Transcript Cold War
East Asia and The Origins of the Cold War Historiography of the Cold War • Nationalist School Historiography of the Cold War • Nationalist School "The brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression." --Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1967 Historiography of the Cold War • Revisionist School Historiography of the Cold War • Revisionist School “He [Truman] promoted an ideology and politics of Cold War confrontation that became the modus operandi of successor administrations for the next two generations.” --Arnold Offner, 1999 Historiography of the Cold War • Realist School Historiography of the Cold War • Realist School “By 1949, US officials, non-governmental opinion molders, and ordinary citizens were exhibiting a selfrighteous confidence in the complete validity of America's policies, and of the total evil of international communism, that made clear thinking and wise diplomacy difficult.” --Ralph Levering, 2001 Historiography of the Cold War • Post-Revisionist School Historiography of the Cold War • Post-Revisionist School “After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were doomed to be antagonists.... There probably was never any real possibility that the post1945 relationship could be anything but hostility verging on conflict... Traditions, belief systems, [close contact], and convenience ... all combined to stimulate antagonism, and almost no factor operated in either country to hold it back.” --Ernest May, 1984 George Kennan and the Long Telegram George Kennan and the Long Telegram “It [Marxism] is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability. Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced [the] country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regimes. This is why Soviet purposes most always be solemnly clothed in trappings of Marxism.” George Kennan and the Long Telegram “A policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.” --Kennan, Sources of Soviet Conduct, 1947 Nikolai Novikov and the Soviet Long Telegram “The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopoly capital, is characterized in the postwar period by a striving for world supremacy… Careful note should be taken of the fact that the preparation by the United State for the future is being conducted with the prospect of war against the Soviet Union, which in the eyes of the American imperialists is the main obstacle in the path of the United States to world domination.” Step 1: Pre-WWII “The Last Decisive Battle” Step 1: Pre-WWII • Allied Intervention (1918) “The Last Decisive Battle” Step 1: Pre-WWII • Allied Intervention (1918) • Non-recognition policy “The Last Decisive Battle” Step 2: World War II • Second Front Step 3: Cooperation and Suspicion (1945-6) • Baruch Plan (1946) Step 4: The Iron Curtain Emerges (194749) • Truman Doctrine (1947) “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Step 4: The Iron Curtain Emerges (194749) • Marshall Plan (1947) Step 5: The Final Straws (1949-50) • Chinese Civil War (1911-49) Step 5: The Final Straws (1950) • NSC-68 "The Soviet Union is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose absolute authority over the rest of the world." Step 5: The Final Straws (1950) • NSC-68 “[The US] must strike out on a bold and massive program of rebuilding the West’s defensive potential… and to meet each challenge promptly and unequivocally. This means virtual abandonment by the US of trying to distinguish between national and global security.”