Dale Carter and Robin Clifton, eds., War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy, 1942-62.
New York: Palgrave, 2002. 250 pp. $79.95.
This book of essays, assembled from a conference that paid tribute to the late Callum Alexander
MacDonald, is like a good issue of a good journal. The essays address a disparate array of
issues, and no unifying theme binds the individual selections together, but each is grounded in
solid research and makes an important contribution to the literature on American foreign policy.
As such they are a fine tribute to the work of MacDonald himself. By the time of his early death
from cancer at age forty-nine, he had established himself as a prolific historian of international
history, known not only for the wide range of his work but also for his skillful blending of military
and diplomatic history. He published six books and over a dozen articles on a wide range of
subjects, including appeasement, the Nanking massacre, the Korean War, Anglo-American
relations with Argentina, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dwight Eisenhower's "New Look," and various
aspects of the Second World War.
The essays in this volume reflect the broad scope and international focus of MacDonald's work.
The book begins with an exemplary introduction that provides a detailed and insightful overview
of historiographical trends in diplomacy and military history, as well as clear summaries of the
individual essays. The book is divided into four subsequent parts, beginning with a section on
World War II, which was a recurring object of MacDonald's research. Warren Kimball writes a
penetrating critique of the historiography of the war in an essay that was published earlier, in a
slightly different [End Page 73] form, in the journal Diplomatic History. Appropriately subtitled
"(Not) Just the Origins of the Cold War," Kimball's essay laments the tendency of scholars to
interpret World War II in light of the Cold War that followed. The next chapter, by Lloyd Gardner,
revisits the end of the Pacific war. Gardner provides a rich narrative of the "unconditional
surrender" debate within the Truman administration that goes beyond the usually polarized and
politicized interpretations of the decisions to drop nuclear bombs. Incorporating political and
cultural factors into his analysis, he paints a complex picture of the intersection between domestic
and international forces shaping U.S. policy toward Japan at the end of the war.
The editors titled the second section of the book "Privates on Parade," a strange and unfortunate
heading for two excellent essays on the "Cold War of Words." In an illuminating study of covert
action and American foreign policy, W. Scott Lucas surveys the cooperation between the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency and various private groups in psychological warfare campaigns and
other Cold War projects during the 1940s and 1950s. This "state-private network," he argues,
was motivated by a desire to spread American culture and an American ideology of freedom
around the world.
Lucas's interest in the "cultural Cold War" is shared by the next essay in the collection, an
examination by Richard Crockatt of the curious popularity of British historian Arnold Toynbee's
six-volume A Study of History. Crockatt shows how Toynbee's history of world civilizations was
susceptible to multiple readings and shifting fortunes attributable to the historical lessons it
seemed to provide Americans in the unfolding Cold War. Cited by such figures as George F.
Kennan, John Foster Dulles, and Whittaker Chambers, Toynbee's message that "great
challenges required great responses" (p.111) was read as a call to arms in the 1940s and 1950s.
Perceived as a non-Marxist dialectic for a world in crisis and an ideological weapon against
Communism in the chilliest days of the Cold War, A Study of History was reinterpreted by leftwing critics during the upheavals of the Vietnam years. In much the same way that Paul
Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers was read as a cautionary tale in the late 1980s
about "imperial overstretch," Toynbee's interpretation of history emerged in the 1960s as "an
ideological ally in the struggle against imperialism" (p.119). This thought-provoking essay is at
once an intellectual history of the Cold War, an exploration of the uses and abuses of history, and
an analysis of historiographical trends (one that would stimulate provocative discussion in
graduate seminars).
A third section, on the Korean War (another of MacDonald's interests), focuses on two lesserknown dimensions of the conflict. Peter Lowe examines the impact of the war on Anglo-American
relations, demonstrating that it played a key part in determining the future of the "special
relationship." Fundamentally, Lowe concludes, the U.S.-British relationship "was a matter of
power: the Americans had plenty of it and the British did not" (p.152). Bruce Cumings probes into
the historical memory of the "forgotten war" by documenting the also forgotten war crimes and
atrocities perpetrated by United Nations troops against Communist forces during the occupation
of North Korea in 1950. Cumings asserts that even though American historians have [End Page
74] overlooked these atrocities, the North Koreans have not—something to be remembered, he
claims, when thinking about reunification. The final section of the book deals with the United
States and Latin America and reflects the concerns of the "new international history." An essay by
Mario Rapoport and Caludio Spiguel on U.S.- Argentine relations (using multiarchival materials) is
followed by a critique of the literature on the Cuban missile crisis by Nicola Miller, who chides the
historiography for failing to consider adequately the role of Cuba, a topic that has been explored
recently by Philip Brenner.
Although War and Cold War lacks a central focus or unifying theme, each of the individual essays
in this collection adds a new layer of complexity to the cultural, political, diplomatic, military, and,
indeed, international history of American foreign relations.
Kenneth A. Osgood,
Florida Atlantic University