Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism

367 Pages·2004·5.155 MB·English

by  Ellen Schrecker

C O LD WAR
T R IU M P H A L IS M

COLD WAR
TRIUMPHALISM
The Misuse of History After
the Fall of Communism
EDITED BY ELLEN SCHRECKER
THE NEW PRESS
NEW YORK
LONDON
Compilation © 2004 by Ellen Schrecker
Individual essays © by each author
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced,
in Iny form, without written permission
from the publisher.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2004
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Cold War triumphalism : the misuse of history after the fall of communism /
edited by Ellen Schrecker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56584-899-3
I. United States—Foreign relations—1989- 2. United States—Politics and
government—1989- 3. United States—Foreign relations—1945-1989—
Philosophy. 4. United States—History—1945—Philosophy. 5. World
Politics—1945—1989—Philosophy. 6. Cold War. 7. Cold War—Influence.
I. Schrecker, Ellen.
E840.C646 2004
32773'oo9,o49—dc22 2003061501
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large,
commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing indus­
try. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and
is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural,
and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.
The New Press
38 Greene Street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10013
www.thenewpress.com
In the United Kingdom:
6 Salem Road
London W2 4BU
Composition by dixI
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Cold War Triumphalism and the Real Cold War i
Ellen Schrecker
PART i: INTELLECTUALS
1 / Moral Judgments and the Cold War: Reflections on Reinhold
Niebuhr, William Appleman Williams, and John Lewis Gaddis 27
Leo R Ribuffo
2 / Time of Illusion: Post—Cold War Visions of the World 71
Bruce Cumings
PART IL ECONOMICS
3 / Market Triumphalism and the Wishful Liberals 103
Nelson Lichtenstein
4 / Cold War Triumphalism and the Deformation of the
American Economy 126
Michael A. Bernstein
part hi: the past
5 / “Papers of a Dangerous Tendency ": From Major Andre's Boot
to the VENONA Files 149
Maurice Isserman and Ellen Schrecker
6 / The Myth of the Berlin Blockade and the Early Cold War 174
Carolyn Eisenberg
[v]
CONTENTS • VI
7 / The United States, the United Nations, and the Other
Post-Cold War World Order: Internationalism and
Unilateralism in the American Century 201
Jessica Wang
PART iv: THE PRESENT
8 / The Three Cold Wars 237
Chalmers Johnson
9 / Still Stuck in the Big Muddy 262
Marilyn B. Young
10 / Remembrance of Empires Past: 9/11 and the
End of the Cold War 274
Corey Robin
Notes 299
Contributors 341
Acknowledgments 345
Index 347
C O LD WAR
T R IU M P H A L IS M

I N T R O D U C T I O N
Cold War Triumphalism
and the Real Cold War
Ellen Schrecker
F or more than forty years the Cold War loomed over the world,
a bruising contest between two nuclear-armed superpowers
and their allies in which the fate of the earth seemed to hang in
the balance. At its height, each side viewed the struggle as an im­
mutable clash between incompatible political and economic systems.
Each, of course, claimed to be on the defensive—the Americans pro­
tecting Western civilization from an expansionist revolutionary power
that had gobbled up Eastern Europe and was threatening the rest of
the world, while the Soviets saw themselves as the beleaguered bastion
of international socialism, fending off rapacious capitalists. During the
course of the conflict, both sides built empires, developed weapons of
mass destruction, and fought proxy wars that killed millions of people.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Unwilling and unable to use force to keep
its rickety imperium together, the Soviet Union simply fell apart.
Within a few months, Communist governments had disappeared
from the map of Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
was no more.
While the USSR’s disintegration was largely caused by its own in­
ternal structural problems compounded by the doomed reforms of
Mikhail Gorbachev, it was greeted by many in the West, conservatives
[i]
INTRODUCTION • 2
in particular, as a great victory for the United States.1 “The collapse
of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe,” hard-liner Richard Perle
proclaimed, “is in large measure a result of the postwar strength and
determination of the alliance of Western democracies.”2 Perles for­
mulation—and one could cite hundreds of similar ones—has become
a truism in the world of politicians and talking heads. Communism’s
failure was America’s success. That the denizens of Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union might also have had a hand in the process
rarely figures in the story. Instead, it was the strategic resourcefulness
of the American government, the technological dynamism of the
American economy, and the moral and cultural superiority of the
American system that simply (but peacefully) overwhelmed the back­
ward tyrants of Moscow. Our perseverance, Commentary’s Joshua
Muravchik noted, won the day:
After victory in World War I we turned inward and reaped unprece­
dented catastrophe. After World War II we assumed the burdens of
international engagement and were rewarded by a triumph beyond
our fondest dreams. We faced the most puissant enemy we or anyone
had ever known, and we brought it down without having to fight a
big war.3
Despite its massive distortion of the recent past, this interpretation
dominates contemporary political discourse—at least within the
United States. Outside of the left and a handful of academics, few even
question the notion that America “won” the Cold War. Whether there
actually was such a victory and what that victory entails are seemingly
beyond debate. As a result, there has been no postwar reassessment of
the U.S.-Soviet conflict, no final accounting of its impact on American
society and the rest of the world, not even an attempt to explain why,
given its anticlimactic outcome, it dragged on for so many years.
Instead, an undemanding patriotic celebration prevails, glorifying
Washington’s past actions in order to justify its present ones. This tri­
umphalism serves a partisan function as well: it supplies a supposedly
irrefutable basis for disparaging left-wing critics of the Cold War,
while it prepares the same historical dustbin for those who question
current policies. The contributors to this volume, though differing
among themselves aboutthe wisdom and morality of the Bush admin-