Download Cold War and Global Hegemony, 1945-1991

Cold War and Global Hegemony, 1945-1991
We are accustomed to viewing the cold war as a determined and
heroic response of the U.S. to communist aggression spearheaded
and orchestrated by the Soviet Union. This image was carefully
constructed by presidents and their advisers in their memoirs
(1). This view also was incorporated in some of the first
scholarly works on the cold war, but was then rebutted by a wide
variety of revisionist historians who blamed officials in
Washington as well as those in Moscow for the origins of the
Soviet-American conflict (2).
Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the cold war the traditional
interpretation reemerged. John Gaddis, arguably the most eminent
historian of the cold war, wrote in the mid-1990s that the cold
war was a struggle of good versus evil, of wise and democratic
leaders in the West reacting to the crimes and inhumanity of
Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator in the Kremlin (3).
This interpretation places the cold war in a traditional
framework. It is one way to understand American foreign policy
between the end of World War II and the breakup of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1991. But for quite some
time now, historians, political scientists, and economists have
been studying the cold war in a much larger global context. They
do so because the new documents from the Soviet Union and its
former empire as well as older documents from the U.S. and its
allies suggest that Stalin conducted a more complex and
inconsistent foreign policy than previously imagined and that
U.S. officials initially did not regard Stalin, notwithstanding
his crimes and brutality, as an unacceptable partner with whom to
collaborate in stabilizing and remaking the postwar world.
Most scholars looking at Soviet documents now agree that Stalin
had no master plan to spread revolution or conquer the world. He
was determined to establish a sphere of influence in eastern
Europe where his communist minions would rule. But at the same
time, Stalin wanted to get along with his wartime allies in order
to control the rebirth of German and Japanese power, which he
assumed was inevitable. Consequently, he frequently cautioned
communist followers in France, Italy, Greece, and elsewhere to
avoid provocative actions that might frighten or antagonize his
wartime allies. Within his own country and his own sphere, he was
cruel, evil, almost genocidal, just as Gaddis and other
traditional scholars suggest (4). Yet U.S. and British officials
were initially eager to work with him. They rarely dwelled upon
his domestic barbarism. Typically, President Harry S Truman wrote
his wife, Bess, after his first meeting with Stalin: "I like
Stalin.... He is straightforward. Knows what he wants and will
compromise when he can't get it." Typically, W. Averell Harriman,
the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, remonstrated that "If it were
possible to see him /Stalin/ more frequently, many of our
difficulties would be overcome"(5).
Yet the difficulties were not overcome. American fears grew. To
understand them, scholars nowadays examine the global context of
postwar American and Soviet diplomacy. They see the contest
between American freedom and Soviet totalitarianism as part of an
evolving fabric of international economic and political
conditions in the twentieth century. After World War II, they
say, U.S. leaders assumed the role of hegemon, or leader, of the
international economy and container of Soviet power. To explain
why, scholars examine the operation of the world economy and the
distribution of power in the international system. They look at
transnational ideological conflict, the disruption of colonial
empires, and the rise of revolutionary nationalism in Asia and
Africa. They explain the spread of the cold war from Europe to
Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America by focusing on
decolonization, the rise of newly independent states, and the
yearnings of peoples everywhere to modernize their countries and
enjoy higher standards of living. Yet the capacity of the U.S. to
assume the roles of hegemon, balancer, and container depended on
more than its wealth and strength; the success of the U.S. also
depended on the appeal of its ideology, the vitality of its
institutions, and the attractiveness of its culture of mass
consumption -- what many scholars nowadays call "soft power" (6).
At the end of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged
as the two strongest nations in the world and as exemplars of
competing models of political economy. But it was a peculiar
bipolarity. The U.S. was incontestably the most powerful nation
on the earth. It alone possessed the atomic bomb. It alone
possessed a navy that could project power across the oceans and
an air force that could reach across the continents. The U.S. was
also the richest nation in the world. It possessed two-thirds of
the world's gold reserves and three-fourths of its invested
capital. Its gross national product was three times that of the
Soviet Union and five times that of the United Kingdom. Its
wealth had grown enormously during the war while the Soviet Union
had been devastated by the occupation by Nazi Germany. Around 27
million inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. died during World War II
compared to about 400,000 Americans. The Germans ravished the
agricultural economy of Soviet Russia and devastated its mining
and transportation infrastructure (7).
Compared to the U.S. in 1945, the Soviet Union was weak. Yet it
loomed very large not only in the imagination of U.S. officials,
but also in the minds of political leaders throughout the world.
It did not loom large because of fears of Soviet military
aggression. Contemporary policymakers knew that Stalin did not
want war. They did not expect Soviet troops to march across
Europe. Yet they feared that Stalin would capitalize on the
manifold opportunities of the postwar world: the vacuums of power
stemming from the defeat of Germany and Japan; the breakup of
colonial empires; popular yearnings for postwar social and
economic reform; and widespread disillusionment with the
functioning of democratic capitalist economies (8).
During World War II, the American economy had demonstrated
enormous vitality, but many contemporaries wondered whether the
world capitalist system could be made to function effectively in
peacetime. Its performance during their lifetimes had bred
worldwide economic depression, social malaise, political
instability, and personal disillusionment. Throughout Europe and
Asia, people blamed capitalism for the repetitive cycles of boom
and bust and for military conflagrations that brought ruin and
despair. Describing conditions at the end of the war, the
historian Igor Lukes has written: "Many in Czechoslovakia had
come to believe that capitalism... had become obsolete.
Influential intellectuals saw the world emerging from the ashes
of the war in black and white terms: here was Auschwitz and there
was Stalingrad. The former was a byproduct of a crisis in
capitalist Europe of the 1930s; the latter stood for the
superiority of socialism" (9).
Transnational ideological conflict shaped the cold war. Peoples
everywhere yearned for a more secure and better life; they
pondered alternative ways of organizing their political and
economic affairs. Everywhere, communist parties sought to present
themselves as leaders of the resistance against fascism,
proponents of socioeconomic reform, and advocates of national
self-interest. Their political clout grew quickly as their
membership soared, for example, in Greece, from 17,000 in 1935 to
70,000 in 1945; in Czechoslovakia, from 28,000 in May 1945 to
750,000 in September 1945; in Italy, from 5,000 in 1943 to
1,700,000 at the end of 1945 (10). For Stalin and his comrades in
Moscow, these grassroots developments provided unsurpassed
opportunities; for Truman and his advisers in Washington, they
inspired fear and gloom. "There is complete economic, social and
political collapse going on in Central Europe, the extent of
which is unparalleled in history," wrote Assistant Secretary of
War John McCloy in April 1945 (11). The Soviet Union, of course,
was not responsible for these conditions. Danger nonetheless
inhered in the capacity of the Kremlin to capitalize on them.
"The greatest danger to the security of the United States," the
CIA concluded in one of its first reports, "is the possibility of
economic collapse in Western Europe and the consequent accession
to power of Communist elements" (12).
Transnational ideological conflict impelled U.S. officials to
take action. They knew they had to restore hope that private
markets could function effectively to serve the needs of
humankind. People had suffered terribly, Assistant Secretary of
State Dean G. Acheson told a congressional committee in 1945.
They demanded land reform, nationalization, and social welfare.
They believed that governments should take action to alleviate
their misery. They felt it "so deeply," said Acheson, "that they
will demand that the whole business of state control and state
interference shall be pushed further and further" (13).
Policymakers like Acheson and McCloy, the officials who became
known as the "Wise Men" of the cold war, understood the causes
for the malfunctioning of the capitalist world economy in the
interwar years. They were intent on correcting the fundamental
weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Long before they envisioned a
cold war with the Soviet Union, they labored diligently during
1943 and 1944 to design the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank. They urged Congress to reduce U.S. tariffs. They
wanted the American people to buy more foreign goods. They knew
that foreign nations without sufficient dollars to purchase raw
materials and fuel would not be able to recover easily. They
realized that governments short of gold and short of dollars
would seek to hoard their resources, establish quotas, and
regulate the free flow of capital. And they knew that these
actions in the years between World War I and World War II had
brought about the Great Depression and created the conditions for
Nazism, fascism, and totalitarianism to flourish (14).
"Now, as in the year 1920," President Truman declared in early
March 1947, "we have reached a turning point in history. National
economies have been disrupted by the war. The future is uncertain
everywhere. Economic policies are in a state of flux."
Governments abroad, the president explained, wanted to regulate
trade, save dollars, and promote reconstruction. This was
understandable; it was also perilous. Freedom flourished where
power was dispersed. But regimentation, Truman warned, was on the
march, everywhere. If not stopped abroad, it would force the U.S.
to curtail freedom at home. "In this atmosphere of doubt and
hesitation," Truman declared, "the decisive factor will be the
type of leadership that the United States gives the world." If it
did not act decisively, the world capitalist system would
flounder, providing yet greater opportunities for Communism to
grow and for Soviet strength to accrue. If the U.S. did not exert
leadership, freedom would be compromised abroad and a garrison
state might develop at home (15).
Open markets and free peoples were inextricably interrelated. To
win the transnational ideological conflict, U.S. officials had to
make the world capitalist system function effectively. By 1947,
they realized the IMF and the World Bank were too new, too
inexperienced, and too poorly funded to accomplish the intended
results. The U.S. had to assume the responsibility to provide
dollars so that other nations had the means to purchase food and
fuel and, eventually, to reduce quotas and curtail exchange
restrictions. In June 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall
outlined a new approach, saying the U.S. would provide the funds
necessary to promote the reconstruction of Europe. The intent of
the Marshall Plan was to provide dollars to likeminded
governments in Western Europe so they could continue to grow
their economies, employ workers, insure political stability,
undercut the appeal of communist parties, and avoid being sucked
into an economic orbit dominated by the Soviet Union. U.S.
officials wanted European governments to cooperate and pool their
resources for the benefit of their collective well-being and for
the establishment of a large, integrated market where goods and
capital could move freely. In order to do this, the U.S. would
incur the responsibility to make the capitalist system operate
effectively, at least in those parts of the globe not dominated
by the Soviet Union. The U.S. would become the hegemon, or
overseer, of the global economy: it would make loans, provide
credits, reduce tariffs, and insure currency stability (16).
The success of the Marshall Plan depended on the resuscitation of
the coal mines and industries of western Germany (17). Most
Europeans feared Germany's revival. Nonetheless, U.S. officials
hoped that Stalin would not interfere with efforts to merge the
three western zones of Germany, institute currency reform, and
create the Federal Republic of Germany. Marshall Plan aid, in
fact, initially was offered to Soviet Russia and its allies in
eastern Europe. But Stalin would not tolerate the rebuilding of
Germany and its prospective integration into a western bloc. Nor
would he allow eastern European governments to be drawn into an
evolving economic federation based on the free flow of
information, capital, and trade. Soviet security would be
endangered. Stalin's sphere of influence in eastern Europe would
be eroded and his capacity to control the future of German power
would be impaired. In late 1947, Stalin cracked down on eastern
Europe, encouraged the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and
instigated a new round of purges (18).
Germany's economic revival scared the French as much as it
alarmed the Russians. The French feared that Germany would regain
power to act autonomously. The French also were afraid that
initiatives to revive Germany might provoke a Soviet attack and
culminate in another occupation of France. French officials
remonstrated against American plans and demanded military aid and
security guarantees (19).
The French and other wary Europeans had the capacity to shape
their future. They exacted strategic commitments from the U.S.
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949 as a result of their
fears about Germany as well as their anxieties about Soviet
Russia. U.S. strategic commitments and U.S. troops were part of a
double containment strategy, containing the uncertain trajectory
of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the anticipated
hostility of the Soviet Union. Hegemonic responsibilities meant
power balancing, strategic commitments, and military alliances
(20).
Just as western Germany needed to be integrated into a western
sphere lest it be sucked into a Soviet orbit, so did Japan. U.S.
officials worried that their occupation of Japan might fail and
that the Japanese might seek to enhance their own interests by
looking to the Soviets or the communist Chinese as future
economic partners. In 1948, U.S. policymakers turned their
attention from reforming Japanese social and political
institutions to promoting economic reconstruction. Japan's past
economic growth, they knew, depended on links to Manchuria,
China, and Korea, areas increasingly slipping into communist
hands. Japan needed alternative sources of raw materials and
outlets for her manufactured goods. Studying the functioning of
the global capitalist economy, America's cold warriors concluded
that the industrial core of northeast Asia, Japan, needed to be
integrated with its underdeveloped periphery in southeast Asia,
much like Western Europe needed to have access to petroleum in
the Middle East (21). It was the obligation of the hegemon of the
world capitalist economy to make sure component units of the
system could benefit from the operation of the whole.
But, as hegemon, the U.S. also had to be sensitive to the worries
and responsive to the needs of other countries. In Asia, as in
Europe, many peoples feared the revival of the power of former
Axis nations. Truman promised them that U.S. troops would remain
in Japan, even as Japan regained its autonomy, and that the U.S.
would insure peace in the Pacific, even if it meant a new round
of security guarantees, as it did with the Philippines and with
Australia and New Zealand (22).
Yet, much as American officials hoped to integrate Japan with
Southeast Asia, revolutionary nationalist movements in the region
made that prospect uncertain. During World War II, popular
independence movements arose in French Indochina and the
Netherlands East Indies. Nationalist leaders like Ho Chi Minh in
Vietnam and Sukarno in Indonesia wanted to gain control over
their countries' future (23). Decolonization was an embedded
feature of the postwar international system, propelled by the
defeat of Japan and the weakening of traditional European powers.
Decolonization fueled the cold war as it provided opportunities
for the expansion of communist influence. Third World
nationalists wanted to develop, industrialize, and modernize
their countries. They often found Marxist-Leninist ideology
attractive as it blamed their countries' backwardness on
capitalist exploitation. At the same time, the Soviet command
economy seemed to provide a model for rapid modernization.
Stalin's successors, therefore, saw endless opportunities for
expanding their influence in the Third World; leaders in
Washington perceived dangers (24).
As hegemon of the free world economy, U.S. officials felt a
responsibility to contain revolutionary nationalism and to
integrate core and periphery. The Truman administration prodded
the Dutch and the French to make concessions to revolutionary
nationalists, but often could not shape the outcomes of colonial
struggles. When the French, for example, refused to acknowledge
Ho Chi Minh's republic of Vietnam and established a puppet
government under Bao Dai in 1949, the U.S. chose to support the
French. Otherwise, Truman and his advisers feared they would
alienate their allies in France and permit a key area to
gravitate into a communist orbit where it would be amenable to
Chinese or Soviet influence. Falling dominos in Southeast Asia
would sever the future economic links between this region and
Japan, making rehabilitation in the industrial core of northeast
Asia all the more difficult (25).
In the late 1950s and 1960s Japan's extraordinary economic
recovery, sparked by the Korean War and fueled by subsequent
exports to North America, defied American assumptions. Yet, by
then, American officials had locked the U.S. into a position
opposing nationalist movements led by communists, like Ho Chi
Minh. U.S. officials feared that if they allowed a communist
triumph in Indochina, America's credibility with other allies and
clients would be shattered. Hegemons needed to retain their
credibility. Otherwise, key allies, like Western Germany and
Japan, might doubt America's will and reorient themselves in the
cold war (26).
Hegemony and credibility required superior military capabilities.
Leaders in Washington and Moscow alike believed that perceptions
of their relative power position supported risk-taking on behalf
of allies and clients in Asia and Africa. In the most important
U.S. strategy document of the cold war, NSC 68, Paul Nitze wrote
that military power was an "indispensable backdrop" to
containment, which he called a "policy of calculated and gradual
coercion." To pursue containment in the Third World and erode
support for the adversary, the U.S. needed to have superior
military force (27). Prior to 1949, the U.S. had a monopoly of
atomic weapons. But after the Soviets tested and developed
nuclear weapons of their own, U.S. officials believed they needed
to augment their arsenal of strategic weapons. Their aim was not
only to deter Soviet aggression in the center of Europe, but also
to support the ability of the U.S. to intervene in Third World
countries without fear of Soviet countermoves.
Nuclear weapons, therefore, produced paradoxical results. Their
enormous power kept the cold war from turning into a hot war
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Leaders on both sides
recognized that such a war would be suicidal. But at the same
time nuclear weapons encouraged officials in both Washington and
Moscow to engage in risk-taking on the "periphery," that is, in
Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean because each
side thought (and hoped) that the adversary would not dare to
escalate the competition into a nuclear exchange (28). When
Ronald Reagan revived the determination of the U.S. to regain
military superiority in the 1980s, he sought to use those
military capabilities, not for a preemptive attack against the
Soviet Union, but as a backdrop to support U.S. interventions on
behalf of anti-communist insurgents from Nicaragua and El
Salvador to Afghanistan and Angola. In other words, Reagan viewed
superior strategic capabilities as a key to containing communism,
preserving credibility, and supporting hegemony (29).
For U.S. officials, waging the cold war required the U.S. to win
the transnational ideological struggle and to contain Soviet
power. To achieve these goals, the U.S. had to be an effective
hegemon. This meant that the U.S. had to nurture and lubricate
the world economy, build and coopt western Germany and Japan,
establish military alliances and preserve allied cohesion,
contain revolutionary nationalism, and bind the industrial core
of Europe and Asia with the underdeveloped periphery in the Third
World. To be effective, Cold Warriors believed that superior
military capabilities were an incalculable asset. They focused
much less attention and allocated infinitely fewer resources to
disseminating their values and promoting their culture. Yet
scholars of the cold war increasingly believe that America's
success as a hegemon, its capacity to evoke support for its
leadership, also depended on the habits and institutions of
constitutional governance, the resonance of its liberal and
humane values, and the appeal of its free market and mass
consumption economy (30).