Europe and the End of the Cold War

A Reappraisal

Frederic Bozo,Marie-Pierre Rey,N. Piers Ludlow,Leopoldo Nuti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134059959
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Europe de l'Est

This book seeks to reassess the role of Europe in the end of the Cold War and the process of German unification.

Much of the existing literature on the end of the Cold War has focused primarily on the role of the superpowers and on that of the US in particular. This edited volume seeks to re-direct the focus towards the role of European actors and the importance of European processes, most notably that of integration. Written by leading experts in the field, and making use of newly available source material, the book explores "Europe" in all its various dimensions, bringing to the forefront of historical research previously neglected actors and processes. These include key European nations, endemic evolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, European integration, and the pan-European process. The volume serves therefore to rediscover the transformation of 1989-90 as a European event, deeply influenced by European actors, and of great significance for the subsequent evolution of the continent.

1 Who won the Cold War in Europe?

A historiographical overview

Michael Cox

It has often been remarked that victors do not merely harvest the fruits of war, but are then situated by virtue of their commanding position to write the ‘real’ history of how that war began, who fought it most ethically, and the key part they played in bringing it to a victorious and just end. As Orwell once remarked, those who dominate world history are always best placed to write it in their own image and to their own advantage. This chapter argues that this pattern of writing the past, and thereby defining its meaning, has been much in evidence in the wider US historiography on the end of the Cold War in Europe. This is not to reduce a complex literature to a single narrative. It is to suggest however that many Americans – though not all – have too readily adopted the politically convenient view that it was the US (and in some cases the US alone) that was in possession of all the main keys that finally opened the closed door to communist Europe in 1989. Many would no doubt argue that this is where the evidence has inevitably led them. But as Carr has classically shown, the conclusions historians arrive at are just as likely to be shaped by those who do the writing and when, as it is by those little nuggets of gold we call the facts.¹ Still, as this chapter will try to show, many Americans’ rendering of the end of the Cold War not only makes for a one-sided triumphalist history; it has also had the effect of writing others – especially Europeans – out of the events that finally led to the overcoming of the continent’s 45-year-old division. Europeans may have got used to being written out of their own story, in much the same way as the US appears to have become habituated to thinking of itself as the indispensable European power after 1945. However, we need to challenge such vanity by pointing to the many important, and sometimes forgotten, ways in which Europe and Europeans helped make their own history in 1989. By so doing, we will not only be able to redress the intellectual balance, but hopefully challenge American writers to reflect more critically on their own ways of viewing what, by any measure, still remains the most important event of the last part of the twentieth century.

The chapter is divided into three main parts. Part one will provide an overview of what might best be described as the popular American version of why the Cold War came to an end. Part two will go on to discuss the roles performed by Europe and Europeans. Finally, the last section will suggest a number of reasons why it is important to bring Europe back in to the narrative as a player, one that does not merely observe what others do, but rather sees itself as an active factor in the historical process.

Winning is the American way

Though many historians and students of international affairs are able to discuss 1989 in terms that have little to do with their place of birth or ascribed nationality, the fact is that many Americans continue to see the events of 1989 through a largely US prism. Of course there is a more complex story to be told here, and no doubt most American historians – as opposed to the overwhelming majority of ordinary Americans – would plainly deny the charge that they are guilty of telling the story about the end of the Cold War with a strong ‘American’ accent. There is some truth to this claim. In fact, some of the better studies on the late 1980s written by US scholars tell a complex tale in which many actors and several factors combined together to bring about 1989. This much we concede. Still, there continues to be a dominant narrative in which the United States remains central throughout while others look to have but walk-on parts in a play in which there is only one starring performance. Indeed, while most contemporary Americans seem perfectly happy to blame the USSR for having started the Cold War, they appear to give it little credit for having ended it. On the contrary, if a Cold War they apparently did not seek concluded at the end of the 1980s, then this was largely, if not entirely, down to US efforts.

First, it was the US – it is argued – that played the central part in the checking of Russian ambitions, without which it would have been impossible to conceive of the huge changes that finally changed the world in 1989. Kennan to this degree not only turned out to be a brilliant strategist in the immediate post-war years but a prescient one as well.² Admittedly, there was much disputing where containment ought to be applied, by what means and to what ends. Still, it was what Kennan’s original ‘X’ article termed the ‘patient’ and ‘long-term’ application of US power that ultimately brought about a change in the Soviet outlook and then, in turn, a withdrawal of Soviet influence from the heart of the continent.

This simple tale about an American-inspired containment is usually married to a second argument about the wider role of the US in the international system. Here the empirical fact of the post-war boom merges neatly with the theoretical notion of hegemonic stability.³ The argument has been repeated in various ways but can be summarized in the form of a series of apparently irresistible truisms. Global order, it is argued, requires a global leader. There was no leadership in the inter-war period. And what Carr called ‘Twenty Years’ Crisis’ ensued. Lessons though were learned, and were especially well learned by the US.⁴ As a result, the US went on to lead the world to safety and to steady growth thereafter. This may have had many causes. However, it would not have happened without the US playing the twin role of lender of last resort and easily accessible market. America, in effect, became the indispensable nation providing a series of public goods that no other nation could. Naturally, not all of its post-war efforts were undertaken with the general good in mind. Nor did all of its actions help stabilize the international capitalist system. Indeed, when it broke the back of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, it looked less like a benevolent hegemon and more like a selfish superpower seeking to bolster its economic position at the expense of others. Still, without the US it is difficult to think of a successful globalization; and without globalization it is impossible to conceive of the death of communism in 1989.⁵

The third chapter in this special story begins with the election of a new kind of US leader in 1980, one who was determined to confront the Soviet Union in a more serious fashion.⁶ Inevitably, given his own chequered career and outspoken conservative views, Ronald Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War remains a highly contested and controversial one.⁷ Indeed, views vary from those who think he played no role whatsoever – it was all down to Gorbachev they insist⁸ – right through to those who fervently believe he saved the world from disaster. There is certainly more than one story that has been told about Reagan. There is also more than one Reagan it would seem. Thus according to some accounts, there was a wise and good Reagan, wise and good at least when he started talking to the USSR after 1984. There was however another Reagan – the hard-line cold warrior (or determined leader) – who spoke in strong moral terms in the early part of his two-term presidency about abolishing nuclear weapons, consigning the ‘evil empire into the trash-heap of history, and making America strong again’.⁹ Either way, Reagan still played a crucial role, initially in achieving what he claimed the US had lost in the ‘decade of neglect’ known as the 1970s, namely its position of strength, and of then having the wisdom to engage Gorbachev in serious discussions that led to four summits, an arms control agreement, and a climate of trust that laid the basis for what subsequently happened in 1989.¹⁰

Whether or not we see Reagan as a catalyst for change, a cause of dismay, or just plain lucky, there is agreement amongst most US historians that his presidency marked an important transitional moment in the history of the Cold War. But this still left much to be done by his successor George H. Bush. Indeed, the story about Bush’s own contribution to ending the Cold War has been told in great detail by a number former US officials, none more persuasive than President Bush himself!¹¹ Bush, it seems, was faced by much scepticism within his own circle of advisers about the Gorbachev phenomenon. Scowcroft and Gates in particular were worried that Gorbachev would either be overthrown or that his policies would lead to an erosion of support for NATO.¹² Either way it was reckoned that one should keep one’s powder dry and concede as little as possible.¹³ Bush too had his reservations. Yet even though he did not ‘want to make’ what he termed ‘a foolish or short-sighted move’, nor did he wish to be seen to be ‘lagging behind Gorbachev’ either. It was also evident he was far ‘less suspicious’ about the Soviet leader than a number of his colleagues.¹⁴ He was thus prepared to step up to the plate in what some have called his ‘finest hour’.¹⁵ Overcoming resistance from within his own administration he went on to set out a programme of carefully calibrated US responses. This offered US support to Gorbachev on the condition that the USSR began to take measures that would reduce its presence in Europe and open the way to possible European and German unification. This approach, it is reasoned, achieved two things. Most immediately, it sent out a clear signal that there would be few concessions on the cheap. More broadly, it held out the offer of US backing if Moscow moved in the right direction which, in the end, it did.

This though was not all. As events began to unwind during 1989 Bush intervened even more decisively on the question of Germany. Here the US role is deemed to have been critical – vital even – not only in reassuring Germany’s Western allies that unification would not upset the balance of power in Europe but in reassuring Gorbachev too that a united Germany would not be at the expense of the USSR.¹⁶ Bush also takes credit for having then not exploited his own position of very real strength in relation to Gorbachev. Indeed, he now threw the increasingly beleaguered Soviet leader a series of lifelines. First, he reassured Gorbachev that having locked the new Germany into a reformed NATO, NATO itself would go no further. This was critically important for it sent out a signal – admittedly one that Gorbachev’s many enemies at home refused to believe – that this was not the beginning of a new US encirclement of its old enemy. Bush also talked in vague terms about a vast influx of US economic aid. In fact, for short while, there was much speculation about the possibility for a new Marshall Plan that would do for the USSR what the US had earlier done for Western Europe. Finally, Bush made it clear to Gorbachev, and thus to the Soviet elite as whole, that the US had no serious interest in seeing the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. Of course, this was in the American national interest; however, it was in Gorbachev’s interest too, and this it was believed was vital if Gorbachev was to remain in power.¹⁷

And Europe?

The story Americans so frequently tell themselves and others about 1989 raises several questions.¹⁸ The one we shall deal with here however revolves around the issue as to whether or not the repeated telling of the same kind of story in which American statesmen always seem to be taking the critically important decisions and making the more interesting speeches, does not end up sidelining or marginalizing others? As I have already suggested there is little doubt that it does, sometimes in ways that are more subtle than others, but nonetheless in ways that have had the consequence of making make too light of Europe’s own contribution to its own final transformation.

Most obviously, what many American accounts tend to understate is the rather critical part played by Europeans themselves in the recreation of a new kind of Europe in the post-war years. Americans can of course claim (and do) that if it had not been for the US there would have been no Eur...