The meaning of hostile bipolarization: Interpreting the origins of the Cold War

Abstract

The origins of the Cold War have been the subject of numerous debates among international historians. On different occasions, historians have looked at International Relations Theory for insights and concepts to help understanding why and how the Cold War originated. While the postrevisionist paradigm was inspired by realism, for the last decade and a half, running parallel with broader theoretical developments in IR, large parts of the debate on the origins of the Cold War have focused on the role of ideas, ideology, and culture. However, the imported innovations had the effect of fragmenting our theoretical understanding of the origins of the Cold War, rather than offering a workable, coherent synthesis. Moreover, these accounts do not always sufficiently address problems of agency and causality. The debate on the origins of the Cold War, therefore, is in need of coherent theoretical frameworks which are capable of remedying these problems. This article argues that a possible way of generating such a framework is taking a closer look at hermeneutics and constructivism.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Megan Marie Milota, Marijke De Bie, and Jorg Kustermans for proofreading and commenting on the manuscript.

Notes

Maarten Van Alstein is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He studied History, Law and International Relations at the Universities of Antwerp, Ghent and Bologna. His doctoral research focuses on the Belgian diplomatic elite and the emergence of the hegemonic Cold War consensus (1944–49). He has published articles on how the Belgian foreign policy elite viewed the League of Nations and the origins of the Cold War.

 [1] For historiographical overviews see Westad, ‘Introduction: Reviewing the Cold War’, and Stephanson, ‘The United States’.

 [2] See Lundestad, ‘How (Not) To Study the Origins of the Cold War’.

 [3] See e.g. Gould-Davies, ‘Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War’; Kramer, ‘Ideology and the Cold War’, and the ensuing discussion between William C. Wohlforth and Kramer ( Review of International Studies 2 (2000): 327–31 and 1 (2001): 119–30); Westad, ‘The New International History of the Cold War’; Ferguson and Koslowski, ‘Culture, International Relations Theory’; Macdonald, ‘Formal Ideologies in the Cold War’; the special issue of Journal of Cold War Studies on ‘Ideas, International Relations, and the End of the Cold War’ 2 (2005), edited by Nina Tannenwald and William C. Wohlforth; Reynolds, ‘Culture, Discourse, and Policy’.

 [4] Ferguson and Koslowski, ‘Culture, International Relations Theory’; Macdonald, ‘Formal Ideologies in the Cold War’.

 [5] Lundestad, ‘How (Not) To Study the Origins of the Cold War’.

 [6] Leffler, ‘Bringing it Together’.

 [7] Kramer, ‘Ideology and the Cold War’, 575–6.

 [8] See e.g. Wohlforth, ‘The End of the Cold War as a Hard Case for Ideas’, 166–8, 170.

 [9] Reynolds, ‘Culture, Discourse, and Policy’, 347–8.

[10] Kennedy-Pipe, ‘International History and International Relations Theory’. About the possibilities of a dialogue between international historians and IR scholars also see Roberts, ‘History, Theory and the Narrative Turn in IR’; Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History; and the special issue of International Security, no. 1 (1997) on the differences and similarities between IR Studies in Political Science and in History and possible ways of seeking common ground.

[11] See Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, Interpretation and Method; Yanow, Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis; Mottier, ‘The Interpretive Turn’.

[12] For the methodological and epistemological discussion see the works referred to in note 11.

[13] Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, 175.

[14] See e.g. Leffler, ‘National Security and US Foreign Policy’; Roberts, ‘Stalin and Soviet Foreign Policy’; Holloway, ‘Stalin and the Bomb’; Thompson, ‘Conceptions of National Security’: Vladimir Pechatnov, ‘The Big Three After World War II’.

[15] See e.g. Stephanson, ‘Liberty or Death’; Mark, ‘Revolution by Degrees’; and Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin. For an interesting case study of pre-war anticommunist sentiments within the British political elite see Shaw, ‘Attitudes of the British Political Elite’.

[16] See e.g. Deighton, ‘The Cold War in Europe’, 87.

[17] See e.g. Costigliola, ‘“I Had Come as a Friend”’; Naimark, ‘The Russians in Germany’.

[18] See Yanow, ‘Thinking Interpretatively’, 15–17.

[19] Hegemony, thus, is understood in a Gramscian manner (Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks).

[20] For aspects of this conception of power see Guzzini, ‘The Concept of Power’; Guzzini, ‘From (Alleged) Unipolarity to the Decline of Multilateralism?’, 122–3; Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, 326–49.

[21] Goh, Constructing the US Rapprochement with China, 2–5; Deighton, ‘The Cold War in Europe’, 89–91.

[22] Reynolds, ‘The ‘Big Three’ and the Division of Europe’, 271–2.

[23] Roberts, Stalin's Wars, 253; Roberts, ‘Stalin and Soviet Foreign Policy’, 43; also see Mark, ‘Revolution by Degrees’.

[24] Roberts, Stalin's Wars, 253; Roberts, ‘Stalin and Soviet Foreign Policy’, 43.

[25] Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin, 7.

[26] Roberts, Stalin's Wars, 253; Roberts, ‘Stalin and Soviet Foreign Policy’, 43.

[27] Leffler, ‘Economics, Power and National Security’. In the British geopolitical interpretation of world politics, the maintenance of the empire and stability on the European continent was primordial. The disappearance of the German powerhouse in Central Europe created a problem in this respect and urged the British to start thinking about the Soviet Union as the new, dominant factor in the shifted geopolitical balance in Europe. See Kent, ‘British Policy and the Origins of the Cold War’; Reynolds, ‘Great Britain’.

[28] Leffler, ‘National Security and US Foreign Policy’, 16.

[29] Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores, 49.

[30] Costigliola, ‘I Had Come as a Friend’.

[31] Archives of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, file 10958bis, de Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, London, 5 April 1945.

[32] Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace.

[33] See e.g. Raine, ‘Stalin and the Creation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party’; Davis, ‘A Projected New Trusteeship?’; Yegorova, ‘The “Iran Crisis” of 1945–46’; Mark, ‘The War Scare of 1946 and its Consequences’; Ulunian, ‘Soviet Cold War Perceptions’; Seydi, ‘Making a Cold War in the Near East’; Mazov, ‘The USSR and the Former Italian Colonies’; Sfikas, ‘War and Peace’; Iatrides, ‘Revolution or Self-Defense?’; Johnson, ‘Early Indications of a Freeze’.

[34] Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb. Also see Sherwin, ‘The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War’.

[35] Jensen, Origins of the Cold War.

[36] See e.g. Parrish and Narinsky, ‘New Evidence’; Roberts, ‘Moscow and the Marshall Plan’; Cox and Kennedy-Pipe, ‘The Tragedy of American Diplomacy?’ (reactions by Trachtenberg, Bischof, Bonds, Bohri and Maier in the same issue); Offner, Another Such Victory, 213–34; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin, 50–53, 111–31.

[37] Roberts, ‘Litvinov's Lost Peace’, 52–3.

[38] Buzan et al., Security. A New Framework for Analysis.

[39] Offner, Another Such Victory, 238–9, 245.

[40] Roberts, ‘Litvinov's Lost Peace, 1941–1946’, 52–3.

[41] Also see Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust.

[42] Roberts, ‘Litvinov's Lost Peace’, 52–3.

[43] See Beck on the autogenerative power of enemy images (Beck, ‘The Sociological Anatomy of Enemy Images’).

[44] See e.g. Wiebes and Zeeman, ‘Benelux’; Pharo, ‘Scandinavia’.

[45] See Soutou, ‘France’; Creswell and Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question’.

[46] Deighton, ‘Entente Neo-Coloniale?’; Greenwood, ‘The Third Force Policy of Ernest Bevin’.

[47] Roberts, Stalin's Wars, 319.

[48] See e.g. Wiebes and Zeeman, ‘Eine Lehrstunde in Machtpolitik’.

[49] See e.g. Maier, ‘Hegemony and Autonomy within the Western Alliance’.

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Notes on contributors

Maarten van Alstein

Maarten Van Alstein is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He studied History, Law and International Relations at the Universities of Antwerp, Ghent and Bologna. His doctoral research focuses on the Belgian diplomatic elite and the emergence of the hegemonic Cold War consensus (1944–49). He has published articles on how the Belgian foreign policy elite viewed the League of Nations and the origins of the Cold War.