The Cold War Is Overagain

Allen Lynch

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367290917
• eBook ISBN: 9781000315516
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In this book, Allen Lynch challenges the common wisdom that the revolutionary events in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the cold war. Instead, he argues that the cold war was actually resolved by the early 1970s, as evidenced by the tacit acceptance of a divided Germany and Europe. More recent events thus overthrew not the cold war but the post -cold war order in East-West and U.S.-Soviet relations. And–often to their surprise and consternation–leaders of the governments involved must now face formidable new forces created by German unity and nationalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which were contained efficiently–if at times brutally–by the post-cold war order. In its three sections, the book reviews historical, contemporary, and future-oriented themes, respectively. Lynch begins by exploring the deeper logic of the cold war and how it was resolved by the 1970s. He then presents an overview of recent Soviet domestic and foreign policy processes as they affect East-West relations. The concluding section considers the future, with special emphasis on the implications of a disintegrating USSR for U.S. foreign policy.

Part 1
The Legacy of the Past

1
The Cold War Is Over … Again

But the real reason for the war … [w]hat made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.

—Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

The amazing, sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the second half of 1989 caused many in the United States and much of the rest of the world to hail the “end of the cold war.” The seemingly never-ending contest between the Soviet Union and the United States, between communism and democracy (or communism and capitalism), had, in this view, ended in a dramatic and conclusive victory for the United States and its allies. Even prominent “revisionists,” who ascribe chief responsibility for the cold war to the United States, have conceded as much. One such critic, Christopher Lasch, has thus stated, “We ought to admit that the West won the cold war—even if it goes against the grain, our political inclinations.” Mikhail Gorbachev, in this view, presided over the abandonment of the Soviet empire in Europe and pushed through political changes that “implicitly condemn the whole course of Soviet history; if these actions don’t add up to a victory for the West, the term surely has no meaning.”¹ None of the celebrants, or mourners, appear to grasp that the “cold war” of vivid political and popular imagery had actually ended, if not in victory, then to general governmental satisfaction, more than two decades earlier. The rapid disintegration of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe after June 1989 surprised and even alarmed Western governments, which were much more concerned with the possibly disruptive effects of German unity and the removal of the Soviet Union as a player on the field of East-West politics in Europe than with the transplantation of democracy eastward. The reverberations of the liberation of Eastern Europe have made themselves felt across the breadth of the Soviet Union itself, with the consequent challenge to the very survival of the Soviet political union. In recent years politicians and diplomats of the West have been busy trying to prop up that union—whose downfall would have been their aim were their policies actuated by considerations of “cold war.”

The Division of Europe

Whereas this attempt is a sure sign that the cold war was, by 1990, indeed over, the confusion of Western, and especially U.S., policies when policymakers have been confronted with the end of communism and of the Soviet state suggests an antecedent set of motives. Those motives have taken U.S. and allied foreign policies far beyond the simplicities of cold war in their conduct and thinking about East-West relations. In fact, the two “superpowers” and their allies have formed a limited security partnership in the most vital theater of world politics—Europe—since the late 1960s. The roots of this expanding calibration of policies may be traced as far back as the early 1950s, when the U.S. and West German governments of the time indicated their preference for the emerging postwar status quo of two German states in a divided Europe against any plausible alternative. Between the late 1950s and the late 1960s, the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact would formalize and then institutionalize this recognition that a Europe only half free was an acceptable foundation of East-West relations.

This preference for a divided Europe would remain a constant of the actual policies of East and West right through 1989. Western governments are still wrestling with the hell of having their (nominal) wishes granted as they seek to come to terms with an Eastern Europe that promises to upset tidy West European plans for economic and political integration and with a (former) Soviet Union whose tentative efforts to enter the modern world politically imply a flood of refugees and the creation of wholly new patterns of international relationships. It is not the governments of the West but, as Dwight Eisenhower presaged, the “peoples,” in this case those of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, who broke the pattern of what is still commonly thought of as cold war. In this respect, it was the potf-cold war order that was shattered by the East European revolutions of 1989.

Views of the Cold War

Why insist on terms? Does the discussion of the meaning of the “cold war” have any more than academic interest, given the fact that, whatever the analysis of the past, we are now surely in a post-cold war era and should get on with the task of building that world? In fact, our analysis of what we have been through—whether that analysis is made explicit or not—will inevitably affect our idea of what the most important problems of the present and future are. It is a cliché by now that strategists tend to plan for the last war; perhaps this should be extended to include past cold wars as well. We should be very careful, then, in weighing the only evidence that can guide us in the future, that is, our common past. This is no easy task, as the distinguished historian Michael Howard has warned us. We should beware of “false premises based on inadequate evidence,” and we should know that “the past is a foreign country; there is very little we can say about it until we have learned its language and understood its assumptions.”²

In a related vein, if it is the cold war, as the popular imagination would have it, that has just ended, what now are the corresponding U.S. and Soviet stakes in international politics? If the end of the cold war or simply of the most recent phase of East-West relations has resulted in the achievement of the most important U.S. foreign policy objectives, as the rhetoric of “winning” the cold war implies, then what remains to justify the commitment of U.S. lives and treasure to far-flung regions of the globe? In short, our view of what the cold war was about—the stakes involved and the policies pursued—will shape our view of the nature of the interests that have been, are, and will be involved in East-West and U.S.-Soviet relations. It will shape our understanding of the posture, active or reactive, of the policies that are called for; of the means required to secure the interests at stake; and of the implications of success (or failure) in achieving the goals of policy.

Containing Communism

If, for instance, the cold war, for the United States, was primarily about containing “communism” (or capitalism, for the Soviet Union), one would then expect that the interests of the states involved would tend to be global in character. Ideological constructs such as capitalism, communism, and democracy are universal by nature. They advance, or are said to advance, claims upon all mankind. Consequently, the sphere of competition between such ideological causes embraces the entire planet. The stakes are correspondingly unlimited, in that victory for one implies the total defeat of the other. A U.S. policy aimed at containing communism (with a view to its eventual transformation or elimination), although global in focus, would be essentially reactive in thrust, inasmuch as communism is seen as the assertive challenger to the global status quo. Indeed, this is how both sides in the East-West conflict have claimed to see the character of the East-West, or U.S.-Soviet relationship.

Given the enormity of the scope and stakes of such an ultimately irreconcilable conflict of world historical missions (going far beyond simple conflicts of interest), the means that are considered legitimate to employ would be correspondingly unlimited in scope. At the same time, the stress in U.S. (or Soviet) policy would tend to be on political-ideological means as opposed to purely military ones. In the end, it is much better testimony to the value of one’s ideology to convert or render irrelevant one’s opponent than to coerce him. In the event of success in this grand ideological struggle, world politics would no longer be primarily a national security issue for the states involved but rather an issue of social-economic and political development.

Containing Russian Power

If the crux of the cold war was the containment, not of communism as such, but of Russian power, one would identify corresponding differences in the interests, instruments, and reaction to success (or failure) of the parties involved. Russian power, as part of the normal warp and woof of world politics, implies a less than universal challenge to the states and social systems that make up the international system. The interests of the United States and its allies in coming to terms with the nature of Russian power would thus be more limited than if it is communism as such that is the problem. Of course, to the extent that Russian or Soviet Russian and Communist interests are equated with each other, the field and intensity of the conflict would tend to expand. Nevertheless, the possibility of using non-Soviet-Russian Communist powers (such as Yugoslavia and the People’s Republic of China) to help check the extension of Soviet power in principle ensured that the Soviet challenge, however serious, would always be less total than that posed by communism.

Although U.S. interests in containing the Soviet Union are in principle more restricted than its interests would be in containing communism, the thrust of its policy would still be reactive: It would concede the initiative to a Soviet power that it sees as consciously attempting to shift the balance of global power in Soviet favor. The means employed would tend to be political-economic and political-military as opposed to purely military, although the intrusion of ideological phobias, which transcend the purely doctrinal aspects of ideology, may encourage reliance on armed force as the basis of a containment policy. In the case of success, that is, with the effective removal of the Soviet challenge to the existing world order, it is not clear what would continue to move U.S. international interests and policies. Having for so long defined its mission in world affairs in negative ways, by what it is against (whether it be communism or the expansion of Soviet power) rather than by what its intrinsic long-term international stakes are, the United States would find itself in a quandary as it sought to sort out the justification for a global foreign policy in such a post-cold war environment.

European and German Unity

If, to take another view, U.S. (and/or Soviet) policy in the cold war was driven by the nominal commitment to restore the unity of Europe, and thus of Germany, the interests involved would be much more regionally specific than in either of the two previously mentioned cases. At the same time, such a policy would be aimed at subverting the status quo in Europe, which has been recognized throughout the cold war period (and after) as the central theater (if no longer the cockpit) of world politics. The instruments of policy would vary according to circumstances, but for the Americans policy would be largely dependent on the preferences of West Germany, given the intensity of U.S. commitment to German unity. A good test of this thesis would thus be the extent to which U.S. policy consciously followed the course of West German foreign policy. In the event of success, that is, the unity of Europe and of Germany, U.S. policy would find itself in a quandary similar to that governing the demise of the Soviet challenge: With the specific goal of unity accomplished, it is no longer clear what drives the U.S. commitment to Europe.

The Balance of Power

If the cold war was about the more prosaic issue of maintaining the balance of power, albeit in a very dynamic setting following the collapse of Europe and Japan in 1945, then U.S. interests would be limited to the geopolitical “soft spots” of the balance. Metaphorically, a balance may be maintained at a single point (as in a seesaw), although considerable and increased pressure may be brought to bear from various sides over time in order to preserve the static state of equilibrium. The means used to create or preserve the balance would tend to be political-economic and political-military in character, with raw military force held in the background as a necessary, though by no means sufficient, condition for maintaining a stable and healthy balance. That is, external military force cannot over the long run be a substitute for the emergence of stable societies and polities, necessary for a plural and stable distribution of global power.³

Reaction to “success,” if that term can be applied to the maintenance of a balance, depends on what the sources of threat to the balance of power are considered to be: the nature of certain political systems (Communist, capitalist, or democratic); an unbalanced distribution of international economic, political, and military power (bipolar, tripolar, or multipolar); the quantity and quality of weapons systems in given states or throughout the international system; or the presence of aggressive leaders of powerful states. Whatever the source of the threat, the fact remains that the responsibility of maintaining that balance can never end. As a balance is by definition a process, there is in the long run no final success, or failure, for that matter.

Preventing World War III

If, finally, the cold war was about preserving the peace, that is, preventing World War III, then the interests at stake may be related to all of the challenges mentioned above: communism or capitalism, Soviet Russian (or U.S.) power, the division of Germany and of Europe, and the maintenance of the balance of power. The means employed, however, would be considerably less varied: They entail armed force, the purpose of which in the nuclear age is to deter the outbreak of war, as opposed to winning war when it comes. The philosophy of deterrence that is thus expressed assumes the existence of a threat to be deterred: In the absence of deterrent means, an aggressive design would have taken place.

Such a view would tend to militarize the entire East-West relationship. It is then not simply the prevention of war but the broader management of political objectives that is held to be most reliably served through the threat, implicit or explicit, or even the actual use, of armed force. This deterrent perspective on the cold war, aside from taking as given a premise—the existence of an imminent threat—that sorely warrants examination, tends to reinforce the problem it purports to resolve. Not only does it reduce the spectrum of international relationships to a military dimension; it even draws the question of war and peace in largely military terms. If the causes of war transcend issues of military balance to include political ambitions—themselves rooted in particular social, economic, and political contexts—then the management of international relations is only secondarily a military issue, and thus only secondarily a subject for the application of deterrence theory.

Paradoxically, the view that the stake of the cold war was the prevention of World War III and the establishment of credible deterrence toward that end could actually have resulted in the most restrictive of all policies: The aim of preventing an attack on the United States could have been reliably served by maintaining a minimal number of nuclear weapons capable of inflicting a devastating retaliatory attack on the Soviet Union. Had that indeed been the goal of U.S. policy, the entire apparatus of cold war—the elaborate and comprehensive military preparations, the far-flung network of military and political intervention (overt and covert), worldwide alliance systems, the various aid programs—would have been unnecessary. That this was not the case, that U.S. policy throughout the cold war embraced the totality of means that were technically and financially available, and at a very high level of material and political commitment, suggests that the cold wir went far beyond the simple prevention of global war, if indeed it was about that at all.

None of the schema proposed here alone provides an adequate explanation of the cold war or of U.S. cold war policy. Each does exp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• A Note on Usage
• Introduction
• PART 1 THE LEGACY OF THE PAST
• PART 2 THE DYNAMICS OF THE PRESENT
• PART 3 CHALLENGES OF THE FUTURE
• Documents
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index