceful use of power between “superpowers” and the emergence of the USA and the USSR as the principal agents, see pages 12 to 15 “The Evolution of Theory in International Relations”. Robert Rothstein, Ed. University of South Carolina, 1992. ISBN 0-87249-862-X

8 TranscriptofrecordedconversationincludingJFK,RFK, Johnson,Bundy andMacNamara. October 16th 1962 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset+Tree/Asset+Viewers/Audio+Video+Asset+Viewer. htm?guid= {16E3 A48F-B1EF-4447-8D97-C1F0006B3F29 } &type=Audio

9 Cold War International History Project, Virtual Archive Telegram from Dobrynin to USSR MFA. October 24th, 1962. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409& fuseaction=va2.document&identifier=5034E27E-96B6-175C-9886707B7D50B CF8&sort= Col lection&item=Cuban%20Missile%2 °Crisis

10 Cold War International History Project, Virtual Archive. Breshnev address to the СССР Politburo, June 8th, 1978. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2. document&identifier=5034F5A8-96B6-l 75C-9DD9D17B9F404E16&sort=Subject&item=detente

11 Gorbachev Press Conference during his visit to West Germany. “New York Times”. June 16th, 1989. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/16/world/a-gorbachev-hint-for-berlin-wall.html

12 See “New Evidence on the End of the Cold War”. V. M. Zubok. The Wilson Centre, http:// www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/New_Ev_EndCW.pdf

13 December, 1991. The Public Purpose Library, http://www.publicpurpose.com/lib-gorb 911225.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Democracy in America”, Alexis de Toqueville, University Press, 1835.

“The Fifty Years War: the United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991”, Richard Crockatt. Routledge, London, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13554-0.

“Airbridge to Berlin. The Berlin Crisis of 1948, its Origins and Aftermath” D.M. Giangreco and Robert E. Griffin, Presidion Press. USA. 1988. ISBN 0-89141-329-4

“The Evolution of Theory in International Relations”. Robert Rothstein, Ed. University of South Carolina, 1992. ISBN 0-87249-862-X