The Fifty Years War

The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941-1991

Richard Crockatt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134779345
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is an authoritative and comprehensive history of the Fifty Years' war and the relationship that dominated world politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

For fifty years relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were deciding factors in international affairs. Available for the first time in paperback, Richard Crockatt's acclaimed book is an examination of this relationship in its global context. It breaks new ground in seeking a synthesis of historical narrative and analysis of the global structures within which superpower relations developed. Attention is given to economic as well as political and military factors.

Part I

PERSPECTIVES

1
INTRODUCTION
The Fifty Years War

For fifty years relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were the deciding factor in international affairs. War against Germany brought them together in 1941 in an alliance which was decisive in securing Germany’s defeat, but victory ultimately drove them apart, giving rise to the state of continuous, if fluctuating, antagonism which we know as cold war. No open hostilities took place between the United States and the Soviet Union, yet for the bulk of the period each armed against the other as if for war. Even their brief alliance against Germany was plagued by mistrust and misgivings. Since these loomed ever larger as the hot war against Germany gave way to cold war, and since the US–Soviet relationship was the determining factor in both the anti-Axis alliance and the shaping of the post-war world, it seems appropriate to view both within the same frame. In short, the upheaval of the Second World War set the geopolitical scene for the cold war.

In December 1991, following the re-drawing of the political map of central Europe, the Soviet Union itself finally disintegrated and with it the cold war. In the space of little more than a generation the international system of states had undergone two earthquakes, the epicentres of which both lay in Europe, the seat of the modern system of states dating from the seventeenth century.

Such transformations demand explanations of the kind which could not be fully offered while the cold war was still in progress. Research into the various episodes of US–Soviet relations over the past fifty years has grown to unmanageable proportions. It is now accompanied by equally urgent questioning of the reasons for the Soviet collapse, spurred on by bafflement at its sheer suddenness and the consequent shock it supplied to assumptions about the durability – the apparent givenness – of the cold war system. Notoriously, few commentators predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Faced with the enormity of such events we grasp for metaphors where the facts are so legion and diverse in their implications.

The great temptation is to read history backwards. Knowing the outcome of events, we are inclined to construct accounts of history which lead inevitably to the known conclusion.Nor is hindsight necessarily always blind or partial. It is in fact one important advantage which the historian possesses over participants in historical events. Nevertheless, an adequate account of the origins, growth, and collapse of the cold war will be one which balances hindsight against awareness of the contingencies of events as they were experienced by contemporaries. That demands of the historian both detachment and engagement. It may be that the present moment is peculiarly apt for such a balancing act, since the events in question are close enough for their pulse still to be felt but distant enough – by reason of the radical discontinuity supplied by the Soviet collapse – to be grasped as history.As suggested above, the major premise of this book is that the half century from 1941 to 1991 is best understood as a whole. In destroying the pre-war balance of power the Second World War created the conditions under which US–Soviet rivalry would come to form the basis of a new world balance of power. For all the manifest global shifts and upheavals between 1945 and 1991 US–Soviet rivalry was a constant and for much of the period dominated international politics. Such schematic statements clearly demand justification. It is the purpose of this chapter to outline the aims and methods adopted in the book as a whole, providing a general mapping of US– Soviet relations within the framework of global political change.

A QUESTION OF SCALE

Understanding the recent past is like trying to read a map which lacks a scale. Events which loom large as they occur often prove to be of minor importance when viewed in retrospect. On the other hand, apparently minor shifts of policy assume major proportions when, with the passage of time, their full ramifications become visible. Unfortunately, providing an appropriate scale is much more difficult for the historian than for the cartographer. The cartographer simply settles on a framework whose dimensions remain fixed and uniformly applicable. A ruler is all that is needed to establish the true proportions between the features on the map.

By contrast, the historian’s scale is constantly in motion.The calendar, the historian’s only fixed point of reference, indicates when events occurred but not precisely how important they are, since that involves judgements which vary according to the position and experience of the observer. Even the most obviously global events – such as the Second World War – affected nations in fundamentally different ways, and in some cases scarcely at all. The location of the historian both in space and time critically affects the scale adopted and the character of the map which results.

A sequence of events from the recent past will illustrate the dimensions of the problem. In the early 1980s, as the superpower détente of the late 1960s and 1970s wound down, it became common to speak of the emergence of a ‘new’ or ‘second’ cold war (Chomsky et al. 1982; Halliday 1983).Whoever was to blame for the downturn in US–Soviet relations, it seemed clear that détente was dead. The succession of crises from the Angolan revolution in 1975, to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in the same year, in addition to Soviet intervention in the Horn of Africa and insurgency in El Salvador, seemed to indicate that détente had done little to moderate superpower rivalry in the Third World. These events, coupled with the deployment of new intermediate-range nuclear weapons by both sides in Europe and the halt in the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) process, ushered in a period of hostility in US–Soviet relations comparable in scope and intensity with the early post-war years. Détente, already moribund in the later years of the Carter administration, was apparently buried by the time of the election of President Reagan in 1980. The new president embarked on rhetoric and policies which were more nakedly confrontational than anything since the days of John Foster Dulles in the mid-1950s. There is room for much debate about the interpretation of these events, an issue which will be addressed later in this book, but there can be little doubt that US– Soviet relations had entered a new and dangerous phase. The resurgence of the long quiescent anti-nuclear movement in the West was one indication of the depth of popular concern over the revival of cold war politics.

Within a few years, however, these events appeared in a very different light. In 1987 President Reagan, who in 1983 had labelled the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire’, put his signature to the first arms reduction (as opposed to arms control) treaty ever negotiated between the superpowers, he had established a cordial, even warm relationship with the new Soviet leadership, and relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in general were perhaps closer than during the period of détente in the early 1970s. The second cold war looks to have been a minor blip on the changing graph of US–Soviet relations, a matter of rhetoric rather than substance, and an event whose significance has been exaggerated by political observers.

How are these different perspectives to be explained, let alone reconciled? Evidently much depends on the length of the time-scale adopted. Viewed in the short term, the second cold war did represent a novel departure in US–Soviet relations. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for example, was in line with a general expansion of Soviet intervention in the Third World during the latter half of the 1970s.These developments, like the build-up of Soviet naval power and other categories of armaments, were matters of fact not rhetoric. On the American side one need only look at the substantial increases in the American defence budgets adopted by the Reagan administration to be aware that here too we are speaking of matters of substance. Furthermore, the US arms buildup was associated with a distinct swing to the right in domestic politics, expressing a repudiation of permissive social values at home and a distaste for compromise abroad. The Reagan presidency brought revised assumptions about the nature of the Soviet threat and the appropriate means of dealing with it. Reagan’s Manichaean vision of the world order as a moral battleground between the principles of good and evil, and not merely an arena for competition between nation-states, was at several removes from the complex Realpolitik of the Nixon–Kissinger approach to world politics during the years of détente. In short, it is arguable that there was a qualitative change in the US–Soviet relationship during this period. It was not, of course, entirely novel, in that it disinterred old cold war attitudes dating from the 1940s and 1950s, but it was to be sharply distinguished from the period of détente.

The alternative way of viewing the second cold war is to place it firmly within the overall framework of US–Soviet relations since the Second World War. From this standpoint the oscillations between periods of confrontation and détente are less significant than the fact that both issued from a fundamental pattern or structure which was continuous from the mid-1940s to the late 1980s.That structure was defined by the geopolitical conditions and ideological rivalry established after the Second World War.The division of Europe, the growth of parallel alliance systems, the arms race, and the extension of superpower competition to the Third World constituted a cold war ‘system’, so it can be argued, which underlay periods of détente no less than the periods of more overt conflict between the superpowers (Cox 1990: 30–1). From this viewpoint détente itself was conditioned by cold war relations; it was an episode in the cold war rather than a departure from it.This interpretation does not deny that significant changes in the behaviour of the superpowers took place in the early 1980s, but it does question whether they signalled a basic alteration in the underlying conditions of superpower relations.

If, to adopt another change of scale, we take as our benchmark, not the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987 but the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since 1989, then the second cold war looks even less like the fundamental upheaval it appeared to be at the time. The comprehensive demise of communism now allows us to see more clearly than ever that cold war was the defining characteristic of the US–Soviet relationship. Like the shooting star which shines most brightly just before it burns out, the second cold war might from this perspective be seen as the dying phase of the cold war.

Furthermore, the upheavals since 1989 have exposed an instructive ambiguity in the term ‘cold war’ itself which helps the historian to gain a perspective on the whole post-war period. ‘Cold war’ has been used in two distinct ways. In its more restricted sense it refers to (roughly) the two decades following the Second World War during which the main outlines of the US–Soviet relationship were established and in which open antagonism predominated. By the late 1960s some commentators began to ask what was left of the cold war and concluded that not much remained (Thomas 1969; Buchan 1972: 34–5).The second cold war of the 1980s was so called precisely because it recalled that earlier period and seemed out of line with the détente of the 1970s.

In the first meaning of the term, then, cold war refers to particular periods and a particular type of behaviour. It is to be contrasted sharply with détente. The second meaning of the term refers to the underlying conditions of the US–Soviet relationship which persisted until what has been called ‘the second Russian Revolution’ (Roxburgh 1991).When in the late 1980s commentators and political leaders began to talk of ‘the end of the cold war’ it was this structural condition they meant.They meant also, to be sure,declining antagonism and a growing climate of cooperation, but what distinguished this climate from the détente of the 1970s was the fact that it went along with fundamental structural change: nothing less than the entire geopolitical order which had been established in the early post-war years. Détente, by contrast, involved a ratification of the post-war European status quo, including mutual de facto recognition by East and West Germany. The price of détente in the early 1970s was formal acknowledgement by both sides of the division of Europe. As was suggested above, this places détente firmly within the cold war framework.

THE COLD WAR AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

The above example illustrates some of the choices open to the historian in attempting to understand the recent past.The argument for employing a long perspective on the period can be reinforced by reference to the writings of certain international relations theorists who have engaged rather more explicitly than historians with the underlying principles of international politics. Since in the course of this book some of these principles will be invoked, it may be as well to refer briefly to them here.

The dominant theoretical perspective in the study of international relations, established in the early post-war period, was ‘Realism’. It posited that the key units of analysis in international politics were nation-states, that nation-states presented themselves to the outside world as coherent, integrated units pursuing rationally conceived objectives, and, furthermore, that conflicts of power (particularly military power) based on clashing national interests provided the driving force of international politics. Historians largely shared this state-centric approach and characteristically also the Realists’ preoccupation with the ‘balance of power’ as the feature of international politics which made for stability, or the lack of it, within the international system.

However, while historians, who were generally area or single nation specialists, tended to retain the emphasis on the nation-state, some theorists developed alternative ways of conceiving the international context within which nation-states operated. Two lines of development deserve particular mention.The first, termed ‘Neorealism’, was, as its name suggests, an outgrowth of Realism.While retaining the view that nation-states were the basic units of international politics, Neorealists denied that the character of the units determined the structure and behaviour of the international system. The functioning of the system was determined not by the capabilities of the units but by the particular position they assumed relative to each other within the overall system. Nation states, that is to say, could be considered as being essentially alike for the purposes of analysing the characteristics of the system. In the words of the most prominent Neorealist theorist, Kenneth Waltz:

To define a structure requires ignoring how units relate with one another (how they interact) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to one another (how they are arranged or positioned). Interactions . . . take place at the level of the units. How units stand in relation to one another, the way they are arranged or positioned, is not a property of the units.The arrangement of units is a property of the system.

(Waltz 1979: 80)

The characteristics of any particular international system are set by two main features: anarchy and polarity (multipolarity or bipolarity).Anarchy exists in international politics because there is no overarching sovereign body which exerts governmental or organizing power over the states which compose it.There exists, that is to say, no body in the international system which exerts power comparable to that which national governments wield over their own territory. International law and such bodies as the United Nations are limited in their effects by the willingness of sovereign nations to accede to their rulings. There is as yet no compulsion to do so.¹ For this reason the international system reflects any particular given distribution of power. This generally takes the form either of a multipolar system, in which several Great Powers form the peak of a hierarchy of powers (such as existed between the world wars), or a bipolar system, whose shape is set by the presence of two dominant powers (such as existed for much of the cold war) (Hollis and Smith 1991: 101–4).

On the face of it, adoption of the most rigorous form of systems theory would seem to place the bulk of diplomatic history on the rubbish heap, since the latter is premised on the assumption that what goes on inside nation-states – not least policymaking, personalities, ideology, national traditions and so on – are causal factors in producing change in the international system. Indeed, one of the criticisms levelled at systems theory (at least in its most rigorous form) is that it has not been able satisfactorily to explain how change in the international system is possible without some reference to the inner workings of nation-states (Ruggie 1986: 141–52).

There is much, however, which systems theory can offer the historian. The chief gain lies in the concept of system itself, in that it allows us to understand the foreign policies of states as being determined, at least in part (a qualification we shall return to) by constraints and opportunities supplied by the given distribution of power. For example, many historians write as if the origin of the cold war is to be explained wholly by reference to the intentions of the nations in question. This has frequently meant that interpretations have rested on ascribing blame to one or another of the major powers. Depending on one’s political or national viewpoint, either the Soviet Union or the United States was regarded as the initiator of the cold war and the other as the reactive power. In particular, histories written during the first two decades of the cold war tended to adopt this approach. This was a consequence not simply of national or ideological bias but of the framework of analysis itself which served to abstract the nation-state from its international setting.

A systems approach, furthermore, offers insights into how different structures tend to produce different types and levels of international conflict and different forms of alliances among nations. Much debate has taken place about whether multipolar or bipolar systems are more conducive to stability (Deutsch and Singer 1964; Waltz 1964). For present purposes, however, the important point is that bipolarity in the post-war international system, in conjunction with nuclear weapons, tended to lock the superpowers into tense relations at the centre and extend international conflict to the ‘periphery’ of the system. That may or may not be described as stability; doubtless it depends on one’s location within the system. At any rate, according to the Neorealist approach, as compared with multipolar systems, bipolar systems are less likely to produce war between the major powers.

However, such a conclusion is warranted only if one assumes that structures determine the behaviour of states. Two modifications to this position are necessary for the historian to be able to make use of the systems approach. One indeed comes from Kenneth Waltz himself who, in a revised version of his theory, has conceded that ‘thinking in terms of systems dynamics does not replace unit-level analysis nor end the search for sequences of cause and effect’ (Waltz 1986: 344). In short, Waltz acknowledges that it is necessary to analyse what goes on inside nation-states in order to understand the full workings of the system.

A second modification of the systems approach is to insist, against the advice of some theorists, that it is necessary specifically to relate the system and nation-state levels of analysis. ‘We may utilize one level here and another there,’ argues J. David Singer, ‘but we cannot afford to shift our orientation in the midst of a study’ (Singer 1969: 28). The historian, however, will often find that this is precisely what is required. The most important questions for the historian of international relations arise in the interaction between the international system and the nations of which it is composed, not least because the internal character of nation-states, their ambitions, policies, and capacities to exert power are manifestly c...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• PART I: PERSPECTIVES
• PART II: THE EMERGENCE OF A BIPOLAR WORLD, 1941–1953
• PART III: GLOBALISM AND THE LIMITS OF BIPOLARITY, 1953–1964
• PART IV: DÉTENTE AND ITS LIMITS, 1965–1981
• PART V: COLD WAR VERSUS INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: THE DENOUEMENT, 1981–1991
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY