I
I"" ic vv I.\U I t-i.t; LULU I\AK
I
reaction against this Cold War orthodox)', as there was against other
I
I
attempts at anti-communist regimentalization of American public life.
A number of scholars began to look at the Cold War primarily as an
American effort to force its will (and its economic system) upon a reluctant
world. Although their enthusiasm for radical thinking was sometimes
greater than their research skills, these revisionists contributed immensely
to the debate on the Cold War - one could almost say that they, through
. their opposition to orthodox views, created the debate. They also stimu-
; lated American authorities to open up official archives, in part to counter
~
revisionist claims.'
After the radicalization of the 1960s, and the heated claims and counter-
claims in the clashes between orthodox and revisionist Cold War histor-
ians, many younger scholars wanted to get rid of the political hyperbole
and return to facts - as was said by the most prominent of them, John
.- Lewis Gaddis, in 1983; the writing he championed was the 'sober stuff".
lacking the 'pungency' of earlier accounts. 7 Assisted by the relative open-
ness of US archives, post-revisionist scholars rewrote Cold War history in_
the I 970s and 19805, venturing beyond the European core to the Balkans,
Scandinavia, the Middle East, Iran, China, and elsewhere.' Their efforts
undoubtedly brought Cold War history forward, but the unfortunate
thesis/antithesis/synthesis framework in relation to earller approaches
(with post-revisionism, of course, as the synthesis) led to much trouble. In
order to clear the middle ground for themselves, many self-proclaimed
post-revisionists insisted not only on taking politics (as they knew it) out
of the field of history, but also on taking ideas and beliefs out of history
as they practiced it. What remained for many post-revisionists, much as \/I
for their Realist IR colleagues, were national interests; states in conflict with it I
each other along axes of mainly predetermined definitions ofthemselves Ll
as international actors."
For the authors of the first four chapters of the present volume, this
background is important. John L. Gaddis, as has been mentioned, was in
many ways the founder of the post-revisionist approach. Melvyn Lerner
"vas initially one of Gaddis's revisionist critics, but came increasingly to
underline national security as a paradigm for explaining Cold War origins
(which again, on some issues, brought him into line with IR Realists, by
whom Gaddis had also been influenced). Geir Lundestad was one of
Gaddis's closest allies in Europe, known for his 'empire by invitation' thesis
-- that West European elites had 'invited' and, at least to some extent.
r instigated a strong American role in post-war Europe. Anders Stephanson
, was (and remains) a radical critic of mainstream Cold War history, ernpha- .
sizing the conflict as being mainly an American ideological construct. 10 _~
I ,-
I With the end of the Cold War and the availability of communist source
/-D materials inthe early 1990s:"positions changed. In his latest book, Gaddis
challenges some of his own previ'oufviewsand those of his post-revisionist
INTRODUCTION
co~le~gues. He now insists that a main discovery is the role played by ideas
and Images on the Eastern side: 'the "new" history is bringing us back to
an old answer: that as long as Stalin was running the Soviet Union a Cold
War was inevitable ... The more we learn, the less sense it makes to
distinguish Stalin's foreign policies from his domestic practices or even his j
personal behavior.' II Lundestad, on the other hand, believes that Gaddis
is being far too critical of his own earlier views and that his new views
represent a dangerous return to the orthodox school of interpretation.
Melvyn Leffler sees ideological postures being adjusted to security needs
in both East and West, and that the West, as often as not, was the aggressive
side. Stephanson criticizes Gaddis, Lerner, and Lundestad for their lack oT!
understanding of American ideology - if it had not been for a particllJ,Q.f.L j
American view oCtEe world, there ""ould not have been a Cold war.1-h~~ t···
Cold War, Stephanson ar~es, wa;,o"the American way'." ··d
As witnessed by the debatebetweefffhe four inthis volume, it is clearly
too early to deem the new Cold War history a singular approach, not to
mention a 'school'. Rather, as Geir Lundestad
history
suggests new Cold War
is Cold War history written after the conflict~e~n,ciedand with access
1 I
[ ~o Warsaw Pact documents. It means the culmination, in a historiograph-
ical sense, of trends which matured during the 1980s toward making the
study of the Cold War international history, rather than an outgrowth of
the history of American foreign relations. New Cold War history is in its
essence ~uItiarchival in research and multipolar in analysis, and, in the
cases of some of its best practitioners, multicultural in its abilitv to under-
~tand different and sometimes opposing mindsets. "'-.
It is on which tools will be most useful in furthering these processes that
the four disagree. Lerner, Lundestad, and Stephanson accuse Gaddis of
overemphasizing the Soviet contribution to the Cold War, and neglecting
the American (and \Vest European) side. Gaddis responds that he is telling
the story of what is ne)j!, of what we have not known in the past, and which,
according to him, changes our perception of the motives and actions of
the Eastern Bloc. To Lerner, especially, this new approach is a continuation
of Gaddis's earlier insistence that at the core of the Cold War conflict is
the Soviet system and its peculiarities. Lerner believes that Gaddis con-
tinues to ignore US actions that led to confrontation, for instance over the
occupation of Japan in 1945-46.
The issue of the occupation of Japan is interesting, because the new
sources tell us that Leffler in his chapter certainly does not exaggerate
1 Soviet irritation about the way they were excluded from the occupation of
Japan. Stalin was furious about being treated 'like a child' by the Western
allies, and kept returning to the issue as a major manifestation of US
intentions to dominate international capitalism and to isolate the Soviet
Union. But, on the other hand, the sources also show that Stalin in 1945
had not expected to be in on the occupation of Japan (except in the unlikely
 6 REVIEWI)."G THE COLD \VAR
case that his forces in the last weeks of war could have landed successfully
on H okkaido), and that he would have considered the Americans naive if
they had volunteered a stake for Moscow. In other words, although Stalin
resented the ''..!' :~;ewas treated on the issue, US behavior fitted in with his
preconceived notions of how an imperialist power was supposed to behave,
and American offers of a Soviet role in Japan would not necessarily have
improved relations. I;
The example of Soviet post-war policy on Japan shows the need for a
new Cold War hist.Q.cf to be more comprehensive in its approach than
- earlier generations of scholarship. It also shows, I think, how one can
widen the canvas to frame both general mindsets and particular judgments
in what was always an interactive relationship. It is the (partial) opening
of Eastern archives that gives us the possibility of putting more balance
into the design, while the retraining of our skills to use both ideational and
materialist tools helps us fill in the gaps in our depiction.
Both historians and (especially) political scientist are traditionally poor
at explaining change '- historians because their macro-analytical devices
are sometrmes rather blunted, and political scientists because their analyses
are geared toward a model-building understanding of what is. Since we
now know that the Cold War had both a beginning and an end, many of
the earlier approaches to understanding the conflict have to be reworked
to take this new form of narrative into account. As several of the con-
tributors to this volume point out. w~av-;;-~;;rbeen doing well in this
respect so far. Many of the 'new' general accounts of the Cold War are
plainly the old static. with an ending tagged on almost as an afterthought.
It is primarily in order to overcome this problem that attention to the
communist side of the Cold War is important. Without understanding the
r surprising economic weakness of the Soviet Union, its inherent handicaps
I in i~~ovation and technology, and its inability to create lasting aIliances,
we cannot understand why the Cold War ended the way it did. The view
L of the end of the Cold War as the collapse of the main alternative to
capitalism is indeed an incomplete view - at least in my opinion - but it
L does furnish us with important knowledge to help understand change.
The new Cold War history meansthe (slow) emergence of new lines of
division in the scholarly debate. In the decade to come, it is likely that we
will be peeking at what only a few years ago would have been considered
strange bedfellows, as debates over modes of interpretation replace the key
political discourse of sYl1chronous historiography. Already in this volume:-
- It IS strikmg that John GaddisanaAnc1efSStephanson have more in
common on some issues of interpretative approachthan either have with
Gaddis's more centrist critics. Future division lines, I think, will be estab-
lished not on issues of who was to blame lor the-Cold \Var, but on how
best to understand motives on both sides, and especially on h~
use The new archival sources to get to these motives. In this process, we will
~~~:::..:.-~.::.-:..:~~:...::-.::~.....:--~~----
INTRODUCTION 7
probably also see a larger number of similarities between historians and
social scientists in terms of difficulties encountered and a growing
awareness within the two communities of the need to transmit their
findings across the professional divide.
Theory
Unlike international historians, for whom the end of the Cold War initially
meant more research opportunities (and therefore often more resources),
IR specialists did not at first benefit from the Soviet collapse. On the
contrary, many of them were taken to task for not having foreseen these
events. - for the general public and for quite a number of its own prac-
titioners, IR seems to derive much of its value from accurate predictions ..
With regard to the Cold War, this is of course a ridiculous debate. The
truth is that nobody foresaw these rapid changes, except perhaps a few
Russian and East European dissidents whom few scholars or politicians
cared to listen to at the time. But the soul-searching that went on among
IR specialists in the wake of this debate does point to a more general,
problem: that some IR theories, which have been much used for over a
generation, seem to have little explicatory value with regard to under-
standing the Cold War as an international system."
This crisis of theory is particularly acute for various forms of Realism,
the concepts and vocabulary of which were often used to explain the
stability and the endurance of a bipolar system. By emphasizing ratjonalist
and materialist lines of inquiry, both classical Realism and the Ne~-
Realism of the Kenneth Waltz school seem to be of little help in under-
standing the speedy changes which ended the Cold War in the late 1980s.
By their very character, it is argued, contemporary forms of Realism fitted
the Cold War system and were perfected in order to analyze it, and there-
fore missed the boat when the system suddenly started to metamorphose
into something different." .
These charges against Realism, which gained strength asa 'result of the
end of the Cold War, seem to signify a substantial shift in the focus of dis-
cussion within IR theory. But just as with the embattled post-revisionism
in international history, it is still premature to say that the new trends are
uniformly pointing away from Realist thinking. Some theorists have been
arguing that the way the Cold War ended is neither a crucial nor an appro-
priate case for Realist theory, and that, as Stephen Walt notes, 'criticizing
Realism for failing to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union is a bit
like chiding it for failing to explain the Great Depression, the behavior of
subatomic particles, or the causes of cancer'." The post-Cold Warsystem,
some scholars would argue, is a much better subject for Realist inquiry.
Other writers influenced by Realism are attempting to give ideas and

·f of a place in their theoretical toolbox, at the risk: of watering
beIIe s more . h
17
down the explicatory value of their overall approac .
Th direction in IR which has benefited most from the newfound doubts
e over understanding the Cold War has had to do with what is important
about Realism ISofterrreIerred to as gonstrucllvism, an approach which
emphasizes the social and cultural context within whi~h a state acts ..Most
ConstructIVISts see ~ext as 6emg 1iQthdomestIc and mt~rnatlOnat.
At the domestic level, the study of culture and systems of belief can tell
I us much about a state's aims and about how it acts - more, perhaps, than
1 can be gained from a rational choice approach. With regard to the ~?ld
.Iant, and, as Ned Lebow points out, thIS IS one of the major methodo-
War this is essential, it could be claimed, to understand not only the ongms
but also the intensity of the conflict. At the international level, the study
of the spread of norms and the diffusion of ideas can inform our under-
standing of cbange, above the level of any' game~t~eoretical approach.
This, it could be argued, is a sine qua non for explaining how and why the
Cold War ended." ..
It is interesting to see how the IR debate mirrors, inits....Qwn wav, the
controversies over the new Cold War history, There is, however, one area
m whICh both Realism anaTonstrucflvlsm-run into trouble, and in which
international history probably has more to give. That is the problem of
agency: In explaining the Cold War, each of these two d~rectlOns I? .rR
- theory are preoccupied with systems, and spend much tune explammg
how their objects' (or their?) system produce testable results. Even
Constructivists, who in terms of theory, it seems to me, could easily devolve
their system into a looser structure, mostly refrain from doing so - held
back, perhaps, by the norms so dominant within their field. This fail~re to
explain agency, both at the individual and collective levels, does project a
threshold that both traditions' need to overcome in order to explain com-
plex phenomena like the life and death of the Cold War.
Both of the authors of the two.chapters dealing explicitly with IR
traditions in this volume are aware of this problem, and both believe that
increasing the empirical understanding of IR theorists can in part rectify
it. Howev~er,they disagree on which direction such an understanding would
take. Ned Lebow is critical of Realism, and believes that it will not be of
much use to social scientists or historians who want to take the new evidence
seriouslv He frames his inquiry primarily in terms of what historians will
find of interest in new IR approaches, and believes that those working in
new Cold War history so far often have lacked methodological sophis-
tication, in part because they have not taken the debates going on in other
areas of international relations seriously. William Wohlforth, on the other
hand who seems interested in rescuing Realism, at least in its classical
form: believes that the flow of ideas, at least initially, ought to move in the
other direction, and that much of the problem can be linked to 'the fact
that the field of international relations is not set up to assimilate new
historical evidence rationally'.
L'\ I KUUld, .. I lUi'<
Culturel Ideology
Both for historians and for IR theorists a major part of the controversies
and what is less Important in terms of research. For a Cold War history
revisionist, the economic relations between the United States and the rest
of the world would be of major importance. For an IR Realist, power
capability would be a crucial category. Unfortunately, very few scholars are
preoccupied with studying the categories which others deem to be impor-
logical weaknesses of the field as such.
Part III of the present vo]wTIe tleC!1sCfitically with two of the vital
categories in the present debates, namely culture and ideology. Both in
history and in IR these two concepts take up an increasing part of the
scholarly vocabulary; often, it is clear, without much"thought being given
to how they are used and which implications their use is having for our
studies in general. Historians are particularly guilty of such practices,
as was shown in some of the debate following the publication of John
Gaddis's recent book, We NoH' Know. Instead of trying to work with a
category, in Gaddis's case ideology, its usefulness (or lack thereof) was
obscured by the imprecision of both supporters and critics.
The two chapters in this part of the book are written by political
scientists who attempt to trace both the use of the concepts and the debates
which have surrounded them, and show, based on their own research. how
the concepts may prove useful in looking at the Cold War. Yale Fer~uson
and Rey Koslowski look critically at the categories of culture and identity,
and~eir measured use in interpretative terms, both by hlstODan:s--
and political scientists. While much of the new evidence seems to show that
specific cultural traditions and developments in the Soviet Union and the
United States should figure more prominently in our understandinz of the
Cold War, there is a danger in the broad use of these terms that some
Constructivist scholars are employing. That danger is reductionism, parti-
cularly if the use of culture is connected up to a specific understanding of
'natjonal' histories. Instead, scholars ought to review specific elements of
cultural practices and see how they might be useful in explaining phenom-
ena that other categories cannot explain.
If, for instance, one believes that the Gorbachev reforms were essential
in ending the Cold War, then it seems difficult to avoid discussinz both
generational changes in perceptions within the Soviet elite and the ~ffects
of 'new' forms of social consciousness across borders, for example,
environmentalism. Both phenomena have to be seen in a cultural context
and can perhaps only be explained in cultural terms. But if one tries to
explain Gorbachev's political emergence itself in terms of broader cultural
concepts, then one would have to contend with a long tradition of writings
 II) REVIEWING THE COLD WAR
on Russian and CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) political
culture, which seem to explain why Gorbachev was not possible. Only by
i limiting the subject of one's inquiry, it seems, will cultural explanations by
L themselves be an Important part of the study of the Cold War.
Douglas Macdonald's treatment of ideology also seems to point in the
direction oftheoretical prudence, although Macdonald himself is willing
to consider a fairly wIde use ot tFieconcept for explanations related to the
Cold War. The point he is making is that ideology had a particular rele-
vance for the Cold War, both on the revolutionary (Soviet) and the status
quo (United States) side. Echoing Gaddis and others, Macdonald believes
that 'ideological behavior', particularly among Marxist-Leninist states, is
a constituent element of the Cold War. He believes that American ideology
does have its own significance, although he does not imply such a far-
reaching conclusion as for instance Anders Stephanson. The main value
of Macdonald's approach is that in searching for particular problems
related to the Cold War where ideology mattered, he avoids making the
emphasis on ideas a monocansal or determinist approach.
There are two main categories of analysis not included in this part of
_ the book to which I believe it is necessary to drawspecial attention for the
sake of debate. One is economic relations - especially the form economic
interaction between countries took dunng the Cold 'War, and the effects
this had on the political and strategic conflict. There are two important
observations that have been made on this category recently. Some scholars
have found that Soviet intentions, at least during the Stalin era, were to
make massive use of strategic raw materials and production capacity in
Eastern Europe and China in order to strengthen socialist production in
the Soviet Union itself. Economic motives, therefore, should not be ruled
out in explaining early Soviet moves in the Cold War.19
Another and perhaps more important observation is that American
policymakers seem to have understood much more readily than most of
us hav~ b~1ieved that there was an intrinsic connection between the spread-
of capltahs~ as a system and the victory of American political values. The
=v= which has been undertaken on US-West European relations
during the Cold War recently seems to underline this, as does research on
the US-Japanese alliance - the two winninz combinations it could be
argu~d, during the Cold War. The point h:re is not so m~ch that the
:elatlOnship was exploitative - the old argument of the historical revision-
ists - but that American leaders consciously took on the role of leader of
global capitalism, and were willing to bear at least short-term burdens in
order to ensure that the system worked."
Another category which seems promising in order to understand aspects
of the Cold War world is gender. The research undertaken bvscholars such
as Frank Costigliola in history and Jean Bethke Elshtain in IR indicates
that gender relations \vere closer to the core of the conflict both in terms
INTRODUCTION 11
~
of representation and in language than we have previously thought." This
l view has implications for our understanding of the particular intensity of
J the Sold War poJiticallangua.,ge - an intensity which, it could be argued,
had direct im lications for the way theCOi'illlct was fouo-ht. The terms and
style used in speech by leaders in ast and West were frequently bound up
in gender metaphors; when Stalin spoke in the inner circle of the
leadership, for instance, his allusions to the way his Western enemies were
treating him sound like a textbook case in the sexualization of language.
It is reasonable to think that there. are links between Cold War enemy
imagery and perceived threats to masculinity - East and West - during the
late twentieth century," On the other hand, the character of the conflict
seems to have delayed more complete advances toward gender equality on .
both sides of the ideological divide. The negative repercussions of the Cold.
War for women were particularly strong in countries under foreign control
- South Korea or East Germany under Soviet occupation are cases in
point."
Strategies
If those who want to broaden the interpretative or theoretical framework
for Cold War studies are correct, then it would be crucial to look more in
depth at how these new approaches influence our study of the Cold War
strategies of individual states. We therefore asked four scholars, working,
respectIvely, on and originating from the United States, Russia, Germany,
and China, to look at the development over time of 'their' countries'
positions in the Cold War. The point here is not as much to illustrate
national differences in scholarly approach as to indicate how the new
information available feeds into our present understanding of the central
decisions of the Cold War. All four authors have concentrated on singling
out what was important (and what was less important) in the minds of
decisionmakers in their individual countries, and on how vital decisions
were made.
What emerges is a not too well-defined set of differences in priorities
and perceptions, If these authors are to be believed, ideas and beliefs were
indeed central to all decisions during the early Cold War, and the self-
----ddmmon ot one leaderShIp group was III some cases delJberately con-
structed to be the negation of that of its defined opponents. For the United
States, the Soviet U nion, and Germany this situation started to chan ge in
~ early 12,60s,in the sense that conscious ideals of realpolitik emerged,
while the Chinese leadership remained wedded to a consciously ideological
3.pproach to world politics (which, arguably, even premeditated the open-
mg to the Umted States - as a form of Leninist united front against the
more aggressively imperialist Soviet Union). However, even Moscow and