Air University Review, May-June 1968

Who Started the Cold War?

Herman S. Wolk

. . . It is only with the progress of historical science on a particular subject that men come really to recognize that there was a terrible knot beyond the ingenuity of man to untie. . . . In historical perspective we learn to be a little more sorry for both parties than they know how to be for one another.

-Herbert Butterfield

June 21, 1968, marks the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin airlift. There is a certain ironic propriety in the fact that this anniversary should fall during a time in which another one of those “great debates” is raging among those who deal with and think about American foreign policy. We have apparently entered one of those cyclic periods when the very intellectual roots of U.S. foreign policy are being called into question. And although at first glance it might appear that the war in Vietnam is the reason for this questioning, a deeper probe might also lead one to believe that, while Vietnam is certainly one of the reasons, it is not by any means the sole rationale.

The last few years have been witness to a plethora of books about the Cold War. How did it start? What is its essential character? Is it over? At the risk of formulating a dangerous generalization (something these books are not devoid of), one might conclude that most of the recent works have been written by what we might term either “consensus historians” or “revisionists.” Both terms may be somewhat unfair to some of the writers, but one or the other seems to fit a majority of them nicely. Another caveat: It should be recognized that the word “consensus” remains one of that coterie of words that have come into vogue in recent years and that remain curiously unsatisfying. Other such words—sometimes flowing with overbearing regularity from those who pontificate on the Georgetown cocktail circuit—are “viable,” “commitment,” and “sophisticated.” One ought to beware.

The consensus historians have argued that essentially the Cold War was a result of ineluctable circumstance: the Second World War decimated Europe, shattering the structure of power that had contained the Soviet Union, and into that vacuum Stalin moved, with the result that America and its allies felt compelled to move in response. In general, supporting this thesis have been Marshall D. Schulman, Beyond the Cold War (Yale University Press, 1966); Charles Burton Marshall, The Cold War: A Concise History (Franklin Watts, 1965); and both Raymond Aron and Hans Morgenthau in many of their works.

On the other hand, the revisionists have argued that the U.S. was at least equally if not primarily to blame for the evolution of the Cold War. Professor D. F. Fleming, in his massive tome The Cold War and Its Origins (Doubleday, 1961), led the revisionist attack by charging the U.S. with caprice and with a gigantic misreading of history. The Cold War, said Fleming, was a direct outgrowth of American interventionism, militarism, and our almost pathological obsession with anti-Communism. Several more recent revisionist works are Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (Simon and Schuster, 1965); Richard J. Barnet and Marcus S. Raskin, After 20 Years: Alternatives to the Cold War in Europe (Random House, 1965); Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff, Power and Impotence: The Failure of Americas Foreign Policy (Random House, 1966); and Ronald Steel, Pax Americana (The Viking Press, 1967).

Professor Louis J. Halle of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and late of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff has now given us a somewhat different work which—while falling in the category of consensus—is not easily categorized.*  This fact in itself speaks volumes for Halle because he has written a book which is deeply thoughtful, detached, and enriched by a kind of melancholy wisdom.

Halle says that since the end of the eighteenth century four wars have been fought to maintain the European balance of power. The fourth is the Cold War. According to Halle, the Cold War was the product of an “irreducible dilemma” in which men were lashed to the circumstances of the historical flow. “The essence of history. . . is the contrast between the immensity of its movement and the limitations of the individuals who, often with the greatest gallantry, put themselves at grips with it.” (p. xii) Or, again: “I am not one who thinks that great men make history. Still, I would rather not do without them.” (p. 117)

The author views the Cold War more in nationalistic than ideological terms:

The behaviour of Russia under the Communists has been Russian behaviour rather than Communist behaviour. Under the Communists Russia has continued to behave essentially as it behaved under the czars. There has been the same centralization and authoritarianism. There has been the same conspiratorial approach to international relations. There has been the same profound mistrust of the outside world. There has been the same obsession with secrecy and with espionage. There has been the same cautiousness, the same capacity for retreat. There has been the same effort to achieve security by expanding the Russian space, by constantly pushing back the menacing presence of the foreigners across the Russian borders. (p. 11)

Thus, according to Professor Halle, the Cold War amounted to a “historical necessity” to which Communism was a secondary rather than an essential element.

With Europe prostrate after World War II and millions of Russians under arms, it was a great mistake, says Halle, for the U.S. to demobilize immediately after the war and completely dismantle its military machine. Although the view has been held that Washington was oblivious to power politics at the close of the war, the author—who was at the time in the State Department—maintains that Washington’s major preoccupation was nevertheless with “the deadly struggle to contain the Soviet Union that could already be foreseen.” (p. 39) The explanation for this dichotomy is that by then it was too late to persuade the public of the necessity of restoring a balance of power.

By this time, men were being driven by circumstance. Stalin probably felt that there had always been a Cold War and that it would continue after the war as before. The U.S. and Britain, on the other hand, did not feel encircled; they viewed the situation in more global terms. The Grand Alliance might be continued, as President Roosevelt saw it, in the form of the United Nations. The trouble here, as Halle sees it, was that far too much was expected of the U.N. It simply could not deliver on such a grand scale, especially as an alternative to international power balance.

The Berlin blockade in 1948-49 was the first great battle of what was already an overt Cold War. Here Halle makes what he feels to be an exceedingly important point—one that places him firmly with the so-called consensus historians. Berlin showed, for the first time in the Cold War, that nuclear weapons had indeed revolutionized strategy, for if the U.S. had not possessed nuclear weapons and longrange air power, the Soviet Union “would not have been deterred from using its local military superiority to take West Berlin by force.” (p. 166)

The weakest part of The Cold War as History is Halle’s treatment of the evolving confrontation in the Far East. Indeed he comes very close to a blanket condemnation of American Far Eastern policy since the Open Door. His judgment that Mao Tse-tung, even early in his career, disdained Communist-type discipline is certainly open to question, as is his view that both the Red Chinese under Mao and the Kuomintang under Chiang fought the Japanese equally. The idea that the Communists after the war possessed the “Mandate of Heaven” but few guns and little ammunition is not only surprisingly naive but contrary to fact, which is that the great stock of weapons of the crack Japanese Manchurian Army fell into the hands of Mao with the help of the Soviets.

Halle is guilty of contradiction in stating that it was not a foregone conclusion that the Communist Chinese would be unfriendly to the U.S. while almost in the same breath observing that “Mao’s new regime regarded the United States as the enemy. . . .” (p. 200) The author does recognize that it would have been “unseemly” for the U.S. to recognize Peking at the same time the Chinese were torturing and killing American missionaries and jailing the American Consul General in Mukden.

“Another impediment to the acceptance by the American people of the new regime’s legitimacy. . . was the Communist label that it bore, a label that was bound to subsume the whole of reality as mythically conceived by people of limited intellectual sophistication.” (p. 201) It remains debatable whether this was a matter of “sophistication” (that word again!) at all. Curiously, this doubt is stated by Halle himself in his limited indictment of Mao’s actions and brutalities. But then the Korean War starkly sharpened the confrontation and ended any possibility whatsoever of an American rapprochement with Mao. Halle’s interpretation of the Korean conflict seems to lack the sure feel he displays on European matters.

As far as military-political policy is concerned, the author refutes the widely accepted thesis that the Eisenhower-Dulles policy was solely one of massive retaliation (What of Hungary, Lebanon, Taiwan?), which was subsequently replaced by the opposite policy of flexible response under the Kennedy Administration. Dependence on the nuclear deterrent, according to Halle, diminished as the U.S.S.R. developed its own nuclear arms, and this diminution was already well advanced by the time of Dulles’s “massive retaliation” speech of 12 January 1954. At any rate, Dulles reduced the implications of that speech in an article in Foreign Affairs the following April. Halle implies that the Defense Establishment was not in fact completely foundering when the Kennedy Administration came to power. There seems to be some evidence already that historians will in the future look with a jaundiced eye upon those publicists who have already depicted with finality the alleged bankruptcy of the Eisenhower defense policies. Much that was done in the 1960s in Defense could be traced back to the mid and late 1950s, not the least of which was Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates’s pioneer establishment of the integrated targeting staff (Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff) at Headquarters Strategic Air Command.

Louis Halle echoes such contemporaries as Raymond Aron and Marshall Schulman—and, not insignificantly, also Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.—when he speculates that if it is correct to regard the Cold War as World War III, then we must at least note that it has been quite different from the two tragic and costly World Wars of this century.

The reason for the difference, I think, is that the revolutionary new weapons of the nuclear age are so deadly that their use cannot be seriously risked. . . . It follows that, so far at least, we have much to thank nuclear weapons for. Whatever the future may hold, their advent upon the scene has so far spared us much. It has kept the Cold War cold. (p. 8)

Again, in his conclusion, he observes that the inhibiting influence of nuclear weapons makes the Cold War “historically unique.” They have so far prevented a general conflict, and in them “lay the hope of the world, no less than its peril, as it moved on into an unknown future.” (p. 418)

It is exceedingly difficult to summarize and evaluate in a brief review the philosophical and historical content of Halle’s work. It is much more than a history of the Cold War; it has much to say of world politics and the interplay of international relations—and, above all, of the folly of mankind. Where Halle lines up strongest with the consensus is in his judgment that the Soviets took the initiative in the Cold War. The West, in general, reacted to this thrust, with both sides locked into the flow of historical inevitability.

Has the Cold War ended? Although optimistic about the future, Halle really doubts it. Surely it is difficult to answer in the affirmative when America and Russia confront each other in Europe, the Middle East (perhaps the most explosive locale of all), and Asia. No doubt many of the revisionists would disagree. The conflict of interests between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. persists. The international political schism is deep. And, in many respects, Germany still remains the crucial issue. In itself, this melancholy realization conjures up the divisiveness of the Cold War conflicts.

To those revisionists who argue that the U.S. is imperialistic, interventionist, and militaristic, I would point out that a close reading of post-1945 history indicates that America has not pursued domination but has—sooner or later—resisted it. Indeed, a case can be made that the United States, far from being too assertive, has been too reactive and defensive. And, of course, the pitfall presented to those who claim that we have been guilty of globalism is that by condemning America as a global policeman they end up arguing against U.S. intervention in principle anywhere.

 Finally, Professor Halle, with his learning and wisdom, reminds us that the future will not yield itself any more readily than the past. For, despite the arrogance of predicting with any sense of finality what the year 2000 will hold for a frail humanity, we simply cannot conceive of the possibilities or surprises that lie ahead.

But of course none of this relieves us from discharging our responsibilities despite our ignorance and fallibility. That is the human predicament—and there is no way out.

Silver Spring, Maryland

*Louis J. Halle, The Cold War as History (New York: Harper & Row, 1967, $6.95), 434 pp.

Contributor

Herman S. Wolk (M.A., American International College) was a historian for Hq Strategic Air Command for seven years prior to joining Hq USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1966. He served in the U.S. Army information and education program during the Korean War. He has taught history for two years and lectured on strategic nuclear deterrence and political military matters related to the Cold War. His articles have appeared in Air Force and Space Digest, Military Review, and Air University Review, and he has written several articles on deterrence and USAF subjects for Grolier’s International Encyclopedia.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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