Alternatives To Violence: The Cold War
Alternatives to Violence
History 12
“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
John F. Kennedy
September 25, 1961
The Cold War, which took place between 1945 and 1989, has been the event in which the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union directly threatened each other with nuclear weapons, almost bringing “an end to mankind”. All those that offered explanations during and after the Cold War have been classified into two groups: the traditionalists and the revisionists. The traditionalist point of view was focused on the idea that if there was somebody to be blamed for the outbreak of the Cold War, the Soviet Union deserved …show more content…
to be acknowledged with complete responsibility for the start of the conflict, whilst the United States was totally innocent. The traditionalist scholars dominated the historiography of the Cold War until the mid 1960s, when many came to question the American innocence and blamed the Cold War on the American economic imperialism and untrustworthy behavior regarding the Korean War and the Vietnam War. By the 1970s, the so-called Post-revisionists went beyond placing blame on either side and contended that misperception and miscalculation accounted for the beginnings of the Cold War.
According to traditionalist views, George Kennan was the man that developed the first explanation of the origins of the Cold War. He shaped the American foreign policy in his characterization of the Soviet Union as a paranoid and insecure power that exaggerated the external threats to justify internal repression and cautious expansion. Kennan almost single-handedly transformed a former wartime ally into a nervous enemy that needed to be contained. The main traditionalist diplomats have been Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, George F. Kennan and William H. McNeill. For instance, Herbert Feis was convinced that under Stalin the Russian people “were trying not only to extend their boundaries and their control over neighboring states but also beginning to revert to their revolutionary effort throughout the world”. Similarly, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. concluded “The Cold War was the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression”. In contrast with the traditionalists, the revisionists made the reinterpretation of orthodox views on historical evidences. Initially the revisionists were few in numbers and attracted relatively little attention. However, in the 1960s and 1970s the revisionists grew larger in numbers and influence. Frequently revisionist scholars have claimed that Soviet expansion was not a reply to domestic insecurity but the evidence of a sincere commitment to a more literal interpretation of communist ideology. The Soviets did not merely desire greater power and influence in the world, but have also sought to employ their power and influence to foster their ideological aspirations.
º
Starting with the Korean War, the primary traditional believes suggested that the US enemies had consistently attacked the public support using the media as a weapon.
The Chinese maintained the Korean stalemate along the 38th parallel knowing media coverage of mounting US casualties would disintegrate public support. In the 90s scholars began to portray the Korean War as a civil conflict, rejecting the traditional interpretation of the war as an example of Soviet-inspired, external aggression. Kathryn Weathersby concluded that the war origins “lie primarily with the division of Korea in 1945 and the polarization of Korean politics that resulted from . . . the policies of the two occupying powers…The Soviet Union played a key role in the outbreak of the war, but it was as facilitator, not as originator." President Harry S. Truman firmly believed that North Korea was a puppet of the Soviet Union. Many historians wrote that the Unites States had to act against Soviet-inspired aggression or risk irreparable damage to American credibility and prestige. On the contrary, other historians applauded the Truman Administration for rejecting MacArthur’s proposals of widening the war. At first, Korea escaped reinterpretation at the hands of the revisionists. In particular, Richard J. Barnet accepted the traditional view that North Korea initiated the Korean War. Nevertheless, early studies of the Korean War blamed the United States for the North Korean attack, stating that the Truman …show more content…
Administration had abandoned South Korea giving Kim Il-sung a green light to launch his invasion. Later, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko charged that South Korea struck first in June 1950 and that North Korea’s invasion was an act of self-defense, thus portraying the Korean War as a civil conflict, rather than a case of external aggression justifying an international response in the name of collective security.
Similarly the United States’ involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned the people of America, creating sympathy towards the Communist position and antipathy towards American policies. Previously, under President Harry Truman, the United States had established a foreign policy doctrine known as “containment”. This policy’s aim was not to fight against the communist Soviet Union, but rather to confine communism and the Soviet Union to their existing boundaries. Traditionalists thought that the Soviet Union was committed to the worldwide spread of communism. For instance, in 1959 Soviet Prime Nikita Krushchev, in debate with Richard Nixon in Moscow, had threatened him by yelling “We will bury you!”. In contrast with the Korean War, in Vietnam there was a broad agreement among early writers that the Vietnam War represented a colossal mistake for the United States, and that American policy was plagued persistently by errors, blunders, misperceptions, and miscalculations. However, in the late 1970s, a conservative point of view began to emerge, eventually to be named “revisionist”. Guenter Lewy, a Universiy of Massachusetts professor of political science, published America in Vietnam in 1978. He considered that, while the American policy in Vietnam might have been misguided, it was not evil and that the American military fought honorably and well, given the constraints of a flawed strategy. This revisionist point of view hugely contrasts with the worn out and harsh critics that the American governments has received over the Vietnam War.
Three obvservations can be made regarding the fierce debate between traditionalists and revisionists. The early “orthodox” scholars tended to see the conflict in the same way American officials of the time did. This was due to a limited access to classified documents from various departments and governmental agencies involved in the United States Cold War policy-making, which obligated them to rely mostly on public papers, unclassified materials and on personal experiences. On the contrary, the revisionist scholars benefited from the appearance of a vast quantity of documents on American foreign policy in the early 1970s that would help clarify what each nation had done wrong. It is now clear that the Soviet Union wasn’t fully responsible for the beginning of the Cold War, and specifically, the Korean War, as well as the United States wasn’t completely guilty for the Vietnam War’s end result. Nowadays, a consensus is emerging that the Cold War was not caused by one side or the other but by the conflicting and unyielding ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union that were unable to find an alternative for their differing ideals until late 1989. Like Dorothy Thompson once said “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict: alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.”
Bibliography
Max Hastings, “The Media and Modern Warfare,” Conflict Quarterly 9, no.
3 (Summer 1989), 7.
Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin. The War they Waged and the Peace They Sought, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 655.
Kathryn Weathersby, "The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War," The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 2 (Winter 1993), 432.
Review Essay. James I. Matray: Korea’s Partition: Soviet-American Pursuit of Reunification, 1945-1948. © 1998 James I. Matray
Studies on East Asia: The Korean War in History. Edited by James Cotton & Ian Neary. Hak-Joon Kim: China’s Non-Involvement in the Origins of the Korean War: A Critical Reassessment of the Traditionalist and Revisionist Literature
History 122. Michael O’Malley: The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment. http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/vietnam/lecture.html
Modern American Poetry. Robert J. McMahon: Changing Interpretations of the Vietnam War. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/interpretations.htm
Maj Earl H. Tilford, Jr., USAF - The Right Reaction: A Consideration of Three Revisionists.
http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj89/sum89/tilford.html
Mrs Healy History: Cold War. http://mrshealyhistoryclass.wikispaces.com/Cold+War
CSL News Cartoons: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/directory/m/missles.asp
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/
History 12
“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
John F. Kennedy
September 25, 1961
The Cold War, which took place between 1945 and 1989, has been the event in which the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union directly threatened each other with nuclear weapons, almost bringing “an end to mankind”. All those that offered explanations during and after the Cold War have been classified into two groups: the traditionalists and the revisionists. The traditionalist point of view was focused on the idea that if there was somebody to be blamed for the outbreak of the Cold War, the Soviet Union deserved …show more content…
to be acknowledged with complete responsibility for the start of the conflict, whilst the United States was totally innocent. The traditionalist scholars dominated the historiography of the Cold War until the mid 1960s, when many came to question the American innocence and blamed the Cold War on the American economic imperialism and untrustworthy behavior regarding the Korean War and the Vietnam War. By the 1970s, the so-called Post-revisionists went beyond placing blame on either side and contended that misperception and miscalculation accounted for the beginnings of the Cold War.
According to traditionalist views, George Kennan was the man that developed the first explanation of the origins of the Cold War. He shaped the American foreign policy in his characterization of the Soviet Union as a paranoid and insecure power that exaggerated the external threats to justify internal repression and cautious expansion. Kennan almost single-handedly transformed a former wartime ally into a nervous enemy that needed to be contained. The main traditionalist diplomats have been Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, George F. Kennan and William H. McNeill. For instance, Herbert Feis was convinced that under Stalin the Russian people “were trying not only to extend their boundaries and their control over neighboring states but also beginning to revert to their revolutionary effort throughout the world”. Similarly, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. concluded “The Cold War was the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression”. In contrast with the traditionalists, the revisionists made the reinterpretation of orthodox views on historical evidences. Initially the revisionists were few in numbers and attracted relatively little attention. However, in the 1960s and 1970s the revisionists grew larger in numbers and influence. Frequently revisionist scholars have claimed that Soviet expansion was not a reply to domestic insecurity but the evidence of a sincere commitment to a more literal interpretation of communist ideology. The Soviets did not merely desire greater power and influence in the world, but have also sought to employ their power and influence to foster their ideological aspirations.
º
Starting with the Korean War, the primary traditional believes suggested that the US enemies had consistently attacked the public support using the media as a weapon.
The Chinese maintained the Korean stalemate along the 38th parallel knowing media coverage of mounting US casualties would disintegrate public support. In the 90s scholars began to portray the Korean War as a civil conflict, rejecting the traditional interpretation of the war as an example of Soviet-inspired, external aggression. Kathryn Weathersby concluded that the war origins “lie primarily with the division of Korea in 1945 and the polarization of Korean politics that resulted from . . . the policies of the two occupying powers…The Soviet Union played a key role in the outbreak of the war, but it was as facilitator, not as originator." President Harry S. Truman firmly believed that North Korea was a puppet of the Soviet Union. Many historians wrote that the Unites States had to act against Soviet-inspired aggression or risk irreparable damage to American credibility and prestige. On the contrary, other historians applauded the Truman Administration for rejecting MacArthur’s proposals of widening the war. At first, Korea escaped reinterpretation at the hands of the revisionists. In particular, Richard J. Barnet accepted the traditional view that North Korea initiated the Korean War. Nevertheless, early studies of the Korean War blamed the United States for the North Korean attack, stating that the Truman …show more content…
Administration had abandoned South Korea giving Kim Il-sung a green light to launch his invasion. Later, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko charged that South Korea struck first in June 1950 and that North Korea’s invasion was an act of self-defense, thus portraying the Korean War as a civil conflict, rather than a case of external aggression justifying an international response in the name of collective security.
Similarly the United States’ involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned the people of America, creating sympathy towards the Communist position and antipathy towards American policies. Previously, under President Harry Truman, the United States had established a foreign policy doctrine known as “containment”. This policy’s aim was not to fight against the communist Soviet Union, but rather to confine communism and the Soviet Union to their existing boundaries. Traditionalists thought that the Soviet Union was committed to the worldwide spread of communism. For instance, in 1959 Soviet Prime Nikita Krushchev, in debate with Richard Nixon in Moscow, had threatened him by yelling “We will bury you!”. In contrast with the Korean War, in Vietnam there was a broad agreement among early writers that the Vietnam War represented a colossal mistake for the United States, and that American policy was plagued persistently by errors, blunders, misperceptions, and miscalculations. However, in the late 1970s, a conservative point of view began to emerge, eventually to be named “revisionist”. Guenter Lewy, a Universiy of Massachusetts professor of political science, published America in Vietnam in 1978. He considered that, while the American policy in Vietnam might have been misguided, it was not evil and that the American military fought honorably and well, given the constraints of a flawed strategy. This revisionist point of view hugely contrasts with the worn out and harsh critics that the American governments has received over the Vietnam War.
Three obvservations can be made regarding the fierce debate between traditionalists and revisionists. The early “orthodox” scholars tended to see the conflict in the same way American officials of the time did. This was due to a limited access to classified documents from various departments and governmental agencies involved in the United States Cold War policy-making, which obligated them to rely mostly on public papers, unclassified materials and on personal experiences. On the contrary, the revisionist scholars benefited from the appearance of a vast quantity of documents on American foreign policy in the early 1970s that would help clarify what each nation had done wrong. It is now clear that the Soviet Union wasn’t fully responsible for the beginning of the Cold War, and specifically, the Korean War, as well as the United States wasn’t completely guilty for the Vietnam War’s end result. Nowadays, a consensus is emerging that the Cold War was not caused by one side or the other but by the conflicting and unyielding ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union that were unable to find an alternative for their differing ideals until late 1989. Like Dorothy Thompson once said “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict: alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.”
Bibliography
Max Hastings, “The Media and Modern Warfare,” Conflict Quarterly 9, no.
3 (Summer 1989), 7.
Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin. The War they Waged and the Peace They Sought, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 655.
Kathryn Weathersby, "The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War," The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 2 (Winter 1993), 432.
Review Essay. James I. Matray: Korea’s Partition: Soviet-American Pursuit of Reunification, 1945-1948. © 1998 James I. Matray
Studies on East Asia: The Korean War in History. Edited by James Cotton & Ian Neary. Hak-Joon Kim: China’s Non-Involvement in the Origins of the Korean War: A Critical Reassessment of the Traditionalist and Revisionist Literature
History 122. Michael O’Malley: The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment. http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/vietnam/lecture.html
Modern American Poetry. Robert J. McMahon: Changing Interpretations of the Vietnam War. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/interpretations.htm
Maj Earl H. Tilford, Jr., USAF - The Right Reaction: A Consideration of Three Revisionists.
http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj89/sum89/tilford.html
Mrs Healy History: Cold War. http://mrshealyhistoryclass.wikispaces.com/Cold+War
CSL News Cartoons: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/directory/m/missles.asp
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/