Cold War History

Vol. 6, No. 4, November 2006, pp. 527–534

A Partial History of the Cold War

David Painter

The Cold War

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
London, Allen Lane, 2005

John Lewis Gaddis has been writing on the Cold War for over 30 years and is probably
the best known historian writing in English on this subject. He has published six
previous books on the Cold War and numerous influential articles.1 According to
Gaddis, his students and his agent urged him to write ‘a short, comprehensive, and
accessible book on the Cold War’ for ‘a new generation of readers for whom the Cold
War was never “current events”’ (viii).
Readers familiar with Gaddis’s earlier work will not be surprised that he has
produced a carefully crafted defense of US policy and policymakers. He defines the
Cold War as a moral struggle between good and evil, and he has no doubt that ‘the
world . . . is a better place for that conflict having been fought in the way it was and
won by the side that won it’ (ix). Echoing the National Security Strategy statement
issued by the Bush administration in September 2002, Gaddis claims that ‘the Cold
War . . . settled fundamental issues once and for all’ (ix).2
The Cold War is short and accessible, but it is not comprehensive. Although there is
more coverage of the Third World than in his previous works, this important topic is
still relatively neglected.3 He also fails to examine the evolution of the world economy
and how it affected, and was affected by, the Cold War. Economic growth, fueled in
part by increased oil consumption, was integral to Western success in the Cold War
because it helped end further fraticidal conflict among the core capitalist powers and
allowed Western countries to reduce social inequalities and create a ‘social bargain’
within a reformed capitalism.4 Maintaining access to the raw materials, markets, and
labor of the Third World, in particular to the oil producing regions of Latin America
and the Middle East, was central to economic growth and thus an important aspect
of the Cold War.

Correspondence to: David Painter, Department of History, Georgetown University, Box 571 035, Washington, DC
20057–1035, USA. Email: painterd@georgetown.edu

ISSN 1468-2745 (print)/ISSN 1743-7962 (online)/06/040527-8

q 2006 David Painter
DOI: 10.1080/14682740600979295
528 D. Painter
More importantly for a book that aims at introducing the Cold War to students and
others who know relatively little about it, Gaddis presents his own views on complex and
controversial issues without addressing alternative views in any meaningful manner and
usually without even acknowledging their existence. In addition, he is a skilled writer
who is a master at using language, deploying quotations, and framing issues in ways that
subtly and indirectly support his larger argument. Because in many instances his views
diverge from those of the best recent scholarship, The Cold War is not a good guide to
recent scholarship. Indeed, it is so partial in its coverage as to be seriously misleading.
Gaddis claims that ‘a simple chronological narrative could only produce mush’, so he
organized the book around ‘significant theme(s)’ that ‘overlap in time and move across
space’ (ix). Instead of producing clarity, however, this method of organization leads
to repetition, a disproportionate focus on the early Cold War (1945– 62), and to his
forcing events and issues into categories that obscure rather than illuminate them. It
also reinforces his penchant for ahistorical abstractions and context-less comparisons.
As most students of the origins of the Cold War know, Melvyn Leffler’s work on US
foreign policy during the 1940s demonstrated that American officials entered the
postwar era thinking expansively and systematically about their nation’s security
requirements. Drawing on the experiences of the 1930s and World War II, US
policymakers sought to create and maintain a favorable balance of power in Europe
and Asia, to fashion an international economic order open to US trade and
investment, and to maintain the integration of the Third World into the world
economy. To achieve these goals US leaders believed that the United States would need
an extensive overseas base system to provide defense in depth and to deter or defeat
aggression by projecting power into trouble spots. US leaders also wanted to maintain
the American monopoly of atomic weapons so that they could pursue their other
objectives without worrying about provoking a war with the Soviet Union. US security
policies were designed not only to protect the physical security of the United States
and its allies but also to preserve a broadly defined ‘American way of life’ by
constructing an international order open to and compatible with US interests and
ideals. These expansive US plans ran up against chaotic conditions around the world
and the opposition of the Soviet Union, which had different interests and plans.5
Gaddis ignores Leffler’s findings about US objectives and fails to examine how social,
economic, and political conditions in Europe and Asia at the end of the World War II
contributed to the Cold War. In addition, there is almost no discussion of British foreign
policy, and very little on the Third World. Although Gaddis mentions decolonization
later in the book, he makes the misleading claim that decolonization was not a
‘significant issue during the early Cold War’ because the United States as well as the
Soviet Union opposed colonialism (122). Such a statement ignores how revolutionary
nationalism in the Third World threatened Western access to vital raw materials such as
oil, disrupted US plans to draw on colonial resources to rebuild the economies of key
American allies, and weakened the overall Western position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.
Instead of addressing these issues, Gaddis focuses on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
He believes that the Soviet Union’s repressive internal regime determined its foreign
 Cold War History 529

policy and claims that Stalin’s goal was to dominate Europe (14). Although he admits
that this was a long-term goal to be achieved by peaceful means, the impression his
statement makes is that Stalin planned from the outset ‘to grab all of Europe’.6 While
no one would deny that Stalin was a brutal tyrant, most scholars view Stalin’s foreign
policy as being significantly shaped by the security requirements arising from the
Soviet Union’s unique geopolitical position and Soviet reconstruction needs. These
objectives, understandable in light of Russian history and geography and recent
experience, and not merely the nature of Stalin’s regime, clashed with Western
economic objectives and security requirements.
Gaddis argues that one of the lessons of the Cold War was that ‘war itself – at least
major wars fought between major states – had become a health hazard, therefore an
anachronism’ (262, italics in original). While nuclear weapons, especially
thermonuclear weapons, and the near certainty of retaliation made war between the
superpowers irrational, they did not prevent an arms race, dangerous crises, or
numerous non-nuclear conflicts in the Third World.
Gaddis has little to say about the arms race. He does not examine the destabilizing
impact of uneven technological advances and the different structures of the US and
Soviet nuclear forces, and he does not note that both sides wanted strategic
superiority, or at least wanted to prevent the enemy from having it, for fear of being
blackmailed in a crisis. He also does not discuss the US strategy of extended
deterrence, which defined the function of US strategic forces as not only to deter a
Soviet attack on the United States but also to deter possible Soviet advances
elsewhere in the world. US strategists believed that strategic superiority was needed
to compensate for assumed Soviet conventional superiority in Europe and to
discourage Soviet ‘adventurism’ in the Third World. Although the United States
reluctantly accepted parity with the Soviets in the 1970s, US strategists continued to
worry that parity might not be enough to maintain extended deterrence because it
would result in mutual deterrence at the global level and thus greater freedom for the
Soviets on the regional level, especially in Europe.7 For their part, Soviet strategists
believed that parity was necessary to discourage an attack on the Soviet Union and to
avoid being coerced in a crisis, and until the 1980s they tried to match each and
every US advance.
The intersection of the arms race and revolutionary nationalism in the Third World
produced the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War era in October 1962. Most
scholars now recognize that US hostility toward the Cuban Revolution and the huge
US lead in the arms race were key factors prompting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
to deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba. Although Gaddis notes the US lead in the arms
race and mentions US efforts to overthrow Castro, he claims that ‘Khrushchev
intended his missile deployment chiefly as an effort . . . to spread revolution
throughout Latin America’ (75). This framing of the issue not only shifts the initiative
back to the Soviets, but also allows him to ignore US efforts in the 1960s to contain
social, economic, and political change in Latin America, efforts that did little to
promote democracy or social justice in the region.
530 D. Painter
Gaddis follows the emerging consensus that praises both Kennedy and Khrushchev
for recognizing that there would be no winners in a nuclear war and insisting on a
peaceful solution to the missile crisis. He notes that the crisis led to progress in arms
control, but he ignores that it also led the Soviets to increase their military spending so
they would never again be in such a position of strategic inferiority. Many scholars also
believe that the crisis contributed to US overconfidence and increased involvement in
the Third World, especially Vietnam.
Most of Gaddis’s published work has focused on the Cold War era, and his
foreshortened historical perspective is especially evident in his treatment of the Cold
War as a contest between ideal and abstract versions of democracy and capitalism
against equally abstract versions of authoritarianism and communism. Ideological and
economic competition were important parts of the Cold War, and most scholars
would agree that communism not only lost the economic competition with the West,
but also failed ‘to bring about political and social justice’ (264). No one reading his
account, however, would learn that the West, and especially the United States, began
the contest with massive advantages built up over centuries. They would not learn that
the only times and places communism took power was in poor countries in the wake
of devastating wars and/or social upheaval, which meant that communist regimes
faced the challenges of reconstruction as well as social transformation.8
Instead of constructing a morality play, Gaddis might have inquired into the
historical origins of American democracy and Soviet autocracy. How were US
institutions shaped by the ‘free security’ the United States enjoyed through much of its
history?9 To what extent did many of the key aspects of the Stalinist system, including
autocracy, a command economy, and a closed society, have their roots in Russian
history and geography?10 Was it the nature of its institutions that enabled the United
States to promote and protect its interests as well as its ideals in Western Europe and
Japan without significantly limiting its allies’ sovereignty? Given that those same ideals,
institutions, and interests produced very different results in the Third World, did the
source of the different outcomes lie elsewhere? Was the difficulty the Soviets had
in pursing their security in ways that did not limit the freedom of their neighbors
primarily a function of ideology, or was it primarily due to the historical and
geographic circumstances faced by Soviet leaders, including difficult to defend
borders, ethnic divisions, and hostile neighbors? What was the impact of a balance of
power in Eurasia on a continental power like the Soviet Union as opposed to a
maritime power like the United States? What are the strategic implications of self-
determination for multi-ethnic states? Finally, Gaddis might have examined the role of
racism in the Cold War. Addressing this issue would complicate casting the Cold War
as a struggle of good versus evil, but avoiding it leaves a huge hole in any account
of the Cold War.11
Most of Gaddis’s discussion of the Vietnam War is buried in a chapter that presents
US intervention in Vietnam as an example of how small countries can manipulate
their great power patrons. This framing obscures what most scholars regard as the key
issue relating to the Vietnam War – the interaction between revolutionary nationalism
 Cold War History 531

in the Third World and the US policy of containment. Most scholars would agree with
George Herring, author of a widely used account of US involvement in Vietnam, that
‘in applying containment to Vietnam, the United States drastically misjudged the
internal dynamics of the conflict’. Many would also agree with Herring that
containment itself was flawed.12 Gaddis does not address these issues and seems
uninterested in the internal history of Third World societies and the relation of conflict
in the Third World to colonialism.
Gaddis’s skill at framing issues in ways that indirectly support his larger argument
is also evident in Chapter 5, ‘The Recovery of Equity’. Instead of defending US
interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, and Chile, he admits they were morally
questionable and counterproductive. He also comes down hard on Lyndon Johnson
for misleading the nation about Vietnam and on Richard Nixon for his abuse of
power. His sentiments are praiseworthy, but his purpose seems to be to portray these
well-documented events as aberrations. This becomes evident when he claims that
Nixon’s forced resignation and Congressional efforts to put curbs on executive power
resulted in a ‘realignment of American strategy with legal and moral principles’ (184).
This framing of the issue ignores the US return to massive intervention in the Third
World under Reagan in the 1980s. Gaddis does not mention US support for
murderous regimes and groups in Central America, for warlords and radical Islamist
groups in Afghanistan, and for brutal opportunists like Jonas Savimbi in Angola.
Ignoring this dark history, the repercussions of which are still with us, allows him to
present the 1980s as ‘the triumph of hope’.
Although Gaddis recognizes that the United States made gains during the 1970s,
most notably in Egypt, he seems to agree with Reagan’s negative assessment of détente.
In addition, he fails to discuss the important role of the Sino-Soviet split and Sino-
American rapprochement on the course of the Cold War. He also largely ignores the
important role of Willy Brandt and German Ostpolitik. It is highly unlikely that the
Soviets would have accepted a peaceful end to their sphere of influence in Eastern
Europe without the decade and a half of reduced tension that Ostpolitik fostered. On
the other hand, he does recognize the positive impact of the Helsinki process in
legitimizing opposition to Soviet rule.
Much of Gaddis’s account of the 1980s focuses on the importance of individuals.
In addition to calling Ronald Reagan ‘one of the sharpest grand strategists ever’
(217), he uncritically praises Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, Lech Walesa, and
Vaclav Havel, and commends Deng Xiaoping for bringing capitalism to China.
Chinese repression of pro-democracy protesters in 1989 is not mentioned until the
following chapter. China also does not seem to affect his belief that the Cold War led
to the discrediting of dictatorships and the globalization of democratization (263 –
65). Although he calls Mikhail Gorbachev ‘the most deserving recipient ever of the
Nobel Peace Prize’ (257), his discussion of Gorbachev seems designed to play down
his accomplishments.13
Gaddis’s appraisal of Reagan ignores his support of repressive regimes that were anti-
communist and his flaunting of the constitution in the Iran-Contra affair. While Reagan
532 D. Painter
deserves credit for working with Gorbachev, Gaddis never asks, much less explains, how
an anti-communist ideologue like Ronald Reagan could work with Gorbachev to begin
bringing the Cold War to a negotiated end. Part of the explanation may be that Reagan
actually believed that the changes in Soviet policy under Gorbachev were the result of his
administration’s hardline policies. In contrast, many careful scholars of Soviet politics
and society believe that Gorbachev and his allies were motivated chiefly by a desire to
overcome the disastrous legacy of Stalinism, reform their economy, democratize their
politics, and revitalize their society. They saw continued conflict with the West as
inimical to these goals so they worked to end the Cold War. Gaddis also fails to note that
Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush, continued the Cold War in the Third
World and that US policies prolonged the conflicts there.14
The partial nature of his account is especially evident in his discussion of the arms race
in the 1980s. Gaddis seems to believe that the US arms build-up, and in particular the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), played a key role in changing Soviet policies and ending
the Cold War (226–27). SDI violated the whole structure of US–Soviet arms control by
threatening mutual deterrence, which was based on each side’s ability to retaliate against a
nuclear attack. While it was highly unlikely that the United States would be able to develop
a system that would be effective against the full force of a Soviet first strike, the possibility
that it might develop a system that would be effective against the few missiles the Soviets
would have left after a US first strike meant that SDI had the potential to provide the
United States with the capacity and confidence to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
Although the Soviets strongly opposed SDI, most scholars believe that its main impact
on Soviet policy was to delay progress in arms control. The Soviets continued research on
space-based and other high-tech weapons, but they neither tried to develop their own
SDI-type weapons nor devoted significant efforts to developing counter-measures against
SDI, in part because the United States never developed a workable system. In any event,
the Soviets could have countered SDI by building more missiles, a response that would
have cost far less than the requisite US countervailing defensive measures.15
SDI and the US arms build-up, along with Reagan’s inflammatory rhetoric (which
Gaddis applauds) and his aggressive policy of rollback in the Third World (which
Gaddis ignores), were part of a strategy of confrontation that aimed at convincing
Soviet leaders that their supposed goal of world domination was unobtainable and that
trying to achieve it was not only dangerous but also incompatible with the economic
health of their country. As Robert McMahon has pointed out, even if Reagan and his
advisers were convinced that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, their
strategy of confrontation was reckless because it could have resulted in desperate Soviet
responses rather than a peaceful end to the Cold War.16 Indeed, by the fall of 1983 Soviet
leaders seem genuinely to have believed that the United States was preparing a pre-
emptive nuclear attack. Had they taken measures to counter the expected US attack, the
result could have been a disastrous chain reaction that would have made August 1914
look like a minor mishap. Although Gaddis mentions Soviet fears, and notes that the
war scare of 1983 was ‘probably the most dangerous moment since the Cuban missile
crisis’ (228), it does not change his positive evaluation of Reagan’s policies.
 Cold War History 533

Judging from the largely uncritical reception it has received in the popular media, it
is likely that Gaddis’s Cold War will have a great influence on how a new generation of
readers will understand this crucial conflict.17 This would be unfortunate because it is
so partial in its coverage as to be seriously misleading in many respects. At the
minimum, it needs to be balanced by more comprehensive, more objective, and less
nationalist accounts that better reflect the existing state of scholarship.

Notes
[1] For a recent assessment of his work, see Hurst, Cold War US Foreign Policy.
[2] The White House statement asserted that ‘the great struggles of the twentieth century between
liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom – and a
single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise’.
“National Security Strategy,” 1.
[3] On the centrality of the Third World to the Cold War, see Westad, Global Cold War; Greiner
et al., Heiße Kriege im Kalten Krieg.
[4] Gaddis devotes little attention to the welfare state and never mentions social democracy.
[5] Leffler, “American Conception of National Security,” Preponderance of Power, Specter of
Communism.
[6] Matthews, “The Washington Read.”
[7] See the discussion in Painter, Cold War, 84– 85.
[8] In addition, communism had its greatest successes in countries where it was able to ally closely
with nationalism.
[9] Woodward, “Age of Reinterpretation”; Gourevitch, “Second Image Reversed.”
[10] See Poe, Russia’s Moment in World History, and Lieven, Empire.
[11] Borstelmann, Cold War and the Color Line; Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy.
[12] Herring, “Vietnam War,” 170– 71.
[13] For a more balanced assessment of Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War, see Leffler,
“Beginning and End.”
[14] See the discussion and citations in Painter and Blanton, “End of the Cold War,” 483– 84,
487– 88.
[15] See the discussion and citations in Painter and Blanton, “End of the Cold War,” 481 –82, 488.
[16] McMahon, “Making Sense of American Foreign Policy.”
[17] Metacritic.com lists 19 reviews; six rate the book outstanding; nine are favorable; two are
mixed; and two are unfavorable.

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