Cold War: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:53, 20 February 2006

Revision as of 15:01, 20 February 2006

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Later "revisionist" historians, however, especially [[William Appleman Williams]] in his [[1959]] ''The Tragedy of American Diplomacy'' and [[Walter LaFeber]] in his [[1967]] ''America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1968'', articulated an overriding concern: U.S. commitment to maintaining an "open door" for American trade in world markets. Some [[revisionist]] historians have argued that U.S. policy of containment as expressed in the [[Truman Doctrine]] were at least equally to blame, if not more so. Some date the onset of the Cold War to the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]], regarding the U.S. use of nuclear weapons as a warning to the Soviet Union, which was about to join the war against the nearly defeated Japan. In short, historians have disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable. This revisionist approach reached its height during the [[Vietnam War]] when many began to view the U.S. and U.S.S.R. as morally comparable empires.

In the later years of the Cold War, there were attempts to forge a "post-revisionist" [[synthesis]] by historians, and since the end of the Cold War, the post-revisionist school has come to dominate. Prominent post-revisionist historians include [[John Lewis Gaddis]] and [[Melvyn Leffler]]. Rather than attribute the beginning of the Cold War to the actions of either superpower, post-revisionist historians have focused on mutual misperception, mutual reactivity, and shared responsibility between the leaders of the superpowers. Gaddis has written that Stalin's "authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition" locked the Cold War into place. Stalin alone pursued personal security by depriving everyone else of it: no Western leader relied on terror to the extent that he did. He alone had transformed his country into an extension of himself: no Western leader could have succeeded at such a feat, and none attempted it. He alone saw war and revolution as acceptable means with which to pursue ultimate ends: no Western leader associated violence with progress to the extent that he did.
Borrowing from the [[realist]] school of international relations, the post-revisionists essentially accepted U.S. European policy in Europe, such as aid to Greece in [[1947]] and the [[Marshall Plan]]. According to this synthesis, "Communist activity" was not the root of the difficulties of Europe, but rather a consequence of the disruptive effects of the Second World War on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe. In addition, the [[Marshall Plan]] rebuilt the European economy and pointed the way toward European unity, all the while thwarting the political appeal of the radical left.

For Western Europe, [[Foreign aid|economic aid]] ended the dollar shortage, stimulated private investment for postwar reconstruction, and (most importantly) introduced new managerial techniques. For the U.S., the plan rejected the isolationism of the 1920s and integrated the North American and Western European economies. The NATO alliance served to integrate Western Europe into the system of mutual defense pacts, thus providing safeguards against subversion or neutrality in the bloc, and locking the US into a permanent military alliance. Rejecting the assumption that communism was an international monolith with aggressive designs, the post-revisionist school nevertheless accepts U.S. policy in Europe as a necessary reaction to cope with instability in Europe, which threatened to drastically alter the balance of power in a manner favorable to the U.S.S.R.