Another Transatlantic Split? American and European Narratives and the End of the Cold War

Abstract

It has often been remarked that the victors do not merely harvest the fruits of war, but are then situated by virtue of their position to write the ‘real’ history of how that war began, who fought it most ethically, and the key part they then played in bringing it to a victorious and just end. This article argues that this pattern of writing the past, and thereby defining it, has been much in evidence in the wider American 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 – politicians, policy-makers and academics alike – have too readily adopted the politically convenient view that it was America (and in some cases America alone) that through dint of effort and skill of diplomacy effectively changed the world by actively ‘winning’ the Cold War on the continent. As I argue, this 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 Europe's 45-year-old division. I then go on to point to the many important, and sometimes forgotten, ways in which Europe and Europeans helped make their own history. By so doing, I not only seek to redress the intellectual balance, but 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.

Acknowledgements

This paper was originally presented to the conference, ‘Europe and the End of the Cold War’, at the Sorbonne, Paris, 15–17 June 2006. I would like to thank the two organizers of that event – Frederick Bozo and Marie-Pierre Rey – those in attendance who provided me with useful feedback, Professor Geir Lundestad, Director of the Nobel Institute Oslo for his written comments, and Dr Kristina Spohr-Readman of the Department of International History at the LSE for her patience and guidance on ways to improve the original text.

Notes

  [1] For an early American assessment of the sources of European discontent, see Kaplan, “The Cold War.”

  [2] For a good example of this approach, see Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era.

  [3] A point made very forcefully in Ferguson, Colossus, 227.

  [4] Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation.”

  [5] Quote from Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 3.

  [6] For a useful primary source see The End of the Cold War produced by the Cold War International History Project.

  [7] Vincent, An Intelligent Person's Guide to History, 9.

  [8] Lundestad, “The European Role,” 61.

  [9] Wallander, “Western Policy and the Demise of the Soviet Union.”

 [10] Hutchings, American Diplomacy.

 [11] See for example the work of American writers Matthew Evangelista (Unarmed Forces), Robert D. English (Russia and the Idea of the West) and (“The Collapse of East European Communism,” Parts I, II and III).

 [12] Schreker, Cold War Triumphalism, 2.

 [13] Lundestad, “The European Role,” 62.

 [14] Friedman, The Fifty-Year War, xi.

 [15] Fukuyama, The End of History.

 [16] Kennedy, The Rise and Fall.

 [17] A point I discuss in Cox, “Whatever Happened to American Decline?”

 [18] Robert Keohane has also claimed that social scientists should not be criticized for failing to anticipate the end of the Cold War. See Keohane, “International Relations, Old and New,” 463–64.

 [19] See the useful survey by Suri, “Explaining the End of the Cold War.”

 [20] For an early guide to the disputes abut the end of the Cold War see the still useful Hogan, The End of the Cold War.

 [21] For one of the exceptions to the now dominant (once orthodox) American view that the Soviet Union under Stalin sought a Cold War with the West, see Roberts, Stalin's Wars.

 [22] ‘The ratio of sources to historians working on them is probably higher for the end of the Cold War than for any other period since World War II’, Painter and Blanton, “The End of the Cold War,” 495.

 [23] Quester, Before and After the Cold War

 [24] Odom, “The Sources of ‘New Thinking’,” 15.

 [25] Bueno de Mesquita, “The End of the Cold War.”

 [26] Gaddis, “International Relations Theory.”

 [27] See Yurchak, Everything Was For Ever.

 [28] Arbel and Edelist, Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union.

 [29] DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers.

 [30] I explore these issues in Cox, Rethinking the Soviet Collapse.

 [31] Gorbachev's ‘reformism in 1985 was that of a man determined to improve the system not overthrow it’. Reynolds, One World Divisible, 543.

 [32] Judt, Postwar.

 [33] See for example Ellmann and Kantorovich, The Disintegration.

 [34] On Gorbachev's primitive understanding of economics see Bodin, Ten Years, 23.

 [35] Almond, “1989 without Gorbachev.”

 [36] ‘The grave economic, financial and state crisis began only between 1986 and 1988, and its immediate cause was Gorbachev's choices and policies’, Zubok, “Gorbachev and the End,” 211.

 [37] Levesque, The Enigma of 1989.

 [38] Mastny, “Did Gorbachev Liberate?”

 [39] See Checkel, “Ideas, Institutions”; and Kratochwil and Koslowski, “Understanding Change.”

 [40] See for example Special Issue of Journal of Cold War Studies, ‘Ideas, International Relations, and the End of the Cold War’.

 [41] Brooks and Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization.”

 [42] English, Russia and the Idea.

 [43] On Poland's role in the end of the Cold War see Packowski, “Playground of Superpowers.”

 [44] Halliday, “The End of the Cold War.”

 [45] See for example Walker, The Cold War, 302–23, and Crockatt, The Fifty Years War, 338–71.

 [46] Dockrill, “Beyond the Cold War Mind Set,” 2.

 [47] Lynch, The Cold War is Over.

 [48] Muravchik, “Losing the Peace,” 39.

 [49] See Cox, “George F. Kennan.”

 [50] See Herf, West German Resistance.

 [51] Reeves, President Reagan.

 [52] How controversial is explained well in Fischer, The Regan Reversal.

 [53] Kaiser, Why Gorbachev Happened.

 [54] Pipes, “Misinterpreting the Cold War.”

 [55] For the latest attempts to privilege Reagan's role in bringing the Cold War to an end see Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev; and Lettow, Ronald Reagan.

 [56] Schweizer, Victory.

 [57] For perhaps the most balanced presentation of this perspective see Patman, “Reagan, Gorbachev.”

 [58] Gaddis, The Cold War.

 [59] Painter, “A Partial History of the Cold War.”

 [60] See Hogan, The Marshall Plan.

 [61] The iconic status of the Marshall Plan is discussed by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe, “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy,” with (highly critical) replies by no less than five American historians, evidently quite upset by our ‘European’ attempt to think critically about US calculations and assumptions in 1947.

 [62] For an example of how one particular American ally (the British) managed to modify original US economic plans see Burnham, The Political Economy.

 [63] A point well made by Maier, “Hegemony and Autonomy.”

 [64] See Kindleberger, The World in Depression.

 [65] Ikenberry, After Victory.

 [66] Gilpin, The Political Economy.

 [67] Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed.

 [68] The significance of the 1988 UN speech is stressed in particular by Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 10–11.

 [69] As Brent Scowcroft admitted, he was ‘suspicious of Gorbachev's motives and sceptical of his prospects’. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 13.

 [70] The view taken within the CIA. See Gates, From the Shadows, 474.

 [71] Quotes from Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 9.

 [72] Cox and Hurst, “His Finest Hour.”

 [73] The standard American account here remains Zelikow and Rice, Germany United and Europe Transformed.

 [74] Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War.

 [75] See Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire.

 [76] See for example Stephanson, “The United States.”

 [77] Hertle, “Germany in the Last Decade,” 282.

 [78] Garthoff, “The U.S. Role.”

 [79] See for example Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War.

 [80] Kent, “The British Empire and the Origins of the Cold War.”

 [81] Milward, The Reconstruction.

 [82] See the introduction to the Ernst B. Haas classic, The Uniting of Europe, xiv.

 [83] Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe since 1945.

 [84] For an excellent discussion of the impact of the EC and EU upon Soviet calculations in 1988 and 1989 see Mastny, “Eastern Europe and the Early Prospects.”

 [85] See Yamamoto, “Détente or Integration?”

 [86] For an excellent overview of Gorbachev's thinking on Europe see Rey, “Europe is our Common Home.”

 [87] Quoted in Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, 105.

 [88] ‘To the West of our borders there is a new giant developing, one with a population of 350 million people, which surpasses us in its level of economic, scientific and technological growth.’ Gorbachev to a closed session of Warsaw Pact leaders July 1988, cited in Mastny and Byrne, The Cardboard Castle?, 607–16.

 [89] See Bulletin, no. 12, and Bulletin, no. 6.

 [90] See Laurent, “European Integration,” 147–51.

 [91] Lundestad, “Imperial Overstretch.”

 [92] Quotes from Gorbachev's conversations with Egon Krentz (1 November 1989) cited in The End of the Cold War, 19.

 [93] Thomas, The Helsinki International Norms; and Leffler, “The Beginning and the End: Time, Context and the Cold War,” 29–60.

 [94] Maresca, To Helsinki.

 [95] See also Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas.”

 [96] On American ‘detachment’ and ‘passivity’ towards the Helsinki process between 1972 and 1977 see Korey, “The Helsinki Process.”

 [97] Robert D. English argues that even though the origins of certain key ideas about political and economic reform can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s, what he calls ‘the détente epoch’ did undoubtedly give these ideas a ‘vital boost’. See English, “The Road(s) Not Taken,” 251.

 [98] Van Oudenaren, Détente in Europe.

 [99] Korey, “Helsinki, Human Rights.”

[100] This issue is addressed in a number of the essays in Summy and Salla, Why the Cold War Ended.

[101] English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 182.

[102] Gorbachev, Perestroika; and Gorbachev, Memoirs.

[103] Brown, The Gorbachev Factor.

[104] Gorbachev noted: ‘the simple fact that Thatcher supports perestroika is very important’. He went on to add, interestingly, that ‘the Americans regard this as her biggest mistake’. Quote from Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, 104.

[105] Quote from Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, 222.

[106] See Greenwood, “Helping to Open the Door?”, 317–331.

[107] Spohr, “German Unification.”

[108] See Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 99.

[109] Forsberg, “Economic Incentives.”

[110] Carr, What is History?, 12.

[111] See Micklethwait and Woodridge, The Right Nations.

[112] Lieven, America Right or Wrong.

[113] Sharansky, The Case for Freedom.

[114] Gaddis, Surprise, Security, esp. 65 and 118.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Cox

Professor Michael Cox teaches in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics where he is also Director of the Cold War Studies Centre. His latest publication is an eight volume edited study entitled Twentieth Century International Relations. Between April and June 2007 he will be taking up a Fellowship at the Nobel Institute in Oslo.