Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990

366 Pages·2012·1.433 MB·English

by  Frédéric Bozo

V   E   C W
Studies in Contemporary European History
Editors:
Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Director of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Studien,
Potsdam, Germany
Henry Rousso, Senior Fellow at the Institut d’historie du temps present
(Centre national de la recherché scientifi que, Paris) and co-founder of the
European network “EURHISTXX”
Volume 1
Between Utopia and Disillusionment: A Narrative of the Political Transformation
in Eastern Europe
Henri Vogt
Volume 2
The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany,
1898–1914
Michael E. Nolan
Volume 3
Confl icted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories
Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger with the Collaboration of
Annelie Ramsbrock
Volume 4
Playing Politics with History: The Bundestag Inquiries into East Germany
Andrew H. Bea(cid:308) ie
Volume 5
Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism,
1870–1939
Christopher J. Fischer
Volume 6
A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance
Edited by Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth
Volume 7
Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe
Edited by Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens
Volume 8
Children, Families, and States: Time Policies of Childcare, Preschool, and
Primary Education in Europe
Edited by Karen Hagemann, Konrad H. Jarausch, and Cristina Allemann-Ghionda
Volume 9
Social Policy in the Smaller European Union States
Edited by Gary B. Cohen, Ben W. Ansell, Jane Gingrich, and Robert Henry Cox
Volume 10
A State of Peace in Europe: West Germany and the CSCE, 1966–1975
Petri Hakkarainen
Volume 11
Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945–1990
Edited by Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, Bernd Rother, and N. Piers Ludlow
V E
ISIONS OF THE ND
C W
OF THE OLD AR
E , 1945–1990
IN UROPE
(
Edited by
Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey,
Bernd Rother and N. Piers Ludlow
Berghahn Books
NEW YORK • OXFORD
First published in 2012 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2012 Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey,
Bernd Rother and N. Piers Ludlow
All rights reserved.
Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visions of the end of the Cold War / edited by Frederic Bozo ... [et al.].
p. cm. – (Studies in contemporary European history ; v. 11)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-85745-288-7 (hardcover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-85745-370-9
(ebook)
1. Cold War. 2. World politics–1945-1989. 3. Balance of power. I. Bozo,
Frédéric.
D843.V527 2012
909.82’5–dc23
2011039175
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-0-85745-288-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-85745-370-9 (ebook)
CONTENTS
(
Introduction 1
Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, Bernd Rother and N. Piers Ludlow
I. Crystallizing the Cold War
1. George Kennan’s Course, 1947–1949: A Gaullist before
de Gaulle 17
John L. Harper
2. The Bilderberg Group and the End of the Cold War:
The Disengagement Debates of the 1950s 30
Thomas W. Gijswijt
II. Stalin’s Death and After: A Missed Opportunity?
3. Moscow’s Campaign against the Cold War, 1948–1955 47
Geoffrey Roberts
4. Stalin’s Death and Anglo-American Visions of Ending
the Cold War, 1953 61
Jaclyn Stanke
5. Soviet Intellectuals after Stalin’s Death and Their Visions
of the Cold War’s End 74
Vladislav Zubok
III. Alternative Visions of the 1960s
6. Towards a New Concert of Europe: De Gaulle’s Vision
of a Post–Cold War Europe 91
Garret Martin
vi | Contents
7. Franz Josef Strauß and the End of the Cold War 105
Ronald J. Granieri
IV. A Helsinki Vision?
8. A Very British Vision of Détente: The United Kingdom’s
Foreign Policy during the Helsinki Process, 1969–1975 121
Martin D. Brown
9. The EC Nine’s Vision and A(cid:308) empts at Ending the Cold War 134
Angela Romano
V. Visions and Dissent in the 1970s
10. ‘The Transformation of the Other Side’: Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik
and the Liberal Peace Concept 149
Go(cid:308) fried Niedhart
11. Neither in One Bloc, Nor in the Other: Berlinguer’s Vision
of the End of the Cold War 163
Laura Fasanaro
12. Overcoming Bloc Division from Below: Jiří Hájek and
the CSCE Appeal of Charter 77 177
Christian Domnitz
VI. Vision or Status Quo in the 1970s
13. Henry Kissinger: Vision or Status Quo? 193
Jussi Hanhimäki
14. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and His Vision of the End of
the Cold War 208
Georges-Henri Soutou
VII. Evolutionary Visions and Unexpected Results in the 1980s
15. Ending the Cold War, Unintentionally 225
Gregory F. Domber
16. Common Security as a Way to Overcome the (Second) Cold War?
Willy Brandt’s Strategy for Peace in the 1980s 239
Bernd Rother
Contents | vii
17. Which Socialism a(cid:286) er the Cold War? Gorbachev’s Vision and
Its Impact on the French Le(cid:286) 253
Marie-Pierre Rey
18. Thatcher’s Double-Track Road to the End of the Cold War:
The Irreconcilability of Liberalization and Preservation 266
Ilaria Poggiolini
19. Mi(cid:308) errand’s Vision and the End of the Cold War 280
Frédéric Bozo
20. Visions of Ending the Cold War: Triumphalism and U.S. Soviet
Policy in the 1980s 294
Beth A. Fischer
21. The Power of Imagination: How Reagan’s SDI Inadvertently
Contributed to the End of the Cold War 309
Marilena Gala
Bibliography 323
Notes on Contributors 344
Index 350

INTRODUCTION
(
Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey,
Bernd Rother and N. Piers Ludlow
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 quickly came to symbolize
the end of the Cold War as a whole, including the liberation of Eastern Eu-
rope from Soviet rule in 1989, the unifi cation of Germany in 1990 and the
break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its twentieth anniversary in autumn
2009 was therefore an opportunity to celebrate not just that particular
event – however meaningful – but an extraordinary period that in barely
two years led from the dismantling of the Iron Curtain to the liquidation
of the whole ‘Yalta’ order. Yet the celebrations were not only a commemo-
rative moment but also a historiographical one, marking the culmination
of almost twenty years of ceaseless scholarly production on the end of
the Cold War. Innumerable academic events were held on the anniversary
itself in order to revisit the period, and a wealth of new works predict-
ably came to enrich an already considerable literature. Furthermore, this
clearly is not the end: as historical evidence continues to become accessi-
ble as a result of the regular opening of archives a(cid:286) er the standard twenty
to thirty years, the end of the Cold War is likely to keep historians busy for
quite some time to come.
There are numerous explanations for the infatuation that continues to
prevail among scholars and the general public with the end of the Cold
War. The sheer historical importance of the period ranks high amongst
them: the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s – o(cid:286) en described as the
‘revolutions of 1989’ – were hugely momentous because they terminated
four decades of East-West confl ict, of the division of Germany, and of the
domination of communism in Eastern Europe, all of which had defi ned
the second half of the twentieth century on the continent. In a sense, the
1989–91 period even marked the defi nitive end of the ‘short’ twentieth
century itself – an era of total confl icts and totalitarian ideologies.
But another reason for the fascination aroused by these events is their
unexpected and, indeed, their unpredicted character. To be sure, by the
Notes for this chapter begin on page 13.
2 | Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, Bernd Rother, N. Piers Ludlow
late 1980s the notion that the Cold War would end someday was generally
recognized, but usually more as a theoretical point than as a defi nite pre-
diction – in fact, the longer the Cold War lasted, the more it was perceived
as likely to last for an indefi nite period of time. In truth, those individu-
als – whether decision-makers or thinkers – who had eff ectively foreseen
the end of the Cold War as it happened were few and far between. Even
less numerous, in particular, were those who had sensed that the process
could be both as rapid and as orderly as it turned out to be, a combination
that certainly remains to this day the most remarkable characteristic of the
events of 1989–91.1
And yet the end of the Cold War had been a constant and recurrent
theme throughout the whole duration of the Cold War itself. Ever since
its inception in the second half of the 1940s, statesmen, diplomats, politi-
cians, academics and others had refl ected on ways of ending the East-West
confl ict and overcoming its undesirable consequences. As the Cold War
se(cid:308) led in – most clearly by the late 1960s – the East-West status quo no
doubt increasingly came to be seen by most contemporaries as an endur-
ing reality. Yet the situation was, arguably, never considered to be irrevers-
ible in the long term: even at times when the established order appeared
to have become all but perennial, the need to overcome it and the ways to
do so were more or less openly or more or less intensely and passionately
discussed.
It is remarkable, therefore, that recent historiography has not more
systematically sought to explore and investigate the visions of the end of
the Cold War that were articulated and off ered before the end of the Cold
War took place. This is precisely the subject of this volume. The follow-
ing collection of essays, then, is not an umpteenth book on the end of the
Cold War itself.2 Rather, it is an a(cid:308) empt at envisaging the entire Cold War
through a prism that has arguably not been used systematically by histori-
ans or international relations specialists before: the retrospective analysis
of the conceptions of the demise of the ‘Yalta’ system that emerged in the
course of the four decades of Cold War.
The lack of a systematic exploration of those visions is not entirely sur-
prising. The multifaceted character of the subject ma(cid:308) er is one possible
explanation. Many diff erent types of actors may indeed be considered in
one way or another to have off ered, or to have been associated with, a
particular vision of the end of the Cold War. The most identifi able case is
of course that of the statesman: there are numerous instances of promi-
nent fi gures – mostly decision-makers or political leaders – whose careers
have been marked by their articulation of a clear, explicit vision of ending
the Cold War. George Kennan, Charles de Gaulle, Willy Brandt, Mikhail
Gorbachev, François Mi(cid:308) errand and – with strong nuances, as seen below