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Stephanie Kelly
HIST 6393
Post 45 U.S. History
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
Cold War historians have benefited enormously in the last decade from new
material coming out of foreign archives. Many of these new documents have resulted in
a true “rethinking of Cold War history”. But simply having access to documents from
“the other side” doesn’t necessarily yield a more balanced or nuanced interpretation of
history. Indeed, as John Gaddis shows us in We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War
History, selective attention and omission can be as harmful to historical interpretation as
not having those documents. Drawing mostly on secondary material that uses newly
discovered records (Gaddis sites linguistic constraints for this), We Now Know offers an
interpretation of the origins and evolution of the Cold War that is reminiscent of the
“good versus evil” orthodoxy that permeated Cold War mentality.
Gaddis’s first chapter ponders the question, given what we now know, could the
Cold War have been avoided and an alternate path forged? To answer this question he
writes at length on Stalin’s despotic personality and malevolent disposition (hardly
revealing anything new) to arrive at the conclusion that the Cold War could not have
taken any other path so long as Stalin was in charge. Not that the United States didn’t try
cooperating with and accommodating the Kremlin, but given Stalin’s commitment to
world revolution and his expansionist tendencies the United States was left with no
choice but to “react” to the aggressiveness. Gaddis notes, for example, that the failure of
the “spheres of influence” arrangement can be attributed to Stalin’s unilateral approach to
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security. The Americans and the British were willing to persuade the Europeans who
would have come under Soviet control to acquiesce if only Stalin would have cooperated
and shown restraint. How does Gaddis explain the apparent cautiousness of Soviet
behavior under Stalin? It was not due to the overwhelming disparity in strength and
power between East and West, as some scholars have noted, but rather to a patient and
plotting Kremlin boss that was willing to wait for the execution of his master plan until
power disparities favored the Soviets.
Because Stalin’s quest for territorial expansion represents a central place in
Gaddis’ narrative, there is a substantial discussion of Cold War empires.
The Soviet
empire was a deliberate and purposely constructed one which was held together by
coercion and military force. According to Gaddis, Stalin’s insatiable appetite for imperial
expansion, coupled with his belief in inevitable war, guided Soviet policy. Hardly a
mention is given to the issue of Soviet security concerns in the aftermath of a devastating
war where Soviet losses in human lives and material destruction far exceeded that of any
other ally. Gaddis is not predisposed to give Stalin any leeway on this issue, yet he does
give considerable leeway to U.S. concerns for security when the issue is Cuba. The
Soviet Empire failed in the end because it was managed poorly, a fate unavoidable
considering the authoritarian tradition it was built upon. According to Gaddis, the
Soviets, in particular Stalin, did have unlimited ambitions but “no timetable for achieving
them”. The United States, in contrast, innocently stumbled upon its empire in the
aftermath of World War II. The American empire did not arise from an internal need for
markets but rather from external factors. The attack on Pearl Harbor exposed Americans
to a vulnerability that required an acceptance of empire for security purposes. In any
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event, the American Empire was qualitatively different from the Soviets. American
democratic habits of compromise and negotiation enabled the U.S. to construct a “empire
by invitation”. Force was not needed as the benefits to client states would speak for
themselves. Gaddis uses Japan and Germany to exemplify this sanguine picture of
empire. Had he ventured to look at the U.S. Empire in other areas of the world his tea
party empire would not have held up to scrutiny. After all, wasn’t it the U.S. that
invaded and occupied Haiti for nineteen years, leaving only in 1934? Wasn’t it the U.S.
that occupied Cuba after “liberating” it from Spain, and then retained the right to
intervene at whim? The list could go on, but suffice to say Gaddis is wrong about
America’s empire staring in 1945. Furthermore, in suggesting the U.S. had an empire by
invitation, he is overlooking substantial evidence to the contrary.
Gaddis’ coverage of the “German Question” highlights how the Soviets were
obstructionists when it came to the idea of a unified Germany and the United States acted
“uncharacteristically passive” on this issue. Both sides appeared to have their advocates
for a reunified Germany, which would have perhaps led the Cold War in a different
direction. In the U.S, George Kennan proposed Program A, which argued for a neutral
Germany that would constitute a “third force” in Europe. However, the “magnet theory”,
which envisioned a prosperous West Germany attracting East Germans and weakening
Soviet control, won out. On the Soviet side, sincere efforts to reunify Germany came
about only after Stalin’s death in 1953. These efforts were spearheaded by Lavrentii
Beria, who proposed that a unified and neutral Germany might actually balance
American and Soviet influence in Europe. This, Gaddis argues, was the closest both
parties ever came to compromise on the Germany issue. But it was not to happen, for a
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divided Germany was “a convenient, perhaps even a comfortable option for the
Americans, the Russians, and their respective allies”. Altering the status quo seemed
riskier than leaving things alone.
Another topic that Gaddis gives considerable time to is nuclear weapons and their
impact on the evolution of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons changed the history of
warfare in that they became an instrument of peace rather than war. Gaddis makes no
apologies for the use of atomic bombs on Japan, arguing that the primary objective was to
achieve a quick victory, not to scare the Russians. He states in the context of the existing
warfare paradigm, “the decision to use the atomic bomb made sense”. Gaddis
unconvincingly argues that the Unites States made a concerted and sincere effort at
proposing international control, but once again Stalin undermined any compromise.
Much is made of Stalin’s underhanded maneuvering to infiltrate the Manhattan Project
even before the war was over, but little is said about the American’s decision to withhold
information about the bomb from their “ally” and how this may have contributed to
suspicion. Why was the American nuclear monopoly ineffective? Gaddis points to
democratic traditions (once again). Domestic concerns, civil-military relations, how
things looked to our allies, and moral qualms all placed restraints on American leaders.
These restraints were not present in the Soviet Union, and had they had the monopoly
first no one knows what they may have done with it. Once the monopoly was broken, the
arms race that ensued masked the political and economic failures in the Soviet system
that was becoming evident by the 1960’s, thereby allowing the cold war to rage on for
two more decades. The Soviet’s technological and military achievements allowed them
to hide a system in decline from the world. The arms race appears now to have been a
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product of Khrushchev’s intoxication with missiles and the subsequent “missile
dependency” it created. More than any other factor, Khrushchev’s bluffs on missile
superiority led to the arms race. Khrushchev is depicted as somewhat less culpable than
Stalin, but this point is irrelevant to the outcome. The authoritarian structures and
processes that brought down the Soviet system were already entrenched, and Khrushchev
could hardly have veered to far from them.
Gaddis’s treatment of the “third world” is altogether inadequate, considering this
is where a substantial part of the Cold War was fought. It is not surprising, however, that
he spend less time on the topic that most refutes his claims to America’s pluralistic,
democratic, and benign behavior. Where Asia is concerned, Gaddis argues the new
documents point to a closer relationship than previously thought between Stalin, Mao,
and Kim Ill-Sung, and a more decisive role for the Soviets in the Korean War. Once
again it was the Russians, engaging in both risk taking and risk aversion simultaneously,
who were to blame. After all, they gave Kim the go ahead while Washington’s
instructions to South Korea were “yellow lights shading over to red”. Vietnam is passed
over as a regrettable mistake. Gaddis argues that the Chinese communists played a
“major role” in the events in Vietnam. Overall, Southeast Asia did represent an
understandable threat at the time, and Western fears of a campaign directed by the
Soviets and the Chinese did have some basis. In Latin America, Gaddis mentions the
“overreaction” to Arbenz in Guatemala (a CIA coup to topple the democratically elected
president), but brushes it off as inconsequential because Arbenz “probably would not
have lasted in any event”. Castro was the biggest threat to stability in Latin America
because of Cuba’s close proximity and Castro’s revolutionary ideology. The Cuban
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missile crisis, which brought home the reality of the nuclear age, resulted in the “long
peace”. The settlement was a compromise in which both sides could claim a piece of
victory. Gaddis is right when he claims the United States was “handicapped” in the third
world because of its association with colonialism and capitalism, which gave Marxist
ideology the upper hand. He doesn’t, however, attempt to explain how America
overcame that handicap. Any such attempt would belie his heroic portrait of America’s
leaders and policy makers.
In the end Gaddis arrives at his main argument, which posits that, not only did the
brutal authoritarianism of the Soviet Union cause and perpetuate the cold war, but that
America’s democratic traditions stabilized and benefited the world. While Gaddis might
have a point that America’s democratic traditions meant leaders and policy makers were
more responsive to popular opinion than in the Soviet Union, this doesn’t mean the U.S.
was restrained from committing its own “atrocities”. These atrocities were often covert,
out of the eye of the public, or as in the case with Vietnam public support was gained by
using propaganda and lies. So in one sense, Gaddis is right that democratic habits
restrained America from committing the type of atrocities that Stalin perpetrated, but
what U.S. covert operations and the manipulation of public opinion managed to
accomplish is just as disturbing. A final word on Gaddis’s rethinking of Cold War
history addresses the role of ideology so central to his interpretation. If the Cold War
was about communism versus capitalism (or authoritarianism versus democracy as
Gaddis prefers), shouldn’t a well researched account give proper weight to the ideology
of both sides? Gaddis writes at length on the effects of Marxist-Leninist ideology on
Soviet actions, but the effects of capitalist ideology on U.S. actions is downplayed, if not
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completely disregarded. Is Gaddis suggesting that the United States would have
accommodated unlimited communist states into the world system as long as Stalin wasn’t
leading them? Once again, a reflection on what Gaddis omits seriously questions his
whole thesis. Unfortunately, the only thing we now know after reading this narrative is
that the myth of American moral superiority is still alive and well.