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BERNATH LECTURE

TheNewInternational History of the

ColdWar:

Three(Possible)Paradigms*

TheCold War isnot what it oncewas. Not only hastheconflict itself beenwrittenaboutinthepasttenseformorethanadecade,buthistorians’certainties

about the character of the conflict have also begun to blur. The concernsbroughtonbytrendsof thepastdecade– suchtriflesasglobalization,weaponsproliferation,andethnicwarfare – havemade evenold strategy buff squestionthedegreetowhichtheCold War ought tobeputat thecenter of thehistoryof thelatetwentiethcentury.InthisarticleI will trytoshowhowsomepeoplewithin our fieldareattemptingto meetsuchqueriesby reconceptualizingtheColdWar aspart of contemporary international history.Myemphasiswill beonissuesconnectingtheColdWar– definedasapolitical conflictbetweentwopower blocs– andsomeareasof investigationthat inmy opinionhold much

promise for reformulatingour viewsof that conflict, blithely summed up asideology, technology, andtheThirdWorld.

I have called this lecture “Three (Possible) Paradigms” not just to avoidmakingtoopresumptuousanimpressionontheaudiencebutalso toindicatethat my use of the term “paradigm” is slightly diff erent fromthe onemostpeoplehavetaken over from ThomasKuhn’sworkon scientific revolutions.Inthehistoryof science,aparadigmhascometomeanacomprehensiveexpla-nation,akindof scientific“level”thatsustainsexistingtheoryuntil overtakenby anew and diff erent paradigm. In thehistory of human societies, I would

venture, thetermparadigmmust takeon aslightly diff erent meaning, closer,in fact, tohow thetermwasgenerally used beforeKuhn’swork in theearlys.Forourpurpose,I wanttolookatparadigmsaspatternsofinterpretation,which may possibly exist side by side, but which each signify a particular

D H,Vol.,No. (Fall ).© TheSociety for Historiansof AmericanForeignRelations(SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, Main Street,Malden, MA,, USA and CowleyRoad,Oxford,OX JF, UK.

*Stuart L.BernathMemorial Lecturedeliveredat St.Louis, April .A draftversionof this lecturewaspresentedtoafaculty seminar at theLondonSchool of Economicson March. Theauthor wishestothank hisLSE colleagues(especially MacGregor Knox)and DavidReynoldsof CambridgeUniversity for their helpful comments(whileabsolvingthemfromanyresponsibilityfor thelecture’s contents).

. FormoreonhowColdWarstudiesisdevelopingasafieldof inquiry seeOddArneWestad,ed.,Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London,).

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approach– anangleof view, if I may– tothecomplexproblemsof ColdWarhistory.

Thisis,of course,alsotoindicategenuinedoubtastowhethercomprehen-siveandmutually exclusiveinterpretations of theColdWar asa phenomenon

are possible today. It seems to me that both our general approaches to howhistory isstudiedandtheemergenceof massivenewbodiesof evidenceleadin the direction of analytical diversity and away fromthe concentration onso-called schools of interpretation. If one looksat the way the Cold War istaught at my school, one finds a multitude of approaches: as U.S. politicalhistory,ashistoryof theSoviet Union,ashistory of Third World revolutions,as history of Europeanintegration,as history ofgender relations,ashistory of economicglobalizationjusttomentionafew.Fewofourcolleaguestwenty-fiveyearsagowouldhaveforeseenhowthefieldhasopenedupandspreadoutway

beyond diplomatic history. Our task now, it seems to me, is to find ways todescribe, in lookingat thislongaxisof analysis,pointsthat seemparticularlypromisingforfurtherscholarlyinquiry,basedonacombinationofworkalreadyundertakenandthe availabilityof sources.

I have chosentodiscussthreesuchpossibleparadigms in thisarticle.Theyaretheonesthatseemtomebestsuitedforrapidadvancesinourunderstandingof the Cold War asaperiod or asan international system, and not just asabilateral conflictor asdiplomatichistory.

Perhapsthemostuseful – andcertainlythemostmisused– oftheparadigmsI will beaddressinghereisthatof ideology,understoodasasetof fundamentalconceptssystematically expressedbyalarge groupof individuals. Integratingthe study of such fundamental concepts into our approach to internationalhistory holds tremendouspromise asamethod within a field that hasoftenignored ideasasthebasisfor humanaction.Used inwaysthataresensitivetohistorical evidence and consistent in their application, the introduction of ideologyasapartof ourunderstandingofmotivesandbroadpatternsofactionhelpsusovercometwo of themain problemsthat international historiansof theColdWaroftenface.Oneisthatweareseentobebetteratexplainingsingleeventsthan weareat analyzingcausesandconsequencesof larger historicalshifts.Theother isthatweare– rightly,I believe– oftenseenasusinganarrowconceptof causality, mostly connectedto interests or statepolicies.

Let meusean example.When President John F.Kennedy met with FirstSecretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Nikita

. Thomas J. Kuhn, TheStructure of Scienti fi c Revolutions (Chicago, ). Richard Evans, In Defense of History, rev. ed. (New York, ) has a useful discussion of the role of alternativeparadigmsinhistorical research.

. Foradiscussion ofoperational definitionsof ideologyseeDouglasJ.MacDonald,“FormalIdeologiesintheColdWar:TowardaFrameworkforEmpiricalAnalysis,”inWestad,ed.,Reviewing theCold War.

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KhrushchevinVienna inJune, both leaders brought withthembriefs andpositionpapersthatunderlinedtheneedtoseekcommongroundonanumberof issues, including the threat of nuclear war. Still, their public and privateencountersweremarkedbysharpconfrontationandthesummititselfprobably

contributedtotheincreasedtensionthat followed,culminatingintheCubanmissilecrisis thefollowingyear. Obviously, thepoliciesthat thetwo leaderspursuedonmost issuesprior totheirmeetingwereinconflict.Equallyclearly,thepersonalitiesof KennedyandKhrushchevwere,toputitmildly,disharmo-nious.But inorder tounderstandtheoutcomeof thesummit, I findthateachman’sbasic ideological perception – hispreconceived imageof hisown roleandthat of theother leader – isan invaluabletool that canonly bediscardedatour peril.

For Khrushchev, itwasnotprimarily Kennedy’syouthandrelative inexpe-

riencethatmadeitnecessarytogoontheoff ensiveoverCubaandBerlinduringthesummit,or tolectureJFK oncommunism.Itwas, asthosewhocamewithKhrushchev toViennaexplain,becausetheSoviet leader wasconvinced thathissociety and political thinkingwere inascendance, and that Kennedy, asaclassrepresentativeof theU.S.“monopolists,”couldbebrought to recognizethis historical necessity. For John Kennedy, it was exactly this ideologicalchallengethatmatteredmost,sinceheperceivedhisownroleasU.S.presidentas assuring“the survival and success of liberty” on aglobal scale. With thepassingof thetorchtoanewgeneration,Kennedymorethananythingmeant

amorevigorousanddeterminedpursuit of U.S.ideological hegemonyin theworld.

WhiletheViennaexampleshowshowideologiescanbeusedtounderstandbothconcretehistoricaleventsandlong-termtrends,itisimportant,asDouglasMacDonaldhasshown,thatouruseoftheconceptdoesnotbecomedeterministor one-sided.Onedanger isassociatedwiththeoverrelianceon ideologiesasa kind of theoretical catchall – such as has happened in the case of someGramscianMarxists– or thereplacementof thehistorical narrativewiththestudy of ideas per se. In other cases, ideology has been reduced to formal

concepts, such asoften happened in Cold War eraU.S. studiesof theSovietUnion,inwhichMarxism-Leninism(meaningtheMarxistcoda)keptoutmorecompositeand complex viewsof Soviet ideology.Finally, there isalwaysthe

. OnpersonalitiesandissuesattheKennedy-KhrushchevsummitseeMichael R.Beschloss,The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, – (New York, ); Aleksandr Fursenko and

T imothy Naftali, “OneHell of Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, – (NewYork, );LawrenceFreedman,Kennedy’sWars: Berli n, Cuba,Laos, andVietnam (NewYork,); andSergeiN.Khrushchev,Nikita Khrushchev andtheCreati on of aSuperpower, trans.ShirleyBenson(UniversityPark,PA, ).

. ForKhrushchevseeOlegTroianovskii,Cherez godyi rasstoianiia:istori iaodnoi semi [Acrosstimeand space:Onefamily’shistory] (Moscow, );andOlegGrinevskii, Tysiacha i odin den Niki ty Sergeevicha [NikitaSergeevich’sthousandandonedays] (Moscow,);forKennedysee

ThomasC.Reeves,AQuesti on of Character:A Lifeof JohnF.Kennedy (London,); or Freedman,Kennedy’s Wars, chaps. and . Kennedy quote from inaugural address, January , athttp:/ /www.hpol.org/jfk/.

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danger of makingtheother side“ideological” – andone’sown sideonly toological or interestdriven.I see this asoneof themainpost-ColdWar fallaciesofU.S.international historians– whilewehavegraduallybecomecomfortablewithmakingideology an integral part of thestudy of Soviet foreignrelations,

many people in the field find it much more difficult to deal with U.S. eliteideology asameaningful concept.

AsMichael Hunthaspointedout,thelatteromissionisparticularlyimpor-tanttorectifyif ideologyistobeusedasameaningful interpretivetool.I wouldclaimthatduringmuchof theColdWar,theideologyof theU.S.foreignpolicyelitewasmore pervasivein termsof decision makingthan wasthat of Sovietpartyleaders.Inthecasesthatreallymattered– theMarshall Plan,thesupportfor European integration,U.S.occupationpolicy in Japan– itwasasetof keyU.S.ideascentered onaspecificU.S.responsibilityfortheglobal expansion of

freedomthatmade the diff erence.Theseideas, whichemphasizedfreedomof expression, freedomof ownership, and freedom of capitalist exchanges andnegatedfreedomofcollectiveorganization,precapitalistvalues,orrevolution-aryaction,wereessential elementsintheU.S.transformationoftheworldafter,andinWashington’sunwillingnesstoengagetheSovietUnioninthegiveandtake of pre-WorldWar II diplomaticpractice.

As will be clear from the above, I to some extent go along with AndersStephanson’scontention that theCold War may profitably be seen asaU.S.ideological project, although I would go much further than Stephanson in

giving autonomy to other actors – my point is that it was to agreat extentAmericanideasandtheirinfluencethatmadetheSoviet-AmericanconflictintoaColdWar.WhileSovietforeignpolicywasnolessfueledbyitskeyideasor itsunderstandingofwhatmadetheworldtick,thecrucialdiff erenceisthatatmosttimesSovietleaderswereacutelyawareoftheir lack of international hegemonyand the weakness (relative to the United States and its allies) of Soviet orCommunistpower.FromtheYaltasummittotheMaltasummittheythereforemost often thought that they would havetosatisfy themselves– short term,asthey sawit – withwhat they couldget fromthestandardGreat Power mixof

negotiations, cajoling, and limited military action.On theU.S.side, althoughthegeneral public havebeen quiteregularly visited by elementsof paranoiawithregard tothe outsideworld, whatreallyneedsexplanationistheremark-ableconsistencywithwhichtheU.S.foreignpolicyelitehasdefinedthenation’sinternational purposeoverthepastthreetofourgenerations.Thatpurposehasbeentheglobal dominationof itsideas– andalthoughmilitarydominationhas

. MacDonald,“Formal Ideologies.”SeealsoWestad,“Secrets of theSecondWorld: RussianArchivesandtheReinterpretationof ColdWarHistory,”DiplomaticHistory (Spring):–.

John LewisGaddissummarizestheargumentsfor why Marxism-Leninismmattered inWeNow Know:Rethinking Cold War Hi story (NewYork,).

. Michael H.Hunt,Ideology andAmerican Foreign Poli cy (NewHaven, ).AsI havepointedoutearlier, thestudy of U.S. foreignpolicy ideology is in itself auseful way of transcendingtheorthodox definitionsof historiographical “schools.”SeeWestad, “Introduction,” in Westad,ed.,Reviewing theCold War.

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not always been recognized as a necessary companion to this ideologicalhegemony, it has still been an aim that U.S. leaders have been willing tointerveneto accomplishfromWorld War I to theKosovo conflict.

For most of the Cold War themajority of Americansdid not share their

leaders’willingnessto spendtheir resourcesonextendingU.S. ideasabroad.Without help fromStalin andthe generationof Soviet leaders he created,it isuncertain whether theTruman and Eisenhower administrationswould havebeen able tokeepastrongU.S. involvement in Europe, theMiddleEast,andEastAsia.Stalinbelievedthatby isolatingtheSovietUnionandthecountriesit hadoccupied after thewar, hecould preservetheCommunist dictatorshipandbuildalong-termchallengetoU.S.domination.HaditnotbeenforStalin’sinflexibility and his insistencethat his“zone” wasextraneoustoany formof U.S.influence,itwouldhavebeenmuchmoredifficultfortheU.S.foreignpolicy

elitestogetatleastlimitedacceptanceamongthegeneral publicforsubstantialandlong-termforeigninvolvements.

Whatthen aboutthecountriesthat joinedwiththeUnitedStatesinwagingColdWaragainstcommunism– firstandforemostWesternEuropeandJapan?

The West European elites that issued the “invitations to empire” that GeirLundestad hasemphasized seemto havedoneso both out of fear of Stalin’sintentionsand because of the attractivenessof U.S.assistancein sorting outtheir own domestic problems. What ismuch more important tounderstand,though, ishowtheU.S.responsetothe“invitations”cametobeshaped– not

asarescueoperationforbesieged (andtoagreat extentdiscredited)politicalleadershipsbutas conscious andcomprehensiveattemptsat changingEurope(andJapan) in the directionofU.S.ideas andmodels.

Tome,itistheflexibilityofU.S.policiesandthenegotiabilityoftheideologytheywerebasedonthatexplainboththeuniquelysuccessful alliancesystemsthattheUnitedStatesestablishedwithWesternEuropeandJapanandtherapidpolitical, social, and economic transformation that these countries wentthrough.This,perhaps,wasthereal revolutionof theColdWar:thattheUnitedStatesover aperiod of fifty yearstransformed itsmaincapitalist competitors

accordingtoitsown image.Thisdidnot,of course, happenwithout conflict.But mostly – and in great part because of the Cold War perceptions of anexternal threat – it wasapeaceful transformation. Itspeacefulness, however,

. AndersStephanson,“FourteenNotesontheVeryConceptoftheColdWar,”http:/ /mail.h-net.msu.edu/~diplo/stephanson.html.This is of coursenot denyingthat ideologywas crucial toSoviet foreignpolicy– mypointhere isaboutcapabilities,not intentions.For an attemptat definingthekeyideological themesinU.S.foreignpolicyhistoryseeDavidRyan,USForeign Policy inWorld History (London,).

. ForStalin’sintentionsseeVojtechMastny,TheColdWar andSoviet Insecuri ty:TheStalin Years

(NewYork, ); andVladislav ZubokandConstantinePleshakov, InsidetheKremlin’sCold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA, ). For U.S. perceptions see Melvyn P. Leffler, APreponderanceof Power:National Security, theTrumanAdministrati on, andtheCold War (Stanford, ).

. Geir Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe,–,”Journal of PeaceResearch ,no. ():–;JohnL.Harper,AmericanVisionsof Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt,GeorgeF.Kennan, andDean G. Acheson (Cambridge,England,).


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and the fact that it happened as much as a result of trade, education, andconsumer cultureaspolitical pressure shouldnotobscureitsintrinsicality.

In thenovel for whichhereceived theNobel Prizefor literaturelast year,theGerman authorGünterGrassdescribeshowhiscountryhaschangedover

thepast century, with themost basic transformationshappeningafter . Itwasnot just theeff ectsofWorldWar II thatchangedGermany,Grassseemstoargue, it wasthepostwar presenceof theAmericans.Thesame– although todiff ering degrees – could be said of all of the United States’s key alliancepartners.Thechangesinpolicies, social stratification, andeconomic founda-tionsthattheU.S.presenceinspiredgraduallycreatedsystemsof alliancesthatwerebasedonsimilar worldviewsandthat couldsurviveconflictsof interest(unlikethoseoftheEast).Tome,atleast,itisthesecondgenerationof postwarleaderswho hold thekeytothismoreprofoundtransformation: Helmut Kohl,

FrançoisMitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Yasuhiro Nakasone, all born in theinterwar years, cametoaccept U.S.modelsmuchmorereadily thanpreviousor (perhaps) cominggenerations,andindoingsotheynotonly changedtheircountries(andsettledthe ColdWar) butalsolaidthefoundations forthenewsystemof globalizedmarketsthat ineff ectreplacedtheEast-Westconflict.

Intermsof ideologies,onemaysaythattheColdWarwasaconflictbetweentwodi

ff erent versionsof what anthropologist JamesC.Scott referstoashigh

modernism– ontheonehand,onethatunderlinedsocial justiceandtheroleof theindustrial proletariat,and, ontheother,onethatemphasizedindividu-alityandtheroleof thestake-holdingmiddleclass.For theworldatlarge,bothideologieswereintheir waysrevolutionary, intent ontransformingtheworldin their image. Aswithmany modernist projects, American and Soviet ColdWar ideologiesbasedanimportantpartof their legitimaciesonthecontrol of nature, be it human nature or our physical surroundings. They were bothattemptsat simplifyingacomplex world through social engineering, massiveexploitation of resources, regulation, and technology. Technology was theepitomeofbothideologiesandofthesystemstheyrepresented– itsymbolizedthe conquest of nature itself for socialism or for freedom and the use the

. Twoexcellentoverviewschartingthesedevelopments, inpoliticsandeconomics, respec-tively,areJohnKillick,TheUnitedStatesandEuropeanReconstruction, – (Edinburgh, );andMarie-LouiseDjelic,Expor ti ng theAmerican Model: ThePostwar Transformation of European Business (Oxford, ).SeealsoMargaretBlomchard,Expor ti ng theFirst Amendment: ThePress-Government Crusade of – (New York, ). For Germany see Ralph Willett, The Americanization of Germany, – (London, );for FranceseeRichardKuisel,Seducing the French:The Dilemma

of Americanization (Berkeley, ).. Günter Grass, Mein Jahrhundert [My century] (Göttingen, ). Insights on how the

American allianceshaveinfluenced thefour leadersarein Hugo Young,Oneof Us:A Biograpy of Margaret Thatcher (London, );Karl HugoPruys,Helmut Kohl:DieBiographie [HelmutKohl:Thebiography](Berlin,);JeanLacouture,Mitterrand:unehistoiredeFrançais [Mitterrand:A historyoftheFrench](Paris,);andYasuhiroNakasone,TheMakingof theNewJapan (Richmond,).

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physical worldcouldbeputtoinconstructingasocial systemor inconfrontingitsenemies.

At thebeginningof theColdWar, nuclear technology stoodat thecoreof theconflict.U.S.possessionof thesecretsof atomicenergycreatedapushfor

wider global responsibilitiesamong U.S.political leaders andfueled deep-feltsuspicionswithin theCommunist movementaboutU.S.plansfor controllingtheir countries.TheSovietquesttodevelopanuclearcapabilityof itsownwas– asDavidHolloway hasexplained – a keyfeatureinMoscow’sestablishmentof aCold War world view. The futureof socialismdepended on the SovietUnion matching the technological achievements of the imperialist states.WithoutaSovietbomb,thesocialistworldwouldbeinherentlyweakandunderconstantpressure.

But nuclear technology wasnot only important for themilitary aspectsof

theconflict. In the late sand early s the battle for access to energyresourcesformed part of thecoreCold War competition,andatomicenergywasof courseavital part of that battle.BothontheSoviet andtheAmericansidedegreesofmodernityweremeasuredinenergyoutput– itwasasifLenin’sadagethat “Communismisworkers’power pluselectricity”heldtrueinbothMoscow and Washington. As the Soviet Union dramatically increased itsenergy output in the s – the first Soviet nuclear power plant becameoperational in – there wasawidespread sense that Moscow’smodel of developmentcouldeventually overtake thatof the UnitedStates.

Oneof thebiggest surprisesthat early Cold Warriorswould havebeen infor, had they still been withus in the sand s, wasthat it wasneithernuclear bombs nor nuclear power that came to decide the Cold War. AfterNagasaki,thebombswereneverused.AfterThreeMileIslandandChernobyl,nuclearpower lostmuchof itsluster,andsomeadvancedindustrial states,suchas Sweden,arenowclosing down their nuclearplants.Whilenuclear technol-ogythereforedefendsitsplaceinColdWarhistory,moreattentionneedstobepaidtootherconnectionsandimplicationsoftherelationshipbetweentheColdWar conflictandthe development of scienceandtechnology.

. JamesC. Scott,SeeingLikea State: How Certain Schemes to Improve theHuman Condition Have Failed (NewHaven,).ForfurtherdiscussionoftechnologyaskeytothemodernityprojectseeMichael Adas,MachinesastheMeasureof Men:Science,Technology,and Ideologiesof Western Dominance (Ithaca,);andMarshall Berman,All That isSolidMeltsintoAir: TheExperi enceof Modernity (New

York, ).See also,ofcourse,Michel Foucault,DisciplineandPunish:TheBir th of thePrison,trans.Alan Sheridan (New York, ). For overviews of the Soviet approach see Kendall Bailes,Technology and Society under Lenin and Stali n (Princeton, ); and especially Richard Stites,Revolutionary Dreams:Utopian Vision andExperimental L ifein theRussian Revolution (NewYork, ).Stephen Kotkin hasan excellent discussion of Soviet modernity anditsdiscontentsinMagnetic Mountain: StalinismasaCivi lization (Berkeley, ). Theclassic statement of technologyaspower

inthepostwar world is Vannevar Bush,Science: TheEndlessFrontier (Washington, ).. DavidHolloway,Stalin andtheBomb:TheSoviet UnionandAtomicEnergy, – (NewHaven,

). William O’Neill, A Better World: Stali nism and the American Intellectuals (London, );

MarcelloFlores,L’immaginedell ’URSS: l’Occidenteela Russia di Stali n ( – ) [Theimageof theUSSR:TheWestandStalin’s Russia (–)] (Milan, ).

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AsDavidReynoldsexplainsinhiscompellingsurveyofinternational trendssince World War II, these connections are not difficult to find. Already inOctober SecretaryofWarRobertPattersonnotedthat“thelaboratoriesof Americahavenowbecomeourfirst lineofdefense.”Tenyearslatermorethan

half of all spending,public orprivate,on industrial researchanddevelopmentintheUnitedStateswenttodefenseprojects.Crucial areasof technologythatwere openedupthroughdefense-relatedfundingincludenavigationsystems,spaceexploration,and even genetics(includingtheHumanGenomeProject).But first and foremost, in termsof itsshort-termimplications, theCold Warprovided publicfundingforresearch inelectronicsandcommunications– thetwo areasof technology, it mightbesaid, that most contributed totheglobalchangesthattookplaceduringtheColdWar,andtothewaytheconflictended.

Withregard tothedevelopmentof global, interconnectedcommunication

systems, it hasbeen argued that the Soviet Union collapsed because, in thewordsof oneauthor, it“didnotgetthemessage.”In ,theSovietUnionhadaroundone-sixthasmany telephoneconnectionsastheUnitedStates,and– aseveryonewhovisitedwiththeSovietscantestifyto– thosethatdidexistoftendidnot work very well. By themid-s, however, theSovietshad communicationssatellitesinorbit,asaresultoftheirenormousinvestmentsinspacetechnology,thatcouldhavebeenusedtoconnecttheSovietUniontotheemergingcommunicationnetworksandtospreadtheSovietmessagetotheworld.Whydidn’tthathappen?

Therearetwomeaningful waysof answeringthatquestion.Thefirst isthat

the failureto link up wastheresult of decadesof Soviet isolation – in partself-imposed,inpartenforced.Ontheonehand,therewasMoscow’sfearthat,asoneformerCPSU leaderputit,“withtheirtechnologycomestheirpoliticalsystemandtheir culture.”On theother hand, therewastheWestern urgetoisolate the Soviets, inpart so that their political system would suff er fromnothavingaccesstothenewesttechnology.ButtherearealsomoreinherentreasonsfortheSovietcommunicationsfailure.NotonlydidthepeoplesofEasternEuropeshowbythedirectionof theirantennasthattheypreferredDallastoDresdenbutalsotheSoviet leadershipsimplydidnotwanttoinvestinmoreelaboratewarsof

propaganda,sincetheyknewthatsocialismwaswinninginthelongrun.Contraryto the general perception at the time, it was the United States that was thepropagandamasteroftheColdWar,intermsof botheff ortandresourcesspent.

. ThefollowingparagraphsarebasedonDavidReynolds,OneWorld Divisible:AGlobal History since (New York, ),– ;Pattersonquoteon.

. John Barber and Mark Harrison, eds., The Soviet Defense-Industr y Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev (New York, ); Jeff reyL.Roberg,Soviet Scienceunder Control: TheStrugglefor In fl uence (London, ).

. Former Vice-ForeignMinister Georgi Kornienko, interview withauthor, February .On U.S.propagandaseeWalter Hixson, Parting theCurtain: Propaganda, Culture, and theCold War, – (Basingstoke, ); and Frances Stonor Saunders,Who Paid thePiper?TheCIA and the Cultural ColdWar (London,).Foraveryinstructiveoverviewofthepurposesbehindthephysical presentation of the United States abroad see Robert H. Haddow, Pavi lions of Plenty: Exhibiting American CultureAbroad in the s (Washington, ).

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Theother maintechnology withanimmediate ColdWar relevance was,of course, thedevelopment of computers. Likeadvanced communications, thefirst computerswereall for militaryuseintheUnitedStatesandBritain,and,asatechnology, cameout of theneedsof World War II. In theUnitedStates,

thehistory of thedevelopment of computers isvery much connected to thehistory of onecompany, IBM, andonebusinessleader, ThomasJ.Watson.Inthesoverhalf of IBM’srevenuescamefromtheanalogguidancecomputerfortheB- BomberandfromtheSAGEairdefensesystem.AsWatsonhimself put it: “It was the Cold War that helped IBM make itself the king of thecomputer business.”

The Soviet Union, it could be argued, was not far behind the West incomputerdevelopmentintheearly s.Butthensomethinghappened.EventhoughtheU.S.militarytook percentoftheoverall productionofcomputer

chipsaslateas,by thePentagonprocurershadbeguntolookoutsidethebigcompaniesfor someof their needs. It wasthisincreasingflexibility intheU.S.military-industrial-academiccomplex inthemid-s– or, toput itmorebluntly,themarriagebetweeneasydefensemoneyandBayAreaflower-power – that created the crucial breakthrough, the commercially availablepersonal computer.ThiswassomethingtheSoviet Unionwould not want tomatch– its researchwentinto bigcomputers for bigpurposes.

Itwas outof the needto linksmall (but available) computers atdiff erentU.S.militaryresearchcentersthatthefirstlongdistancecomputernetwork,ARPAnet,

developedinthes.Thisunionofcomputerchipsandcommunications– latertobeknownastheInternet – wasperhapsthesinglemost important technologicalinnovationof theColdWar.Bythelatesit cametodefine,inaverynarrowsense, who wason the insideand who wason theoutside. Linkingthemaincapitalistcentersmorecloselytogether intermsofbusiness,trade,andeduca-tion, theInternet cametounderlineexchangeof all sorts, andwasgraduallyspreadingout of itsoriginal centers in North America, Japan, and WesternEurope. Communications technology had become an important part of themessage of global capitalism. Indeed, it could be argued that the market

revolutionof thelatetwentiethcentury– or globalization if onepreferstousethat term– would not havebeenpossiblewithouttheadvancesincommuni-cationsthat the ColdWar competitionbrought on.

TheSovietUnionandEasternEuropewerecutoff fromthisdevelopmentbychoiceaswell asbydesign.ThenewcommunicationstechnologymadetheEast Blocelitesfeel isolated in adiff erentsensethanbefore.Bythelates

. Watsonquotedin Reynolds,One World Divi sible, .

. SeeStuart W.Leslie,TheCold War and American Science: TheM ili tary- Industr ial Complex at M IT andStanford (NewYork,);MartinCampbell-KellyandWilliamAspray,Computer:AHistory of the Information Machine (New York, ); for the Soviet Union see Daniel L. Burghart, Red M icrochip:TechnologyTransfer,Expor t Control,andEconomicRestructur ingi n theSoviet Union (Aldershot,).

. RichardO’Brien,Global Financial Integration: TheEnd of Geography (London, ).

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itseemedasifnotjusttheSovietUnion’sWesternenemiesbutsubstantialpartsof the rest of theworld – East andSoutheastAsia, LatinAmerica,and partsof the Middle East – were moving away frominteraction with it and toward ahigher degreeof interactionwitheachother.TherulingCommunist parties,

withintheir owncountries, also hadtocompete with theimage of the West asbeing more advanced, an image that was, in the case of Eastern Europe,projecteddailyintomanypeople’shomesthroughterrestrial orsatelliteanten-nas. In the end, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika project was about being in-cludedintotheworldthat thesatellitechannelsrepresentedwhileupholdingadegreeof ideological challengetothesystem thathadcreatedthem.Hiswasnosurprisingfailure,althoughtheconsequencesof thatfailurerightlystunnedtheworld.

In the little that has been written so far by historians about the role of

technology intheColdWar, their overall relationshiphasoftenbeenreducedtothesimplequestionofwhichpolitical andsocial systemdeliveredandwhichdidnot.LookingatCold War technology in theway I havetriedtopresentithere, this isperhapsthewrongquestiontoask.It isbetter, I think,toexplorethepurposesfor whichtechnology wasdeveloped in itsdiff erent settingsandtodiscussthewaythemilitary-technological policiesonbothsidescontributedtothedirection of scienceand tothemanyweaponswithwhichtheCold Warwas fought – fromstrategic missiles to satellite transmissionsand computernetworks.

Againstthispropositionof makingthehistoryof technologyakeyaspectof thenewColdWarhistory,itissometimessaidthatweareconfusingcategories,that technology is in itsessence politically and ideologically neutral. In thestrictest sensethis isof coursetrue.For individual scientistsit is thethrill of discovery that matters, not thespecificpurposesfor whichtheinvention willlater beused.But if wewant tounderstandtheColdWar in termsnot just of diplomacy andwarfarebutalso in termsof social andpolitical development,weneedtolookmorecloselyathowtechnologywascreated,forwhatpurposesitwas used,and how someaspectsof itcametodefine,in very concreteterms,

thefinal stagesof theColdWarconflict.Weneedtoexplorethelinksbetweenmilitary priorities and technological development and to be open to thesuggestionthat innovationin some keyareasduringthe pastfifty yearsmovedindirections it wouldnot have takenhaditnotbeenfor the ColdWar.

Approachedalongtheselines,I believethattheinterplaybetweentechnol-ogy, politics, and social development forms one of the most useful prismsthroughwhichtoviewtheEast-Westconflict.Suchresearchwouldnotjustdealwith “technological imperatives” (if there ever was such a thing), but moreprofoundly, begin to see the Cold War as aconflict of the core conceptsof

. See, for instance, Peter Dicken, Global Shift: The Internationalizati on of Economic Activi ty (London, ) or, for amore critical view, Thomas C. Patterson, Changeand Development in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, ), esp. –.

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modernity,anessentialpartofwhichwaswhatdirectiontechnological innova-tionshouldtakeandforwhatmeansitsproductsshouldbeused. Thisconflicttook onaparticular significancefor areasoutside EuropeandNorthAmerica,sincetheirmeetingwithmodernity,and,eventually,withcapitalism,toagreat

extenthappenedduringtheColdWarera.AsI will exploreinthenextsection,thereislittledoubt that theseencounterswould havebeen lessunhappy andlessdestructivehad it not been for theglobalizationof theColdWar conflictandthesuperpower interventions that this produced.

The concept of three worlds is often seen as a product of Cold Warperceptions: A first (in every sense) world consistingof the main capitaliststates; asecond(alternative) worldmade upof the SovietUnion and its allies;anda third(-class) world constitutingtherest. Interestingly, thisetymology isalmostcertainlywrong;thetermT iersmonde wasfirstdevelopedbytheFrencheconomistanddemographerAlfredSauvyin todenoteapolitical paralleltotheThirdEstate(T iersétat )of theFrenchRevolution– Sauvy’spointwastounderlinetherevolutionary potential that thenew countries in Africa, Asia,and Latin America would possess in relation to the existing bipolar worldsystem.Sauvyandmanyof thosetheoristswhoadoptedthetermenvisageda

ThirdWorldthat, likeitsillustriouspredecessor inFrance,wouldriseagainstandoverturnthe establishedorder(s).

Intermsof theThirdWorld’sactual fateduringtheColdWar,Sauvycouldnothavebeenfurther fromthetruth.Insteadof overturningtheinternationalsystem, many Third World countries became its main victims through theextensionof Cold War tensionstotheir territories.Central America, Angola,Afghanistan,Indonesia, Indochina,Korea– thelist of countriesthathavehadtheir futures wrecked by superpower involvement is very long indeed, andmany of these countries are still not beginning to come to terms with theconsequencesof their predicament.

But equally damagingtothenewstatesthat werecreated in theaftermathof WorldWar II wasthewillingnessof ThirdWordelites themselves to adoptColdWar ideologies for purposes of domesticdevelopmentandmobilization.

This wholesale takeover of aerial and divisive ideas by feeble states causeduntolddamagenot only throughwarfarebutalso throughsocial experimentsinspiredbybothsocialistandcapitalistversionsofhighmodernism.Fromruralresettlement programs in Indonesia and Thailand and strategic villages in

. For invigoratingattemptsat makingsuchconnectionsseeWolfgangEmmerichandCarl

Wege,eds.,Der Technikdiskursinder Hitler-StalinÄra [ThetechnologydiscourseintheHitler-Stalinera] (Stuttgart, );andDavidC.Engerman,“ModernizationfromtheOther Shore:AmericanObserversandtheCostsof SovietEconomic Development,”American Histori cal Revi ew (April):–.

. Alfred Sauvy, “Trois mondes, uneplanète” [Threeworlds, one planet], l’Observateur, August .


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SouthVietnam, tocollectivizationinEthiopiaandfive-year plansinMozam-biqueandAngola, thesocial andhumancost of theattemptsby ThirdWorldelitestoforcechangeonunwillingsocietieshasbeenfrightful. Insomecases,suchasinSouthVietnamorinEthiopia,itmakessensetospeakofacontinuous

waragainstapeasantry thathad tobe“transformed”– andfast– if theversionof modernity that theregimehadbought intoshouldbeabletoovercomeitsrivals.

ThemainsignificanceoftheColdWarfortheThirdWorld(andoftheThirdWorld for theCold War) seemstometobethis:Thattheideological rivalryof thetwosuperpowerscametodominateThirdWorldpoliticstosuchanextentthat in some countries it delegitimized the development of the domesticpolitical discoursethat any stateneeds for its survival.As a result, theelitesinthesecountriesincreasingly isolated themselvesfromthepeasantpopulation

and, in theend, sought asuperpower ally in order towagewar on their ownpeople.Guatemalaafter andEthiopia after aregoodcases inpoint.

Seen fromaU.S.perspectiveduringtheColdWar, thiswas,of course,notquitethewaythingslooked.TheUnitedStates’sThirdWorldalliesweremostoften seen, by bothsupportersand criticsof U.S. Cold War policies, as localpowerholderswho joinedwith the United Statesin order tofightcommunismandpreservetheir ownprivileges.Theywere“traditionalists”– atermthat intheearly squicklymadethe leap from modernization theory textbookstoState Department dispatches.

Few general descriptionscould, in my opinion,befurther fromthetruth.When we look at their actions and their beliefs, leaders such as Indonesia’sSuharto and the last Pahlavi shah in Iran were, in their way, revolutionaries,who attempted to createcompletely new statesbased on authoritarian highmodernist visions of social transformation. Like leaders in Western Europe,theirmain sourceof inspirationwastheUnitedStates,buttheir societieswere

. GaryE.Hansen,ed.,Agricultural andRuralDevelopment in Indonesia (Boulder,);WaldenF.Belloetal.,ASiameseTragedy:Development andDisintegration inModernThailand (Oakland,CA, );

Arthur Combs,“Rural Economic DevelopmentasaNation-BuildingStrategyinSouthVietnam,–” (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, ); TesfayeTafesse, TheAgri cultural,Environmental, and Social Impacts of the Villagization Programme in Northern Shewa, Ethiopia (AddisAbaba, );MarkF.Chingono,TheState, Violence, andDevelopment: ThePoliti cal Economy of War i n Mozambique, – (Aldershot, ); Pierre Beaudet, ed., Angola: bilan d’un socialismedeguerre [Angola:Accounts of a socialismofwar] (Paris, ).

. JenniferG.Schirmer,TheGuatemalanM ili tary Project: AViolenceCalledDemocracy (Philadel-phia, ); TefarraHaile-Selassie,TheEthiopian Revolution, – (London, ).

. On the curiousdevelopment of conceptsfor viewingThird World elitesseeFrederickCooperandRandall Packer,eds.,International Development andtheSocial Sciences:EssaysontheHistory andPoliti csof Knowledge (Berkeley,);andMichael EdwardLatham,“ModernizationasIdeology:Social ScienceTheory, National Identity,andAmericanForeignPolicy”(Ph.D.diss.,University

of California, Los Angeles, ). The major analytical statements of modernization as anAmerican project are Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge,England,);andSamuelP.Huntington,Poli ti calOrder inChangingSocieties (NewHaven, ). For ahistorical critiqueseeEric HobsbawmandTerenceRanger,eds.,The Invention of Traditi on (Cambridge,England,); and, fora vigorouscounterattackbyan anthro-pologist,Arturo Escobar,EncounteringDevelopment:TheMakingof theT hirdWorld (Princeton, ).

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much further removedfromthat ideal insocial, ideological,and technologicalterms. Just asMao Zedongin thelate sspokeabout “catapulting”Chinainto socialism, Suharto and theshah wanted to catapult their countries intoadvancedcapitalism.Notsurprisingly,sincehumansocietiescannotbeformed

intoprojectilesaimedat ideological images,noneof themhadmuchsuccess.

Thecivil wars inthe ThirdWorldduring the ColdWar era thereforeoftenbeganasclashesbetween acenter that had adopted oneformor theother of highmodernistideologyandmovementsontheperiphery thatsawthemselvesasdefendingtheir valuesandcustoms.Likeall wars, however, theseconflictstransformedbecauseof thelevelsof violence,uprooting, anddestructionthatthey created. Thistransformation was oftenas much ideological asmilitary orstrategic.In manycases,thesecalamitouswarsprovidedunique opportunitiesfor revolutionary movements torecruitadherents to their beliefs,andthereby

transformpeasant communitiesinto armiesof rebellion.TheChineseCom-munistParty isa good casein point: In thefirst phase of theColdWar,radicalsocialist movementsin theThirdWorldoftenbegantheir marchtopower bydefending local areas against imperialist armies, or “modernizing” states, orsimply against encroachments by capitalist practices that, for the peasants,couldbeas destructive aswarfare or forced labor.

The second phase of the Cold War, beginning in the early s, saw anextensionof thispattern.Withdecolonization,withintwodecadesmorethanonehundrednewstatesemerged,eachwithelitesthathadtheirownideological

agendas, often connected up to the ideals constituted by the superpowers.Instead of reducing tensions in society, decolonization – for the formerlycolonized – often increased them, andgaverisetostateadministrationsthatwere, for thepeasants, more intrusiveandmore exploitative than thecolonialauthoritieshad been. As aresult, most of thenew statesbecamechronicallyunstableinbothpolitical andsocial terms.

Haditnotbeenfortheexistenceof thesenewstates,itislikelythattheColdWar conflict, in itssand sform,would havepeteredoutsometimeinthes,withthestabilizationof EuropeanbordersandtheSovietpost-Stalin

“normalization.” What prolonged theconflict was itsextension into areas inwhich theCold War ideological duality hadno relevancefor themajority of thepeople, butwhereU.S.andSoviet leadersconvinced themselvesthat thepostcolonial statesweretheirstowin or lose. Local Third World eliteswerethereforeabletoattainGreat Power alliesin their warsagainst their peoples,andtheorganizationsopposingthemcouldoftenforgetheirownforeignlinks,

. MarvinZonis,MajesticFailure: TheFall of theShah (Chicago, );Michael R. J.Vatikiotis,

Indonesian Politi cs under Suharto, d ed.(London, ).. Theda Skocpol, “Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilization,”World Poli tics

(January ): –; Jeff GoodwinandSkocpol, “ExplainingRevolutionsintheContemporary ThirdWorld,”Poli ticsandSociety ():– ;Quee-YoungKim,ed.,Revolutions in theT hird World (NewYork,);andBarry M.SchutzandRobertO.Slater,Revolution andPoli ti cal Changei n the Third World (Boulder, ).

Three(Possible) Paradigms :

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insomecasesbasedonthemost incongruousof ideological alliances,suchasU.S.support forradical IslamistpartiesinAfghanistan.Whatchangedfromtheearly ColdWar,however,wasthepatternof superpower involvement:Duringthes, itwasasoftentheSovietUnionastheUnitedStatesthatfounditself

onthesideof thegovernmentagainst therebels.In this latter point I think there is an important clue to how we may be

changing our understanding of the relationship between the Cold War anddevelopmentsin Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Asseen fromwithin many

ThirdWorldsocieties, theUnitedStateswasas muchof a revolutionary forceaswastheSoviet Union – thetwo, and thosewhoadopted elementsof theirideologies,emphasizedstandardization,engineering,andplanning;theordersthattheywanted toestablish weredistinctlyWestern,withrootsgoingbacktotheEnlightenment andtheeighteenth century. I wasstruck by thisrecently

whenI attended a seriesoforal historyconferencesontheVietnamwarswithformer Secretary of DefenseRobert MacNamaraasoneof themain partici-pants. As far as I could see, MacNamaraand his former North Vietnameseenemiesstill livedincompletelydiff erent worldsastotheir understandingof thewar except when talkingabout thesocial changesthat they hadattemptedtofoist onVietnamesesociety – MacNamara’s“villagization”wasonly afewstepsaway fromtheNorth’scollectivization in termsof itseff ects (unfortu-natelybothintended and real).LikeMaoZedong– perhapsthemostdestruc-tiveutopianofthepastcentury–bothsidesviewedthepeasantsas“blankslates,

onwhichthe mostwonderful texts may bewritten.”

Some of my colleagues will undoubtedly think that working within thealternativeparadigmsI claimtoobservewill broadenthestudyoftheColdWartoapointwhereitbecomesindistinguishablefroma“global history”approach.If the Cold War was all these things, this thinkinggoes, then what in late-twentieth-century history is left outside therealmof Cold War history?AmInot reducingvery complex and in part unrelated phenomenatothat narrowareaof history inwhichmyownresearchinterests began?

Inthisarticle,I havetriedtoshowhowthesenewparadigmsmaystayclearof reductionist fallaciesby constantly emphasizing theinteractionsbetweendevelopmentsin theEast-West political conflict andother changesinhumansocieties duringtheColdWar era.Theseinteractionsare what may helpustoawider understandingof theconflict– whichisnotthesameassayingthatalleventsfromYaltatoMaltacanbeexplainedbysimplepolitical references.LikethejournalistThomasFriedman,whohaswrittenoneofthebestbooksavailable

about thepost- international system, I believethat the“Cold War systemdidn’tshapeeverything, but it shapedmanythings.”Thepoint isthat withoutattemptingtounderstandthesewider connections, werun therisk of disre-garding those aspectsof the Cold War and of the processes of change that

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accompanied it that wearemost likely toencounter asquestionsfromfuturestudents or fromthegeneral public.

If one, likeme,hopesthat insomeway what I amdoingasahistorianmayhelppeoplemakemoresense of the worldtheyliveintoday,thenitshouldbe

thesewider connectionsthat inspireour work.What isreally reductionist, Ithink, are the attemptsat makingCold War history into gamescentered onnarrow concepts of “interest” – be it the realists’ strategic interests or theMarxists’ economic interests. Last year’sBernathLecture– andmuch of thedebate that followed – may serve as a depressing example of the relativelimitations of these approaches, and as prescriptions for how internationalhistorymayremainperipheralwithinthewiderprofession. Globaleventsaftertheendof theColdWarhavealreadyexposedthedisregardingof cultural andideological backgroundtoconflict asdangerousfolly. I believethatexcluding

theotherkeyissuesof changethat I havepointedtoabovemayturnoutinthelong runtobe equallydangerous.

Attemptingtopoint out what wecarry over fromtheCold War andwhatturned out to bespecific for the latetwentieth century is one useful way of approachingcontemporary international history. I havetried todistinguishdimensions that are important enough to contain both durable and specificelementsand that thereforeseem to become important avenuestoour under-standingof theCold War system.Likeanyonetalkingabout thepast and thefuture,I may,of course,turnouttobemostly wrong– theremaybeothernew

paradigmsbesidethoseI havedescribedherethatwill dominatethefieldintenyears’ time.What I amcertainof, however, isthat theremarkableability thatinternational historianshaveshownuptonowtousenewevidencetofeedintooldinterpretationswill notcontinuetodominate,andthatinthefuturewewillbelookingatamuchmorediversefieldofapproachesandinterpretationsthananyof usthought possible beforetheColdWar ended.

. Friedman,TheLexusand theOliveTree (NewYork, ), ; for morecritical viewsof thesystemthat replaced the Cold War see Anthony Giddens, “The BBC Reith Lectures” athttp:/ /www.lse.ac.uk/Giddens/ ;andAmartya Sen,Development asFreedom (Oxford, ).

. Robert Buzzanco, “What Happened to the New Left? Toward a Radical Reading of American Foreign Relations,”Diplomatic History (Fall ): –, and thedebatebetweenBuzzancoandhiscriticsonH-DIPLO discussionlogsstartingin October (http:/ /www.h-net.msu.edu/~diplo/). Interestingly, Buzzanco, in his footnotes, lists the works of only four

non-Americanscholars– Marx, Lenin,Bukharin,andGeir Lundestad.. Another useful approach is the comparison with other periods and systems. See, for

instance,Paul Kennedy, TheRiseand Fall of theGreat Powers:Economic Changeand Mili tary Con fl ict from to (London, ); and thecritique in Torbjørn Knutsen, TheRiseand Fall of World Orders (Manchester, ).SeealsoB.Teschke, “Geopolitical Relationsin theEuropean MiddleAges:Historyand Theory,”International Organization , no. ():– .


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