Was the Cold War an inevitable outcome of WW2?
Like Pip, I too spent some years of my early military career on the inner German border as a member of the then British Army of the Rhine. However, I'll stop short of claiming that my experiences there qualified me in any way to answer the exam question. Nuclear option? My understanding was that the use of nuclear weapons was not considered optional at the time and was planned as the default course of action as and when the situation reached the level to warrant their deployment. How times have changed.
Now, what to write that is suitably controversial….
It occurred to me whilst cycling to work this morning what an awful question the subject of this unit has posed.
Firstly, it immediately suggests, to me at least, that the Cold War was something bad that was best avoided and now requires excuse. In fact one could argue that the Cold War may well have prevented more strife than it caused. Perhaps at the end of this module we will be able to reflect on just how much of the suffering during the second half of the 20th Century was a direct consequence of the phenomenon that we call the Cold War, how much would have occurred anyway and to what extent any suffering was limited in its intensity because the great powers during the period had little patience for side shows or distractions in a time when tolerance was at a premium. Note also that the suffering and damage demonstrated by the use of atomic weapons on Japan in August 1945 was to eventually inform the political and military activity of the Cold War period and in itself certainly helped to prevent its further deployment (by which I mean further use). This was essentially the basis of the Mutually Assured Destruction general policy adopted during the Cold War.
Second, the use of the word ‘was’ presents the Cold War as a physical series of events rather than the live phenomenon that it still is. After all, as we continue to study the published interpretations of events which occurred during the years which constitute what we term the Cold War period and draw new conclusions about its nature, despite Schlesinger’s warning about revisionism, the relative value of the lessons that we continue to draw from the Cold War change with time. I like to think that, in addition to the learning and the practice of new and useful skills, the study of history exists to remind us of the implications of our decisions now and in the future. I wonder, does that make me a practitioner or a pragmatist?
The question might also draw one to a given conclusion that WW2 resulted in the Cold War, much like the mathematical equation WW2 = CW. That is to say, inevitable or otherwise, it was an outcome. It is worth considering that whilst the two states of affairs share many important features, the actual cause of the events which created the Cold War phenomenon might be rather more straightforward in nature and had more to do with personality for example than being the product of a supposedly deliberate estimate on the courses of action open for inter-power post war security. Gaddis highlighted the crucial significance of Stalin’s personality to the course of events, as does our illustrious leader in his blog ‘the view from where I’m sitting’. At this stage of my reading, I tend to agree. Stalin was certainly a bit of a git.
That’s enough from me for now, I’m going to tuck myself up in bed with a nice cup of tea and a chapter of Calvocoressi. Calvocoressi…. That sounds like a kind of expensive brandy.
posted by Nick Dymond @ 21:35
1 comments
1 Comments:
Nick, I like the way that you have recast the question. As the guy who came up with the question I can say that only the second of your inferences about the question's intent is true. I'll come back to that. I'd like to deal with the first first. While I for one would not suggest that the Cold War was 'bad' or required 'excusing' (not a proper function of the historian anyway, IMHO) it could be taken as such. In fact I rather see it in the way that you suggest. Given the nature of the conflict which being ideological and expansive was not really negotiable (ie., permanently resolvable by compromise) and the nuclear weaponry with which the major belligerents were armed the way in which the Cold War worked itself out was really not bad at all. It was stable, for the most part. We were only threatened with conscious nuclear holocaust once--althuogh the possibility of accidental or mistaken launch prevailed throughout. And in general the superpower rivalry dampened down smaller conflicts. We'll see this in later units. In any case, no it was not at all 'all bad'. Moreover I think that your follow on question 'how much [suffering] would have occurred anyway' is germane.
Now your second point, what I would call a semantic issue 'Was' vs 'Is' except that you do not see its importance as merely semantic. Was is wrong because the Cold War still 'is'. Up until 11 September I would have largely agreed with you. Much of my own research has focused on the problems of the former Soviet Union. I used to take the view that dealing with the 'legacy of the Cold War'--and in my view this can be reduced still further to dealing with consequences of the collapse of the Soviet military--was the foremost and pressing concern of international politics. I often used the term 'post-Cold War'. Now I don't do that so often. While I take your point 'the study of history exists to remind us of the implications of our decisions now and in the future', indeed I feel very strongly that one can't speak sensibly about our present circumstances withuot a historical understanding of how we got here, I think that we are finally 'post-post Cold War' as it was once put (albeit rather inelegantly). In other words, I am somewhat inclined to say the Cold War was.
A few days ago I posted a bit on my blog about the importance of personalities, notably Stalin, on the emergence of the Cold War. I must confess that was a bit of artful deflection. Stalin is such a hugely important figure--in one way or another we will be looking at events over the next four units that go straight back to Stalin and his policies and even in the six units after that he is rarely less than a degree or two of abstraction away--that I am keen for students to contemplate him a bit.
But I actually feel that the Cold War was inevitable not so much because of the events of 1945 but because of the events of 1917 (I hinted at this in my blog). In short the conflict preexisted Potsdam and Yalta and it was about which constitutional structure (parliamentarianism, fascism or communism) would prevail. This is another reason why I think the Cold War 'was' as opposed to 'is'. What happened in 1989 through to August 1991 was the functional equivalent ot the Axis Powers' unconditional surrenders of 1945.
I suppose I have tipped my hand slightly in saying so. Let's see how many of the others are reading this.
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