NC on containment
David Manning
> Chomsky is taking a single sentence from the middle of a 21-page
> document and arguing that this represents the primary goal of US
> foreign policy, ignoring the rest of the document and numerous
> other documents in which it's clear that the primary goal of US
> policymakers was containment of the Soviet Union. In their view,
> the Soviet Union was a threat not because it stood outside the
> capitalist economic system, but because of its military power, its
> hostility towards the capitalist countries, and its willingness to
> use violence (primarily violence by Soviet-controlled Communist
> parties rather than outright invasion, in Kennan's view).
An excerpt from Understanding Power (footnotes inserted throughout):
Well, the rhetoric of "containment" begs all questions -- once you've
acccpted the rhetoric of "containment," it really doesn't matter what
you say, you've already given up everything. Because the fundamental
question is, is it true? Has the United States been "containing" the
Soviet Union? Well, you know, on the surface it looks a little odd. I
mean, maybe you think the Soviet Union is the worst place in history,
but they're conservative -- whatever rotten things they've done
they've been inside the Soviet Union and right around its borders, in
Eastern Europe and Afghanistan and so on. They never do anything
anywhere else. They don't have troops stationed anywhere else. They
don't have intervention forces positioned all over the world like we
do.
[On post-World War II U.S. and Soviet military presence, see for
example, Center for Defense Information, "Soviet Geopolitical
Momentum: Myth or Menace? Trends of Soviet Influence Around the World
From 1945 to 1980," Defense Monitor, January 1980, p. 5 (tracing
Soviet influence on a country-by-country basis since World War II, and
concluding that Soviet power peaked in the late 1950s and by 1979 "the
Soviets were influencing only 6 percent of the world's population and
5 percent of the world's G.N.P., exclusive of the Soviet Union");
Senate Subcommittee on Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad,
Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Report to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, December 21, 1970, 91st Congress, 2nd
Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970, C.I.S.#
70-S382-17, p. 3 (pointing out that the post-World War II U.S. global
military presence reached over 3,000 foreign military bases "virtually
surrounding both the Soviet Union and Communist China"); Ruth Leger
Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1981, Leesburg, VA:
World Priorities, 1981, p. 8 (study counting at least 125 military
conflicts since the end of World War II, 95 percent of them occurring
in the Third World and in most cases involving foreign forces, with
"western powers accounting for 79 percent of the interventions,
communist for 6 percent").]
So what does it mean to say we're "containing" them? ... Well, if you
look at diplomatic history, it too is in the framework of
"containment," even the so-called dissidents. I mean, everybody has to
accept the premise of "containment," or you simply will not have an
opportunity to proceed in these fields. And in the footnotes of the
professional literature on containment, often there are some revealing
things said.
For example, one of the major scholarly books on the Cold War is
called Strategies of Containment, by John Lewis Gaddis -- it's the
foremost scholarly study by the top diplomatic historian, so it's
worth taking a look at. Well, in discussing this great theme,
"strategies of containment," Gaddis begins by talking about the
terminology. He says at the beginning: it's true that the term
"containment" begs some questions, yes it presupposes some things, but
nevertheless, despite the question of whether it's factually accurate,
it still is proper to adopt it as the framework for discussion. And
the reason why it's proper is because it was the pevception of
American leaders that they were taking a defensive position against
the Soviet Union -- so, Gaddis concludes, since that was the
perception of American leaders, and since we're studying American
history, it's fair to continue in that framework.
[For Gaddis's justification of his use of the "containment" concept,
see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal
of Postwar American National Security Policy, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982. The exact words (p. vii n."*"; emphasis in
original):
The term "containment" poses certain problems, implying as it does a
consistently defensive orientation in American policy. One can argue
at length about whether Washington's approach to the world since 1945
has been primarily defensive -- I tend to think it has -- but the
argument is irrelevant for the purposes of this book. What is
important here is that American leaders consistently _perceived_
themselves as responding to rather than initiating challenges to the
existing international order. For this reason, it seems to me valid to
treat the idea of containment as the central theme of postwar national
security policy.]
Well, just suppose some diplomatic historian tried that with the
Nazis. Suppose somebody were to write a book about German history and
say, "Well, look, Hitler and his advisors certainly perceived their
position as defensive" -- which is absolutely true: Germany was under
"attack" by the Jews, remember. Go back and look at the Nazi
literature, they had to defend themselves against this virus, this
bacillus that was eating away at the core of modern civilization --
and you've got to defend yourself, after all. And they were under
"attack" by the Czechs, and by the Poles, and by European
encirclement. That's not a joke. In fact, they had a better argument
there than we do with the Soviet Union -- they were encircled, and
"contained," and they had this enormous Versailles debt stuck on them
for no reason after World War I. Okay, so suppose somebody wrote a
book saying: "Look, the Nazi leadership perceived themselves as taking
a defensive stance against external and internal aggression; it's true
it begs some questions, but we'll proceed that way -- now we'll talk
about how they defended themselves against the Jews by building
Auschwitz, and how they defended themselves against the Czechs by
invading Czechoslovakia, how they defended themselves against the
Poles, and so on." If anybody tried to do that, you wouldn't even
bother to laugh -- but about the United States, that's the only thing
you can say: it's not just that it's acceptable, it's that anything
else is unacceptable.
And when you pursue the matter further, it becomes even more
interesting. So for example, in this same book Gaddis points out --
again, in sort of a footnote, an aside he doesn't elaborate on -- that
it's a striking fact that when you look over the American diplomatic
record since World War II, all of our decisions about how to contain
the Soviet Union, like the arms buildups, the shifts to detente, all
those things, reflected largely domestic economic considerations. Then
he sort of drops the point.
[For Gaddis's reference to "economic considerations," see John Lewis
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar
American National Security Policy, New York: Oxford University Press,
1982. The exact words (pp. 356-357; emphasis in original):
What is surprising is the _primacy_ that has been accorded economic
considerations in shaping strategies of containment, _to the exclusion
of other considerations_. One would not expect to find, in initiatives
directed so self-consciously at the world at large, such decisive but
parochial concerns. . . . To a remarkable degree, containment has been
the product, not so much of what the Russians have done, or of what
has happened elsewhere in the world, but of internal forces operating
within the United States.]
Well, what does that mean? What does Gaddis mean by that? There he's
beginning to enter into the realm of truth. See, the truth of the
matter, and it's very well-supported by declassified documents and
other evidence, is that military spending is our method of industrial
management -- it's our way of keeping the economy profitable for
business. So just take a look at the major declassified documents on
military spending, they're pretty frank about it. For exampie, N.S.C.
68 [National Security Council Memorandum 68] is the major Cold War
document, as everybody agrees, and one of the things it says very
clearly is that without military spending, there's going to be an
economic decline both in the United States and world-wide -- so
consequently it calls for a vast increase in military spending in the
U.S., in addition to breaking up the Soviet Union.
[For National Security Council [N.S.C.] 68, of April 14, 1950, see
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. I, Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1977, pp. 234-292. The exact words
(section VI.B.2, pp. 261, 258):
[T]here are grounds for predicting that the United States and other
free nations will within a period of a few years at most experience a
decline in economic activity of serious proportions unless more
positive governmental programs are developed than are now available. .
. . Industrial production declined by 10 percent between the first
quarter of 1948 and the last quarter of 1949, and by approximately
one-fourth between 1944 and 1949. In March 1950 there were
approximately 4,750,000 unemployed, as compared to 1,070,000 in 1943
and 670,000 in 1944. The gross national product declined slowly in
1949 from the peak reached in 1948 ($262 billion in 1948 to an annual
rate of $256 billion in the last six months of 1949), and in terms of
constant prices declined by about 20 percent between 1944 and 1948.
The document then proposes a build-up of "economic and military
strength" through rearmament (pp. 258, 286):
With a high level of economic activity, the United States could soon
attain a gross national product of $300 billion per year, as was
pointed out in the President's Economic Report (January 1950).
Progress in this direction would permit, and might itself be aided by,
a build-up of the economic and military strength of the United States
and the free world; furthermore, if a dynamic expansion of the economy
were achieved, the necessary build-up could be accomplished without a
decrease in the national standard of living because the required
resources could be obtained by siphoning off a part of the annual
increment in the gross national product. . . . One of the most
significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the
American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full
efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than
civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of
living. After allowing for price changes, personal consumption
expenditures rose by about one-fifth between 1939 and 1944, even
though the economy had in the meantime increased the amount of
resources going into Government use by $60-$65 billion (in 1939
prices).
For commentary, see for example, Fred Block, "Economic Instability and
Military Strength: The Paradoxes of the 1950 Rearmament Decision,"
Politics and Society, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1980, pp. 35-58; Melvyn Leffler,
A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman
Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1992, ch. 8. See also chapter 3 of Understanding Power: The
Indispensable Noam Chomsky and its footnotes 7 to 10.]
You have to remember the context in which these decisions were being
made, after all. This was right after the Marshall Plan had failed,
right after the post-war aid programs had failed. There still had been
no success as yet in reconstructing either the Japanese or Western
European economies -- and American business needed them; American
manufacturers needed those export markets desperately. See, the
Marshall Plan was designed largely as an export-promotion operation
for American business, not as the noblest effort in history and so on.
But it had failed: we hadn't rebuilt the industrial powers we needed
as allies and reconstructed the markets we needed for exports. And at
that point, military spending was considered the one thing that could
really do it, it was seen as the engine that could drive economic
growth after the wartime boom ended, and prevent the U.S. from
slipping back into a depression.
[On the decision to increase military spending in the wake of the
Marshall Plan's failure, see for example, Richard M. Freeland, The
Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy,
Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948, New York: New
York University Press, 1985, pp. 329-334. An excerpt (pp. 330, 334):
Despite the rapid success of the aid program in inducing the recovery
of western Europe's productive capacity, unsatisfactory progress was
made with respect to the problem of increasing the dollar earnings of
western European economies. In 1949 European exports to both the
United States and Latin America actually declined. In this context
Britain suffered another economic crisis and in September 1949 was
forced to devalue the pound by 30 per cent; in subsequent months all
other Marshall Plan countries followed suit. By the end of the year
both [the Council of Economic Advisors] and other federal agencies
came to the conclusion that the [Committee for European Economic
Cooperation] had asserted in 1948: the E.R.P. [European Recovery
Program, the "Marshall Plan,"] offered no prospect for the countries
of Europe to balance their payments through exports to the U.S. . . .
The decision to shift the emphasis of American policy toward Europe
from economic aid to military aid occurred within the context of the
recognized failure of the politico-commercial strategy that was an
essential component of the E.R.P. This failure left the kind of
rearmament program proposed by N.S.C.-68 as the sole means for
building the Atlantic political community to which U.S. policy was
consistently committed after 1946.
William Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic
Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955, Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1984, especially pp. 12, 27, 50-60, 245-246 n.75
(reaching the same general conclusion; also pointing out that "few
dollars changed hands internationally under the aid programs, the
dollars went to American producers and the goods were sold to the
European public" in local currencies).
See also, Melvyn Leffler, "The United States and the Strategic
Dimensions of the Marshall Plan," Diplomatic History, Summer 1988, pp.
277-306 at pp. 277-278 (overcoming the dollar gap "which had
originally prompted the Marshall Plan" required a restoration of the
triangular trade patterns whereby Europe earned dollars through U.S.
purchase of raw materials from its colonies; hence European, and
Japanese, access to Third World markets and raw materials was an
essential component of the general strategic planning, and a necessary
condition for fulfillment of the general purposes of the Marshall
Plan, which were to "benefit the American economy," to "redress the
European balance of power" in favor of U.S. allies -- state and class
-- and to "enhance American national security," where "national
security . . . meant the control of raw materials, industrial
infrastructure, skilled manpower, and military bases"). And see
chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.]
And it worked: military spending was a big stimulus to the U.S.
economy, and it led to the rebuilding of Japanese industry, and the
rebuilding of European industry -- and in fact, it has continued to be
our mode of industrial management right up to the present. So in that
little comment Gaddis was getting near the main story: he was saying,
post-war American decisions on rearmament and detente have been keyed
to domestic economic considerations -- but then he drops it, and we
back to talking about "containment" again.
And if you look still closer at the scholarship on "containment," it's
even more intriguing. For example, in another book Gaddis discusses
the American military intervention in the Soviet Union right after the
Bolshevik Revolution -- when we tried to overthrow the new Bolshevik
government by force -- and he says that was defensive and that was
containment: our invasion of the Russian land mass. And remember, I'm
not talking about some right-wing historian; this is the major, most
respected, liberal diplomatic historian, the dean of the field: he
says the military intervention by 13 Western nations in the Soviet
Union in 1918 was a "defensive" act. And why is it defensive? Well,
there's a sense in which he's right. He says it was "defensive"
because the Bolsheviks had declared a challenge to the existing order
throughout the West, they had offered a challenge to Western
capitalism -- and naturally we had to defend ourselves. And the only
way we could defend ourselves was by sending troops to Russia, so
that's a "defensive invasion, that's "defense."
[For Gaddis's characterization of the 1918 invasion of the Soviet
Union, see John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the
History of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp.
10f, 21. His exact words (pp. 10-11):
This debate over the motives for intervention misses an important
point, though, which is that Wilson and his allies saw their actions
in a defensive rather than an offensive context. Intervention in
Russia took place in response to a profound and potentially
far-reaching intervention by the new Soviet government in the internal
affairs, not just of the West, but of virtually every other country in
the world: I refer here, of course to the Revolution's challenge --
which could hardly have been more categorical -- to the very survival
of the capitalist order. . . . From this perspective, the interesting
question regarding Western intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik
Revolution is why it was such a half-hearted, poorly planned, and
ultimately ineffectual enterprise, given the seriousness of the threat
it sought to counter.]
And if you look at that history in more detail, you'll find the point
is even more revealing. So for example, right after the Bolshevik
Revolution American Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned President
Wilson that the Bolsheviks are "issuing an appeal to the proletariat
of all nations, to the illiterate and mentally deficient, who by their
very numbers are supposed to take control of all governments." And
since they're issuing an appeal to the mass of the population in other
countries to take control of their own affairs, and since that mass of
the population are the "mentally deficient" and the "illiterate" --
you know, all these poor slobs out there who have to be kept in their
place, for their own good -- that's an attack on us, and therefore we
have to defend ourselves.
[For Secretary of State Lansing's warning, see "Lansing Papers,
1914-1920," Vol. II, Foreign Relations of the United States,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940, p. 348. His exact
words (referring to a 1918 communication from the Bolsheviks to "the
peoples and governments of the Allied countries"):
The document is an appeal to the proletariat of all countries, to the
ignorant and mentally deficient, who by their numbers are urged to
become masters. Here seems to me to lie a very real danger in view of
the present social unrest throughout the world.
For a similar warning by Lansing made elsewhere, see John Lewis
Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An
Interpretive History, New York: Knopf, 1978, p. 105:
[Bolshevism's appeal is] to the unintelligent and brutish elements of
mankind to take from the intellectual and successful their rights and
possessions and to reduce them to a state of slavery. . . . Bolshevism
is the most hideous and monstrous thing that the human mind has ever
conceived.
See also, Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American
Response to Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p.
242 (on President Wilson's fears about Bolshevism's potential effect
upon American blacks).
For a study of Wilson's intervention in Russia, see David S.
Fogelsang, America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention
in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920, Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995.]
And what Wilson actually did was to "defend ourselves" in the two
obvious ways: first by invading Russia to try to prevent that
challenge from being issued, and second by initiating the Red Scare at
home [a 1919 campaign of U.S. government repression and propaganda
against "Communists"] to crush the threat that anyone here might
answer the appeal. Those were both a part of the same intervention,
the same "defensive" intervention.
[For sources on the Red Scare of 1919 in the U.S., see footnote 6 of
chapter 8 of U.P. Chomsky remarks: "The Red Scare was strongly backed
by the press and elites generally until they came to see that their
own interests would be harmed as the right-wing frenzy got out of hand
-- in particular, the anti-immigrant hysteria, which threatened the
reserve of cheap labor" (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in
Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 189).]
James A. Donald
wrote:
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > Chomsky is taking a single sentence from the middle of a 21-page
> > document and arguing that this represents the primary goal of US
> > foreign policy, ignoring the rest of the document and numerous
> > other documents in which it's clear that the primary goal of US
> > policymakers was containment of the Soviet Union. In their view,
> > the Soviet Union was a threat not because it stood outside the
> > capitalist economic system, but because of its military power, its
> > hostility towards the capitalist countries, and its willingness to
> > use violence (primarily violence by Soviet-controlled Communist
> > parties rather than outright invasion, in Kennan's view).
>
> An excerpt from Understanding Power (footnotes inserted throughout):
Those of Chomsky's footnotes that I have checked, are lies. The
sources generally do not support the claims.
Jack Black
>
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > Chomsky is taking a single sentence from the middle of a 21-page
> > document and arguing that this represents the primary goal of US
> > foreign policy, ignoring the rest of the document and numerous
> > other documents in which it's clear that the primary goal of US
> > policymakers was containment of the Soviet Union. In their view,
> > the Soviet Union was a threat not because it stood outside the
> > capitalist economic system, but because of its military power, its
> > hostility towards the capitalist countries, and its willingness to
> > use violence (primarily violence by Soviet-controlled Communist
> > parties rather than outright invasion, in Kennan's view).
>
> An excerpt from Understanding Power (footnotes inserted throughout):
>
> Well, the rhetoric of "containment" begs all questions -- once you've
> acccpted the rhetoric of "containment," it really doesn't matter what
> you say, you've already given up everything. Because the fundamental
> question is, is it true? Has the United States been "containing" the
> Soviet Union? Well, you know, on the surface it looks a little odd. I
> mean, maybe you think the Soviet Union is the worst place in history,
> but they're conservative -- whatever rotten things they've done
> they've been inside the Soviet Union and right around its borders, in
> Eastern Europe and Afghanistan and so on. They never do anything
> anywhere else.
Mozambique. Ethiopia. Angola. ...
> They don't have troops stationed anywhere else.
Egypt. Libya. Somalia ...
> They don't have intervention forces positioned all over the world
> like we do.
Sao Tome. Seychelles. Grenada. ...
Russil Wvong
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > Chomsky is taking a single sentence from the middle of a 21-page
> > document and arguing that this represents the primary goal of US
> > foreign policy, ignoring the rest of the document and numerous
> > other documents in which it's clear that the primary goal of US
> > policymakers was containment of the Soviet Union.
>
>
> Well, the rhetoric of "containment" begs all questions -- once you've
> acccpted the rhetoric of "containment," it really doesn't matter what
> you say, you've already given up everything. Because the fundamental
> question is, is it true? Has the United States been "containing" the
> Soviet Union?
Thanks for posting this long excerpt, David. In response, here's a long
dispatch sent by George Kennan in 1952, when he was Ambassador to the
Soviet Union. Kennan reviews the nature of the conflict up to that
point, analyzes the situation from the point of view of the Soviet
leadership, and makes recommendations for US policy. I think it gives
a pretty good picture of the early stages of the Cold War.
[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB14/doc1.htm]
For any readers interested in learning more about the Cold War, I'd
highly recommend Louis Halle's "The Cold War as History" (1967).
Some minor comments follow.
--
Chomsky:
> Well, you know, on the surface it looks a little odd. I
> mean, maybe you think the Soviet Union is the worst place in history,
> but they're conservative -- whatever rotten things they've done
> they've been inside the Soviet Union and right around its borders, in
> Eastern Europe and Afghanistan and so on.
I don't think the Soviet Union is the worst place in history. But I
do think that perhaps Chomsky is overlooking the situation at the end
of World War II. In the words of Mark Danner:
A half-century ago, Germany found itself in a state of utter
devastation, its people clawing through ruins and brambles in
search of scraps of food; France and Britain were financially
and spiritually exhausted; and in the occupied states to the
east, the soldiers of the Red Army crouched menacingly, the
spearhead of a nation that had arisen triumphant from the war
and saw before it now no power that could possibly oppose it.
In 1948, following demobilization, the US had an army of 550,000.
The Soviet Union had an army of 5 to 6 million, which demonstrated
great brutality in its occupation of Eastern Europe, including the
rape of up to 2 million German women. The Soviet expansion into
the power vacuum opened up in Eastern Europe placed its huge armies
within striking distance of the West. It's very difficult to
imagine the atmosphere of fear and exhaustion in Western Europe
at that time. (Louis Halle suggests that Tolkien's "Lord of the
Rings" trilogy captures the fear and horror in Western Europe
from the rise of Hitler in the 1930s to the Berlin and Cuban
crises in the early 1960s, when the world was on the brink of
nuclear war.)
In this situation, if the US had simply withdrawn from Europe, as
it did after World War I, the Soviet Union would have taken over
Western Europe, as it did Eastern Europe. I don't mean to say
that the Soviet Union was evil, or any such nonsense; I'm simply
saying that the Soviet Union would have expanded into the resulting
power vacuum, as it had in Eastern Europe.
> ... the post-World War II U.S. global
> military presence reached over 3,000 foreign military bases "virtually
> surrounding both the Soviet Union and Communist China"
Correct. What else does Chomsky think that "containment" refers to?
> So what does it mean to say we're "containing" them?
Encircling them, particularly in Western Europe and Japan. Naturally
the Soviet Union saw this as aggressive, just as earlier the US and
the Western Europeans saw the Soviet Union's brutal occupation of
Eastern Europe (including the crushing of non-Communist political
forces in Poland and Czechoslovakia) as aggressive. From the Soviet
point of view, of course, this was defensive, not aggressive.
> You have to remember the context in which these decisions were being
> made, after all. This was right after the Marshall Plan had failed,
> right after the post-war aid programs had failed.
Here Chomsky is misconstruing the purpose of the Marshall Plan. The
main purpose of the Marshall Plan was to prevent the Soviet takeover
of Western Europe; and it did so, even before the aid was actually
delivered, by renewing the confidence of the Western Europeans.
Kennan's assessment of the world situation in November 1947, PPS/13:
[http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan/pps13.html]
Regarding the military buildup proposed by NSC 68, I have to point out
again the 10:1 disparity in the late 1940s between the size of the
Soviet military and the size of the US military.
Regarding the Western intervention in Russia in 1918-9, Kennan's written
an entire book on this ("The Decision to Intervene"). For the short
version, see "Russia and the West." Briefly, the Soviet version of
events -- a sinister capitalist plot to crush communism in its
cradle -- ignores the fact that Western leaders were primarily
focused on the all-consuming conflict of World War I. The
intervention was planned while Western leaders were trying to get
Russia back into the war.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
David Manning
<afe9ed76.0209...@posting.google.com>...
>
> Thanks for posting this long excerpt, David. In response, here's a long
> dispatch sent by George Kennan in 1952, when he was Ambassador to the
> Soviet Union. Kennan reviews the nature of the conflict up to that
> point, analyzes the situation from the point of view of the Soviet
> leadership, and makes recommendations for US policy. I think it gives
> a pretty good picture of the early stages of the Cold War.
> [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB14/doc1.htm]
Kennan's comments aren't a response but an example of what Chomsky's
talking about, namely, that liberals viewed their posture as defensive
despite evidence to the contrary.
Quoting Kennan: "When World War II came to an end, the leaders of the
Soviet Union had no desire to face another major foreign war for a
long, long time to come", that it was "orthodox Communist strategy not
to seek an open and general military confrontation with capitalist
power" for tactical reasons, among them "that communism was still
weaker than the main forces of capitalism", that "Soviet naval and air
forces were regarded at the end of the war as so inferior to the
comparable Western contingents" that the Soviets felt they had to make
up for it by maintaining arms production and not demobilizing as much
as the West, and he discusses "the general overrating of the strength
of the Soviet armed forces which attended the beginning of
remilitarization of the West" and the West's "somewhat oversimplified
and inaccurate" image of "the nature of the Soviet threat", one "in
which the real delimitation both of Soviet intentions and of Soviet
strength became confused and distorted" (in other words, the West was
kidding itself -- Kennan doesn't say why, but it's obvious: to justify
its own policies as defensive).
He argues that Communism was on the defensive politically by 1947
(with the West on the offensive) and that "the sudden consolidation of
Communist power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was not a sign of any 'new
Soviet aggressiveness' and had nothing to do with any Soviet decision
to launch its military forces against the West."
"To date there has never been any evidence that would tend to confirm
that Moscow had any thought at that time of launching its armed forces
against the West or that its views on this subject were in any way
different from those described above. Nevertheless, a firm opinion
crystallized in Western circles there was danger of a Soviet attack;
and with this opinion came a feeling that rather than, or at least
together with, consolidating the political gains that had been
achieved in the past year and proceeding to the crushing of the
Western European Communist parties in conjunction with the restoration
of decent economic conditions in the countries concerned, the thing to
do was to proceed to the formation of a Western military alliance
against the Soviet Union."
So it's defense when the West sets up a military alliance against a
weaker empire that shows no evidence of military aggression (only what
Kennan calls "partial war" -- i.e., political warfare) and whose
forces are inferior and overrated. The West does this "in conjunction
with the restoration of decent economic conditions" -- which will just
happen to benefit its economies while maintaining a capitalist system
it can control. Who's responsible for the "crushing of the Western
European Communist parties"? Apparently, crushing political parties is
considered defense. Well, if crushing political parties is a
legitimate form of defense -- a form of political warfare -- then it's
not very different from the political "partial war" the Soviets
propose (characterized by Kennan as aggression). Meanwhile, the "firm
opinion" that "crystallized in Western circles [that] there was danger
of a Soviet attack" helps to justify the West's military and economic
policies (i.e., industrial management via increased militarization),
policies that in turn cause the Soviets to put more emphasis on
militarization, according to Kennan:
"Unquestionably, as Western rearmament proceeded and as the emphasis
on the military aspect of the problem was observed and absorbed in
Moscow, there must have been a corresponding tendency in Soviet
circles to put increasing emphasis on the military aspects of the
East-West conflict at the expense of political ones. The development
of Western policy must have led to a constantly higher rating in
Moscow of the likelihood of an eventual third world war."
So starting an arms race that threatens a third world war is
"defense." For Kennan, as for Gaddis, the Western policies are all
"defensive containment," an Orwellism used to justify aggressive
military and economic policy.
> > You have to remember the context in which these decisions were being
> > made, after all. This was right after the Marshall Plan had failed,
> > right after the post-war aid programs had failed.
>
> Here Chomsky is misconstruing the purpose of the Marshall Plan. The
> main purpose of the Marshall Plan was to prevent the Soviet takeover
> of Western Europe; and it did so, even before the aid was actually
> delivered, by renewing the confidence of the Western Europeans.
> Kennan's assessment of the world situation in November 1947, PPS/13:
> [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan/pps13.html]
He's not misconstruing. The cited source explicitly says that one
purpose of the plan was to "redress the European balance of power" in
favor of the West. But there was a huge economic component to it as
well -- and when it didn't work out as planned, U.S. tactics changed.
Russil Wvong
> For any readers interested in learning more about the Cold War, I'd
> highly recommend Louis Halle's "The Cold War as History" (1967).
Here's a few quotes from "The Cold War as History" regarding the
crisis of 1946-1947.
It was not only Greece that, in the winter of 1946-1947, balanced
upon the brink of perdition. So did Britain and all of western
Europe. We, who know of the last-minute salvation to come, can
hardly recapture, today, the alarm inspired by the picture that
confronted the makers of American policy as they looked out across
the ocean at a world that was collapsing.
The degree to which Britain and western Europe had been exhausted
by the War did not become evident until now, two years after its
termination. In 1945 Britain still had some reserves of gold and
foreign exchange left, and that year the United States and Canada
opened credits of $5,000 million for it to draw on. The
expectation was that these resources would tide the British over
until they had reconstructed the industrial productive power that
would enable them to re-establish the export trade by which they
might earn for themselves what was needed to pay for necessary
imports of food and raw materials.
This, however, was not happening. Britain's productive power was
not becoming re-established. Its limited reserves and the $5,000
million credit were being expended for currently needed food and
fuel, rather than for capital investment. Soon, when they were
used up, and in the absence of rescue from outside, the British
people would starve, and in the winter they would freeze for lack
of fuel. Britain was like a soldier wounded in war who, now that
the fighting was over, would bleed to death.
The plight of Britain--which was no different from the plight of
other free countries in Europe--was made vivid, now, by what
lawyers call an 'Act of God.' The winter of 1946-1947 was one of
extraordinary severity. Beginning on January 25, a succession of
blizzards without precedent struck the British Isles. At this
time Britain was already in the midst of a crisis caused by the
shortage of coal. This shortage had already forced a number of
factories that produced for export to shut down temporarily.
Twelve days before the blizzards struck, the Government had
reduced coal allocations to all industries by fifty per
cent--simply because that was all the coal available. There had
already been some temporary cut-offs of electricity because of the
coal shortage. And food was being severely rationed.
The blizzards that now began simply froze transport in Britain, as
well as killing the winter wheat. Everywhere, the factories that
were still open began to close. By February 7, two weeks after
the British informed the State Department that they would have to
withdraw from Greece and Turkey, more than half of British
industry had come to a halt. On that date the Government
announced in the House of Commons that for several days all
electricity would be cut off from industrial consumers in most of
England, including the Midlands, and that electricity for domestic
use would be cut off for five hours of each day. Immediately,
five million workers were thrown out of work and were left with
little or no heat in their homes.
The approaching crisis in Greece and Turkey was, then, merely the
symptom of a far wider crisis in Britain and throughout Europe.
Britain could no longer continue its rescue operation in Greece
and Turkey because it stood in need of rescue itself. Britain was
collapsing as Greece was collapsing; and so were France and Italy,
in both of which the Communists seemed about to take over as they
already had in the eastern European countries. This was once more
the eleventh hour--as in 1917, as in 1941. If the United States
did not intervene now, all would be lost.
Again, however, now for the third time, the United States would
intervene.
The external and internal threats:
Nothing in the European Recovery Program [the Marshall Plan] could
have been interpreted as antagonistic to Moscow except the fact
that it was undertaken in spite of Moscow's objection. The West
European countries were seeking simply their own salvation and
recovery from the effects of the War. In doing so they were,
however, associating themselves with the United States, which had
taken a stand against any further Russian expansion. The choice
that had been put before them at the beginning of July 1947 had
been that of resigning themselves to helplessness and the descent
into chaos, or facing the active opposition of Moscow by
undertaking to save themselves with American help. Their decision
in favor of the latter course now identified them as members of
the camp opposed to Moscow, and therefore as proper objects of its
hostility.
In the general view then current, of which Churchill made himself
a spokesman, it was only the American monopoly of atomic power,
available for the protection of the West, that made this disregard
of Moscow's opposition possible. Even so, in the months that
followed the first meeting of the sixteen nations, Europeans and
Americans alike had to steel their nerves to live and carry on in
the expectation of a new World War that might begin at any moment
with the occupation of a defenseless West Europe by the Red
Army. [3]
[Footnote 3] From the beginning of the 1930's to almost the
end of 1962 the populations of the West lived continuously in
a terrible fear. The general economic breakdown of 1929-1930,
which foreboded the breakdown of the social order everywhere,
was followed by the rise of Hitler and the Japanese war-lords,
to the point where it no longer seemed possible to stop them.
The terrors of World War II were followed by those associated
with the prospect of an imminent general breakdown of
civilization and the obliteration of all that made life worth
living, or even possible, under the Muscovite tyranny that was
spreading from the East. The emotion of fear is not easily
recaptured, and now a new generation is growing up that, one
hopes, will be spared the experience. However, for those of
the new generation who want to know, and for some of their
elders who want to recapture the brooding terror that lasted
for some thirty years, I recommend J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy,
*The Lord of the Rings*, Boston, 1954-1956, which enshrines
the mood and the emotion of those long years in which we, in
the West, saw almost no possibility of saving ourselves from
the intolerable darkness that was overspreading the world from
the East.
The problem of resisting the hostile Russian power was complicated
in varying degrees for the West European nations by the Communist
parties that operated from within their borders under the
discipline of Moscow and in support of its foreign policy. As we
have seen, their resistance to the Nazis in the occupied countries
had given the Communists prestige and had greatly strengthened
their position when the Nazis were finally overcome and swept
away. They had promptly become one of the strongest parties in
Italy, so that they had to be given four Cabinet posts in the
first Government of the new Italian Republic. In France, after
October 1945 the Communist Party had been the largest and
strongest of the political parties, having polled a higher
percentage of votes than had ever been polled by one party in the
history of France. Consequently, it had held a Vice-Premiership
and four other Cabinet posts (including the Ministry of Defense)
in the first Government under the Fourth Republic. Here appeared
to be a menace of Muscovite conquest from within as grave as the
menace of Muscovite conquest from without. The two menaces in
conjunction were cause for alarm or despair among realistic and
reasonable men. Moreover, continuous suffering from cold and
hunger, as West Europe failed to recover after 1945, seemed likely
to produce increasing numbers of recruits for the Communist
parties, regarded as the parties of protest.
If one has been slipping at an accelerating rate toward the abyss
of disaster, which one has almost reached, one can hardly hope
that one's slide will be halted, at last, just on the brink. The
aggressive intransigence that Moscow now manifested, as the West
approached the brink, was surely based on the expectation that it
would not be able to save itself from going over. It represented
the deep-seated psychology that impells one to turn upon those who
appear stricken and helpless. At this time Moscow was openly
proclaiming the imminence of economic collapse in the United
States as well as Europe, and there can be little doubt that this
is what it confidently expected.
The expectation was not to be realized.
Although it could not yet be seen at the time, by the summer of 1947
the tide was already beginning to turn....
The economic recovery:
It was not only in the popular appeal of Communism that the winter
of 1947-1948 was a turning point. In the same winter there began
an economic recovery in West Europe that quite exceeded the
expectations of those who had launched the European Recovery
Program. In a little over two years, of what had been intended as
a four-year program, Britain's dollar-deficit had vanished, with
the consequence that American assistance under the Marshall Plan
could be terminated at the end of 1951. Eire, Sweden, and
Portugal had already been able to dispense with any further
assistance of the sort by the middle of the year, at which time
the American administrator of the assistance, Mr. William
C. Foster, said: 'The progress of recovery in Western Europe is
now such that we could limit dollar assistance to a few special
cases' if it were not for the need to support the West European
countries, who were now rebuilding their military strength,
against what he referred to, in language that had by now become
commonplace, as 'the Soviet design to subvert and subjugate' them.
By the middle 1950's the West European countries, in contrast to
those of East Europe, were beginning to enjoy such a prosperity as
they had never known before.
The dark and sordid chapters in history far exceed those that show
the grace of which men, at their best, are capable. The latter
are what save the honor of mankind. The conception and the
realization of the European Recovery Program belong to the latter.
On both sides of the Atlantic, intelligence and thoughtfulness
combined with high purpose. The British Government, in announcing
the Program's completion in Britain, expressed its gratitude to
the Government and people of the United States for giving to
Britain, at a critical moment in its history, 'the means to regain
her economic independence and power.' Speaking to the House of
Commons, Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:
'We are not an emotional people, and we are not always very
articulate. But these characteristics should not be allowed to
hide the very real and profound sense of gratitude which we feel
toward the American people, not only for the material help they
have given us but also for the spirit of understanding and
friendship in which it has been given.'
Because such moments never last is no reason why they should be
forgotten.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
alt.politics.international FAQ: www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/apifaq.html
James A. Donald
On 27 Sep 2002 21:35:48 -0700, quote...@yahoo.com (David
Manning) wrote:
> Kennan's comments aren't a response but an example of what
> Chomsky's talking about, namely, that liberals viewed their
> posture as defensive despite evidence to the contrary.
They viewed their posture as defensive because Stalin had just
grabbed half of Europe, attempted to grab Greece and Italy, and
was making moves all over the world.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
xoU/x4imRm3b66Kdce7jPrAObCYZCJRd7UXZ4NRE
4+XWzUUel8VHPJpSwxWFVMO/T4Nj31ZTkw+igiyI2
Russil Wvong
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> > [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB14/doc1.htm]
>
> Kennan's comments aren't a response but an example of what Chomsky's
> talking about, namely, that liberals viewed their posture as defensive
> despite evidence to the contrary.
I'm glad you read the whole thing, David. It's *Kennan* who's presenting
the evidence to the contrary: he's explaining the Soviet perspective,
and how the Soviet leadership likely interpreted the actions of the West
as aggressive, despite the fact that it was the Soviet Union that had
brutally occupied Eastern Europe and overwhelming conventional
superiority -- 150 divisions against NATO's 28.
The realists, such as Kennan, view it as misleading to blame the Cold War
on the "aggressiveness" of one side or the other. *Each side* saw the
other side as threatening, and its own actions as defensive; but by
responding to that threat, intensified the threat perceived by the
other side.
To quote Louis Halle, "The Cold War as History":
Perhaps Stalin had meant it when he had said, in 1945, that after
the War the various Communist parties would become nationalist
parties, giving the national interests of their respective
countries priority. Roosevelt had also meant it when he had said
that the United States would withdraw from Europe after the war.
But the threat posed by Russian expansion had brought the United
States back to Europe, and now the threat that the American return
seemed to pose impelled Moscow to tighten the bonds in which it
held its satellites, attaching them more firmly to itself,
suppressing within them any manifestations of national separatism.
What we see throughout this history is the dynamism of the
self-fulfilling prophecy. Moscow, anticipating a threat from the
West, expands its empire in that direction, thereby provoking a
reaction that confirms its anticipation. Washington, reacting in
fear of Moscow's spreading tyranny, provokes the spread and
intensification of that tyranny by moving to contain it, thereby
confirming the fear on which it had acted.
--
Minor comments:
You say:
> "Soviet naval and air
> forces were regarded at the end of the war as so inferior to the
> comparable Western contingents" that the Soviets felt they had to make
> up for it by maintaining arms production and not demobilizing as much
> as the West ...
The part about the Soviets not demobilizing as much as the West -- that
is, maintaining an army 10 times the size of the US army -- because
they felt they had to make up for their inferiority in naval and air
forces is your interpolation, of course. Kennan cites other reasons
for the Soviets not demobilizing -- the tradition of maintaining
extremely strong ground forces, the usefulness of intimidating the
war-shocked population of Western Europe. His main point is that their
maintaining such a large army didn't necessarily mean they were planning
a war (despite their rhetoric about warmongering and preparing for war).
> So it's defense when the West sets up a military alliance against a
> weaker empire that shows no evidence of military aggression (only what
> Kennan calls "partial war" -- i.e., political warfare) and whose
> forces are inferior and overrated.
Again, the Soviet Union was far stronger in conventional land forces
(150 divisions to NATO's 28), not weaker! It was only their naval
and air forces that were inferior. So yes, I think it's fair to say
that NATO was defensive.
Regarding evidence of military aggression, the people of Western Europe
took the size of the Soviet army as powerful evidence; and it's hard
to blame them.
Of course, the US had atomic weapons, and the Soviet Union did not.
Louis Halle describes the situation as it was seen then:
In the late 1940's the countries of the West were alarmed at the
imbalance represented by the contrast between the vast strength of
the Red Army and their own nakedness in the conventional
instruments of military land-power. They felt themselves
defenseless in the path of the Russian advance. At the same time,
they had such a horror of the atomic bomb, even though their side
had the monopoly of it, that its use could hardly be contemplated.
This psychology must account, at least in part, for the fact that
throughout the tense months of the Berlin blockade Washington
refrained from any overt threat to use the bomb.
On the other hand, to the Russians the imbalance must have been
the other way around, for they saw their society defenseless
against an annihilating attack that the 'capitalist imperialists,'
ruthless by definition, might launch at any time.
It is in its psychological effect only that the balance of power
implies stability. This is to say that it exercises its restraint
on political or military adventure only to the extent that it is
believed to exist, whether it exists in fact or not. In 1948-1949
there was a psychological balance of sorts between utterly
disparate powers--like a balance between a chimera that breathes
fire and a dragon that lashes with its tail. In this case, the
chimera would feel an urgent need to acquire a powerful tail for
lashing, the dragon to acquire a fire-breathing capability. The
West would set about rebuilding its conventional land-forces while
Moscow would be working on a crash basis to develop an atomic
armament.
The great fear in the West was of what would happen when, as was
inevitable in time (assuming that a preventive war would not be
launched), Moscow did acquire such an armament. Its acquisition,
everyone supposed, would deter and thereby neutralize the Western
atomic armament, leaving the Red Army free to advance once more.
This logic seemed unassailable, and the fear it inspired in the
West made us all contemplate the future with awful foreboding.
For years one had the feeling that the time left for the enjoyment
of a tolerable existence was running out. Thinking of the fate of
the Carthaginians, one wondered what except tribal habit caused
one to take such pains in the rearing of one's children.
Historians may recapitulate events such as these, but they can
never recapture the emotion.
All I can say is, I'm very glad the Cold War is over.
David Manning
> quote...@yahoo.com (David Manning) wrote:
> > russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> > > [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB14/doc1.htm]
> >
> > Kennan's comments aren't a response but an example of what Chomsky's
> > talking about, namely, that liberals viewed their posture as defensive
> > despite evidence to the contrary.
>
> I'm glad you read the whole thing, David. It's *Kennan* who's presenting
> the evidence to the contrary: he's explaining the Soviet perspective,
> and how the Soviet leadership likely interpreted the actions of the West
> as aggressive, despite the fact that it was the Soviet Union that had
> brutally occupied Eastern Europe and overwhelming conventional
> superiority -- 150 divisions against NATO's 28.
>
> The realists, such as Kennan, view it as misleading to blame the Cold War
> on the "aggressiveness" of one side or the other. *Each side* saw the
> other side as threatening, and its own actions as defensive; but by
> responding to that threat, intensified the threat perceived by the
> other side.
No one is trying "to blame the Cold War on the 'aggressiveness' of one
side or the other." Just the opposite. The Cold War was mostly an
excuse for the two biggest empires in the world to rule their own
domains and justify it by blaming the other side. It's true Kennan
presents all sorts of argument and evidence about Soviet
non-aggression but he and the other planners still regarded what they
were doing in Europe (crushing political parties and unions,
empowering fascists, increasing militarization to control the economy,
etc.) as defensive, right? If some intelligent Soviet planner
presented evidence about Western non-aggression in Eastern Europe in
*his* planning documents but still regarded Soviet policy there as
defensive, it would simply confirm the point, wouldn't it? These are,
as you say, the "realists" -- the intelligent guys who try to run
their empires rationally. You can only think well of them if you are
in favor of imperialism.
>
> > So it's defense when the West sets up a military alliance against a
> > weaker empire that shows no evidence of military aggression (only what
> > Kennan calls "partial war" -- i.e., political warfare) and whose
> > forces are inferior and overrated.
>
> Again, the Soviet Union was far stronger in conventional land forces
> (150 divisions to NATO's 28), not weaker! It was only their naval
> and air forces that were inferior. So yes, I think it's fair to say
> that NATO was defensive.
You think Kennan was wrong when he said that "communism was still
weaker than the main forces of capitalism"? Is he wrong about "the
general overrating of the strength of the Soviet armed forces" by the
West? Is he wrong when he said: "To date there has never been any
evidence that would tend to confirm that Moscow had any thought at
that time of launching its armed forces
against the West..."? You can harp all you want on "conventional land
forces" -- you're not wrong about it -- but there are clearly other
factors that led to NATO, as Kennan himself pointed out in the Reith
lecture where he said that NATO was formed so that the West could deal
with "the communist danger in its most threatening form -- as an
internal problem -- that is, of Western society, to be combatted by
reviving economic activity." So, there's the real threat -- not from
"conventional land forces" but from the West's internal political
dissenters. NATO was tool for managing the empire, not just as
"defense" from Soviet military expansion.
> Regarding evidence of military aggression, the people of Western Europe
> took the size of the Soviet army as powerful evidence; and it's hard
> to blame them.
>
The size of a military is "powerful evidence" of military aggression?
What then do you make of the post-World War II U.S. global military
presence? Were the US' 3,000 foreign military bases "containment" or
"powerful evidence" of aggression?
Russil Wvong wrote:
> > ... the post-World War II U.S. global
> > military presence reached over 3,000 foreign military bases "virtually
> > surrounding both the Soviet Union and Communist China"
> Correct. What else does Chomsky think that "containment" refers to?
Perhaps "containment" is an Orwellian term for "aggression."
James A. Donald
On 28 Sep 2002 19:28:52 -0700, quote...@yahoo.com (David
Manning) wrote:
> No one is trying "to blame the Cold War on the
> 'aggressiveness' of one side or the other." Just the
> opposite. The Cold War was mostly an excuse for the two
> biggest empires in the world to rule their own domains
But the US did not "rule its domain" France and the rest
remained independent, Germany and Japan swiftly became
independent, while on the other side of the Iron curtain, there
were repeated bloody wars as the Soviet Union crushed the
subject peoples that its army raped and occuppied.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
U2H6s/VrArTDhhrtA1rUD6fEzqVqvMQnDkRkJIBN
4MXhDsfhoEUuQTOSZvt9fx9hymIAysA9SczVMpFyU
Russil Wvong
during the week. I'll try to respond next weekend.
quote...@yahoo.com (David Manning) wrote:
> > quote...@yahoo.com (David Manning) wrote:
> > > Kennan's comments aren't a response but an example of what Chomsky's
> > > talking about, namely, that liberals viewed their posture as defensive
> > > despite evidence to the contrary.
>
> No one is trying "to blame the Cold War on the 'aggressiveness' of one
> side or the other."
Huh? I thought you were arguing that the Western posture was not
defensive ("evidence to the contrary"), i.e. it was aggressive.
You go on to talk about containment being an Orwellian term for
aggression.
> The Cold War was mostly an excuse for the two biggest empires in the
> world to rule their own domains and justify it by blaming the other side.
Not sure what you mean by "mostly". Do you mean to say that Western
leaders weren't terrified by the Soviet Union -- by both its 150
divisions and its Moscow-controlled Communist parties abroad (with
a very real chance of taking over in France and Italy) -- and that
the Soviet leaders weren't terrified by the West's atomic bombs?
The Communist parties in France and Italy weren't "internal political
dissenters." They were controlled by Moscow. Louis Halle, "The Cold
War as History":
The problem of resisting the hostile Russian power was complicated
in varying degrees for the West European nations by the Communist
parties that operated from within their borders under the
discipline of Moscow and in support of its foreign policy. As we
have seen, their resistance to the Nazis in the occupied countries
had given the Communists prestige and had greatly strengthened
their position when the Nazis were finally overcome and swept
away. They had promptly become one of the three strongest parties
in Italy, so that they had to be given four Cabinet posts in the
first Government of the new Italian Republic. In France, after
October 1945 the Communist Party had been the largest and
strongest of the political parties, having polled a higher
percentage of votes than had ever been polled by one party in the
history of France. Consequently, it held a Vice-Premiership and
four other Cabinet posts (including the Ministry of Defense) in
the first Government under the Fourth Republic. Here appeared to
be a menace of Muscovite conquest from within as grave as the
menace from without. The two menaces in conjunction were cause
for alarm or despair among realistic and reasonable men.
Moreover, continuous suffering from cold and hunger, as West
Europe failed to recover after 1945, seemed likely to produce
increasing numbers of recruits for the Communist parties, regarded
as the parties of protest.
There was a crisis in 1947 in France:
As early as May 4, 1947, with the Communists still the strongest
party in France, Premier Paul Ramadier asked four of the five
Communist members of his Cabinet to resign and, when they refused,
dismissed them. The fifth followed them out. For a moment it
appeared as though the Ramadier Government might fall in
consequence, and Ramadier, himself, said with a certain
plausibility that if he was forced to submit his resignation he
would feel that he was 'signing the abdication of the Republic.'
He did not resign, however, the Republic did not abdicate.
The fatal if as-yet-hidden weakness of the Communists was that
they were serving the interests of a foreign government rather
than those of France, and this could hardly be disguised for long.
In the long run they were bound to awaken the opposition of the
forces of nationalism, which, in the long run, in France as in
elsewhere, were bound to prevail over them.
This was demonstrated again in November, when the Communists, who
dominated the French labor movement, tried to arrest France's
economic recovery and bring about a general breakdown through
widespread strikes. At the same time they called strikes in
Italy, and it was evident that a violent movement against the
developing European Recovery Program was under way. In a
statement supporting insurrectionary disturbances that accompanied
the strikes in Marseilles, where the red flag was hoisted over the
*Palais de Justice*, the political committee of the French
Communist Party declared its support for the 'working and
democratic population of Marseilles in its struggle against the
American Party.' On this occasion the Ramadier Government finally
did fall. For a few days France had no government. Some two
million workers were idle. Vitally needed coal was no longer
being mined, food supplies were cut off, and starvation impended.
The Communist-dominated Confederation Generale du Travail adopted
a resolution disapproving American aid to France. By the end of
November the Communists in the National Assembly had almost
brought its proceedings to a halt by obstruction and disorderly
behavior. At one point they took over the tribune and held it
overnight. The new Government of Mr. Robert Schuman, however,
stood firm, and in December the strikers began to weary of what
their Communist leadership was imposing on them. When the
Communists called a strike of the workers in the Paris *Metro* on
December 8 it had to be abandoned because of the lack of response.
Finally, on December 9, the strikes collapsed completely. The
next day business as usual was resumed.
The result of this Communist attempt, and its failure, was a
general loss of Communist strength in France. The
Communist-dominated confederation of labor-unions probably lost
almost a quarter of its membership. A strengthened Government now
closed down the principal Communist newspapers and took other
measures to bring the Party under control. This was the
turning-point for the French Communist Party, which was now
beginning to decline in membership and political strength. It had
shot its bolt and missed.
In Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, there was a non-Communist
government up to 1948, with substantial Communist representation
(including the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior).
What happened in February 1948:
... In the winter of 1947-1948 there were signs that the strong
position of the Communists in Czechoslovakia was weakening.
Throughout Europe and the West as a whole, a reaction was
manifesting itself to the ruthless expansionist policy of Stalin's
empire since 1944. The Cold War had begun.
In February 1948 the Communist Minister of the Interior, supported
by the Communist Prime Minister, defied the Czechoslovakian
Cabinet, which was attempting to exercise over him the discipline
that the Finnish Cabinet, that same spring, was to exercise over
its own Communist Minister of the Interior. Six days later, a
Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union arrived in Prague.
The police, obeying the orders of the Communist Minister of the
Interior, then went into action. There was some blood shed. The
forces of freedom were suppressed. Parliamentary democracy was
abolished. And so Czechoslovakia was forcibly transformed into a
police-state under a puppet Government subservient to Moscow.
> You think Kennan was wrong when he said that "communism was still
> weaker than the main forces of capitalism"? Is he wrong about "the
> general overrating of the strength of the Soviet armed forces" by the
> West? Is he wrong when he said: "To date there has never been any
> evidence that would tend to confirm that Moscow had any thought at
> that time of launching its armed forces against the West..."?
No, no, and no. But if you think this meant Western leaders were
*not* terrified by Moscow's armed forces, you're wrong. Kennan
argued that the Soviet armed forces were overrated; he never argued
that they were incapable of overrunning Western Europe.
Kennan's opinion was that people were focusing too much on the
military threat of a Soviet invasion from without, and not enough
on the political threat of a Communist takeover from within. I
don't see how this supports your theory that the Cold War was
mostly a pretense.
> The size of a military is "powerful evidence" of military aggression?
Correct.
> What then do you make of the post-World War II U.S. global military
> presence? Were the US' 3,000 foreign military bases "containment" or
> "powerful evidence" of aggression?
To the Soviet Union it was "powerful evidence" of aggression, obviously!
David Manning
> during the week. I'll try to respond next weekend.
>
Let's just drop it and agree to disagree. You're a wearying
correspondent. I was afraid when you mentioned the Tolkien trilogy
that you were going to quote the entire text. :-)
On France and Italy, see:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c11-s05.html
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c11-s06.html
> Kennan's opinion was that people were focusing too much on the
> military threat of a Soviet invasion from without, and not enough
> on the political threat of a Communist takeover from within. I
> don't see how this supports your theory that the Cold War was
> mostly a pretense.
I didn't say the Cold War was a "pretense." I said it was used as an
excuse to justify the ugly policies of both sides. That's not a
theory, just an observation.
> > The size of a military is "powerful evidence" of military aggression?
>
> Correct.
>
> > What then do you make of the post-World War II U.S. global military
> > presence? Were the US' 3,000 foreign military bases "containment" or
> > "powerful evidence" of aggression?
>
> To the Soviet Union it was "powerful evidence" of aggression, obviously!
The US has a much bigger military than Canada but that's not "powerful
evidence" of American aggression against Canada.
Russil Wvong
> > during the week. I'll try to respond next weekend.
>
> Let's just drop it and agree to disagree. You're a wearying
> correspondent. I was afraid when you mentioned the Tolkien trilogy
> that you were going to quote the entire text. :-)
Well, I appreciate the opportunity to type in all these excerpts from
"The Cold War as History", and hopefully other people reading the thread
will have found them interesting. They'll go into the Chomsky essay, of
course. :-)
Just to summarize:
- In the winter of 1946-1947, Britain and the other Western European
countries were on the brink of economic collapse, with their
people suffering greatly from hunger and cold. Externally,
the Soviet army vastly outnumbered the US army; internally, the
governments in France and Italy appeared likely to fall under
Moscow's control, via their respective Communist parties, as
later happened to Czechoslovakia.
Chomsky fails to mention (a) the overwhelming superiority of
the Soviet army, and (b) Moscow's control over the Communist
parties in France and Italy.
- The United States responded with the European Recovery Plan, which
offered economic aid to the European countries to assist them with
their recovery from the devastation of the war. This halted the
Soviet political advance. The winter of 1947-1948 was the turning
point, both in the popular appeal of Communism and in the economic
recovery of Western Europe.
- Louis Halle's view is that the psychology of both sides was defensive:
Moscow, anticipating a threat from the West, expands its empire
in that direction, thereby provoking a reaction that confirms
its anticipation. Washington, reacting in fear of Moscow's
spreading tyranny, provokes the spread and intensification of
that tyranny by moving to contain it, thereby confirming the
fear on which it had acted.
- Both sides were still in an extremely precarious position. The
Soviet Union had conventional superiority; the US had the bomb.
People believed that once the Soviet Union had the bomb as well,
which was inevitable, it would be able to overrun Western Europe
without fear of US intervention.
Fortunately, this logic turned out to be incorrect.
> > Kennan's opinion was that people were focusing too much on the
> > military threat of a Soviet invasion from without, and not enough
> > on the political threat of a Communist takeover from within. I
> > don't see how this supports your theory that the Cold War was
> > mostly a pretense.
>
> I didn't say the Cold War was a "pretense."
You did say
The Cold War was mostly an excuse for the two biggest empires
in the world to rule their own domains and justify it by
blaming the other side.
Needless to say, I disagree. (Perhaps I should have said "belief"
rather than "theory"; I didn't mean to suggest that your belief
amounts to a conspiracy theory.) If my paraphrasing didn't
accurately represent your meaning, my apologies.
Russil Wvong
> - Both sides were still in an extremely precarious position. The
> Soviet Union had conventional superiority; the US had the bomb.
> People believed that once the Soviet Union had the bomb as well,
> which was inevitable, it would be able to overrun Western Europe
> without fear of US intervention.
>
> Fortunately, this logic turned out to be incorrect.
So what happened next? Louis Halle, "The Cold War as History":
Ever since 1945 dominant opinion in the West had held that the
time was limited in which a settlement of the conflict with Russia
would have to be achieved if general disaster was to be averted.
Once Russia had a nuclear capability of its own, to neutralize
that of the West, the West would never again be in as strong a
bargaining position. In the most alarmist view, which had much
plausibility, once Russia had achieved such a capability the
defenses of the West would no longer be tenable. The United
States could no longer be counted on to respond to a Russian
invasion of West Europe by a nuclear attack on Russia when its own
cities were hostages to Russia. So the Russian empire would
expand over the Atlantic world, and over Asia, as the Roman empire
had expanded at the beginning of the Christian era. When, in
1949, Russia produced its first atomic explosion years earlier
than had been expected, the West, more than ever, felt itself
living with a time-bomb.
No one outside Moscow could know precisely when Russia would have
achieved a nuclear capability sufficient to match and deter that
of the United States. There were signs that this point was
approaching in 1955, and it appears to have been reached in 1958.
During the three or four intervening years the world outside
Russia awaited it with the most profound anxiety and pessimism.
In 1953, less than six months after Stalin's death, Russia had
exploded its first hydrogen bomb. By the summer of 1955 it had in
operation a heavy bomber roughly equivalent to the American B-52,
which had a range of some 6,000 miles. This meant that American
cities were at last within range of Russian hydrogen bombs,
although it is evident that Russia had not as yet acquired a
sufficient force to undertake the widespread devastation of the
United States. That would have required a great many long-range
bombers carrying a great many bombs, since it was to be expected
that a large proportion of the bombers would be shot down before
reaching their targets. ...
The emergence of a single leader at last, in 1958, coincided
ominously with Russia's acquisition of a full nuclear capability
to match that of the United States. The imminence of this
acquisition had been dramatically revealed to the West on October
4, 1957, when Moscow was able to announce the launching of the
first man-made earth satellite ('sputnik' in Russian) by means of
a carrier rocket. A rocket capable of putting such a satellite
into orbit would also be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead
with considerable accuracy to any target in the United States.
... Not since the Communist attack on South Korea had the American
people suffered such a frightening surprise. What the two
*sputniks* demonstrated was that, in a vital aspect of the arms
race, Russia had unexpectedly got ahead of the United States. It
had been able, ahead of the United States, to produce rockets with
a thrust amply sufficient for intercontinental ballistic missiles
(I.C.B.M.'s), and to direct them with astonishing accuracy.[3] ...
[3] ... As was not the case with the long-range bombers that had
hitherto been the only means of intercontinental delivery, the
defender could have no effective way of interfering with the
passage of an I.C.B.M. to prevent it from reach its target.
Khrushchev's ultimatum in November 1958:
In November 1958 Khrushchev announced that the time had now come
for the occupying powers to withdraw from Berlin, handing the city
over to Moscow's East German satellite, the German Democratic
Republic (G.D.R.). If, at the end of six months (i.e., by May 27,
1959), the West had not reached an agreement with Moscow on this,
Moscow would act without the West. It would turn over to the
G.D.R. control of the West's access routes to Berlin, and if the
West then attempted to use them without the G.D.R.'s consent
Moscow would support the G.D.R. Force would be met with force. A
series of such threats was brought to a climax on Christmas day,
when Foreign Minister Gromyko said before the Supreme Soviet in
Moscow that 'any provocation in West Berlin,' or any attempt at
'aggressive actions against the German Democratic Republic,' could
start 'a big war, in the crucible of which millions upon millions
of people would perish and which would bring devastation
incomparably more serious than the last world war. The flames of
war would inevitably reach the American continent....'
The United States, Great Britain, and France had been handed an
ultimatum, giving them six months to decide whether they would
withdraw from Berlin or fight Russia.
The military and political situation:
... To Khrushchev and his associates it must have seemed that now,
at last, they had the means to put an end to this uncontrollable
situation [the escape of East Germans to West Berlin, undermining
the viability of the East German economy] with which they had had
to live for a decade. At the same time, and by the same means,
they could break out of the military encirclement that the West
called 'containment.' For now that the United States could
presumably no longer protect its European allies by the deterrent
threat that its nuclear monopoly had hitherto enabled it to pose,
those allies would find the risk of continuing to hold their
places in the forces of encirclement too great. Whether in Berlin
or the eastern Mediterranean, the members of NATO could be
expected to break ranks before a Russian diplomacy that offered
the threat of what had become an irresistible force.
The garrisons of the three Western powers in Berlin totaled only
some 11,000 men. They were more than a hundred miles inside what
had to be regarded as enemy territory, surrounded by hostile
forces estimated at 550,000 men. Access to Berlin on the ground
was through narrow gateways held by the Russians, who checked all
traffic in either direction and, by frequent delaying and
harrassing tactics, demonstrated how easily they could close them.
The only access by air was along three 'air corridors,' and the
Western aircraft that plied them were buzzed by Russian fighter
planes in order to display their helplessness. Developments in
electronics, available to the Russians, would prevent any
repetition of the 'air-lift' that had kept the city supplied
during the Berlin Blockade of 1948-1949. President Eisenhower was
merely acknowledging the obvious when, in a press conference on
March 11, 1959, he said: 'We are certainly not going to fight a
ground war in Europe. What good would it do to send a few more
thousands or indeed a few divisions of troops to Europe? With
something like ... 175 Soviet divisions in that neighborhood
[i.e., the neighborhood of Berlin and East Germany] why in the
world would we dream of fighting a ground war?' If the West was
going to fight a real war for Berlin the only kind it could fight
would be a general nuclear war in which the big cities on both
sides of the Atlantic would be targets.
... To maintain the independence of West Berlin the three Western
allies would have to keep open the overland communications with
it. After May 27, if it carried out its threat, Moscow would hand
over the control of those communications to the East German
regime, which the allies did not recognize and with which they had
no agreement, as they did with Moscow, for access to Berlin. Then
if the East Germans closed the gates, simply lowering the barriers
across the access roads at the frontier, what would the allies do?
Would they claim that it was the Communists who had initiated the
use of force by lowering the barriers? Would they put a tank at
the head of a column of troops and break through a barrier? If
they did so, Moscow said, it would consider the action an armed
attack on the Soviet Union, and it would reply in kind. Then the
Western allies would either have to accept defeat or face a
nuclear war that might be expected to entail their own destruction
without saving Berlin.
The logic of the military situation appeared to call for the
Western abandonment of Berlin. Politically, however, such an
abandonment was all but unthinkable. It would constitute a
betrayal, not to be disguised, of 2.2 million people in West
Berlin alone who had, for a decade now, put their entire trust in
the protection of which the Western allies had given them
guarantees. Relying on this protection in 1948-1949, and ever
since, they had given their leaders solid support in defying the
Communists by whom they were surrounded and virtually besieged.
Moreover, because of the dramatic events of 1948-1949, when the
Berlin Blockade had been broken by the Western airlift, Berlin had
become the principal symbol of the Western determination not to
give way before Moscow. This meant that, if the West should now
abandon the city, its action would not only be regarded as a
historic betrayal; it would be taken by all those peoples who had
put their trust in Western protection as a demonstration that they
could not longer count on it. The West Germans, the
Scandinavians, the South Koreans, the Japanese, and peoples
everywhere would feel that they had better make the best terms
they could with Moscow. The allies who were about to take the
risk of allowing the United States to set up nuclear missile bases
on their territory (the I.R.B.M.'s that might compensate for the
Soviet priority in the development of I.C.B.M.'s) might well,
under a threat of annihilation by Russia, change their minds. It
might be expected, then, that all the defenses of the West would
begin to crumble, so that, having retreated from Berlin, the
United States and such allies as remained to it would find no
other point at which they could make the stand they had failed to
make at Berlin. Or, avoiding the risk of war at Berlin, they
would have to take a greater risk of war later on. The Munich
betrayal of 1938 was in everyone's mind.
The confrontation:
In the immediate test the three Western governments held their
ground. On the last day of 1958, in their formal replies to the
Russian notes of November 27, they affirmed their determination to
stand fast in Berlin, saying that they would not accept the
transfer to the East German regime of Moscow's responsibility for
Berlin and the access routes.
The formal positions of Russia and the West, respectively, had now
been established. Adhered to, they would lead to a military
collision on or shortly after May 27, 1959. Each side continued,
in the first months of the new year, as the final date drew
nearer, to make statements declaring that it would not retreat
from its position. Moscow continued to repeat its warnings of
war. Joint contingency planning by Washington, London, Paris, and
Bonn went forward apace. On February 9 Dulles was able to report
publicly that general agreement had been reached on the steps to
be taken if the access of the Western powers to Berlin should be
blocked. Moscow, and the rest of the world with it, were left to
guess what those steps would be.
No historian today [in 1967] can know how much reality there was
behind the impressive facade of unity, among the Western
governments, in their refusal to retreat from Berlin. Presumably
Moscow, at this time, could not know either. That the populations
on whose support the governments depended were not indifferent to
the danger of nuclear war over Berlin, and that they might not
support their governments all the way to the brink of such a war,
was clear. It was not only that the peoples of the West had to
contemplate the destruction of all their hopes, of everything they
cherished, of their civilization, their families, their homes, and
themselves, in a sudden exchange of blows that might, it seemed,
leave the northern hemisphere a radioactive desert. They were
being asked to accept the risk of this for the sake of one local
community belonging to the nation that, in the course of bitter
and still recent experience, they had learned to regard as the
enemy of mankind itself. To many who not only remembered Hitler
vividly, but who still identified the whole German nation with
what he had represented, it seemed intolerable that they should be
expected to take such terrible risks for the inhabitants of
Hitler's capital, the traditional center of Prussia and
Prussianism. In 1939, when Britain and France went to war, there
were many in their midst who asked: Why die for Danzig?
Inevitably, now, there were many to ask: Why die for Berlin? In
this, rather than in the declarations of the governments, lay
Moscow's hope that its nuclear diplomacy would succeed.[2]
[2] A personal note may help make vivid, although it cannot truly
recall, the fear that now gripped the populations of the West.
One [Halle] who, living in Geneva, is on record as having
consistently supported a firm stand at Berlin, recalls how,
nevertheless, he lay awake night after night, thinking of his
wife, thinking of his children one by one, thinking of what might
be the end for them after so much of love, of promise, and of hope
as had become associated with them in his mind over the years.
Still he recalls the physical sensation in the abdomen,
preventing sleep, that the imagination of the possible horror in
store for them produced in him. Multiply this man, now, by
millions, spread over half the earth, think of the sum of their
fear, with its physical manifestations, and it seems a wonder that
the very air which wrapped our planet was not visibly altered by it.
More to come. (Sorry, David!)
Russil Wvong
had a nuclear capability to match that of the United States, in
November 1958, Khrushchev demanded that the United States, Britain,
and France give up West Berlin by May 27, 1959. Up to that point,
everyone had believed that the West -- lacking conventional forces
to match Russia's, and thus unable to resist without fighting a
nuclear war -- would be forced to retreat.
Approaching the brink:
The confrontation over Berlin in the winter of 1958-1959 was
essentially like the confrontation over Serbia in 1914. If it
were to follow the same logical development it would eventuate in
a general war. In 1914 the governments had been willing to risk
such a war because they expected to survive it and even to profit
by it. The governments involved in the Berlin confrontation,
however, could feel no assurance that such a war would not result
in the loss of all they had at stake, perhaps with irreparable
damage to mankind. Consequently, we must suppose that neither side
was willing to engage in such a war or even, perhaps, to take a
considerable risk of it. All the two sides were doing was to see
which would be the first to turn back as, together, they
approached the brink of war. Moscow had assumed that the logic of
power, made eloquent by an overtly menacing diplomacy on its part,
would move the West to retreat. Now, however, the formal attitude
of defiance that the West had adopted must have begun to introduce
an element of increasing uncertainty.
In circumstances like this, where neither side can risk the
ultimate showdown, the defender of the *status quo* has an
advantage over the challenger. For it is the challenger, not the
defender, who is proposing to take the action that will produce
the showdown. Add to this that a possible need to retreat had
always been native to the Russian outlook, representing as it did
a thousand years of national experience, while it was almost
unthinkable for the Western democracies, especially the United
States.
Having by its ultimatum begun the movement toward the brink,
Moscow, as the scheduled date of arrival approached, began to cast
about for ways of postponing it. While it was clearly not prepared
to give up its objective of prizing the Western powers out of
Berlin, we cannot doubt its determination to achieve that
objective by the threat of war only, not by its realization, and
this required at least a modification of the ultimatum to allow
more time for achieving it.
Proposals for negotiation:
On March 2, then, Moscow proposed a meeting of heads of
government, a 'summit' meeting at which a settlement of the Berlin
issue would be negotiated. The West, however, could hardly regard
the issue as negotiable. Its position in Berlin was like that of a
mountaineer holding on to the face of a cliff by his fingers and
toes only: there is no point of attachment at which he can relax
his hold without losing it altogether. The position in Berlin was
already so precarious that there was nothing the West could
concede in negotiation. If, by a compromise, the Western allies
abandoned only a few of the rights to which they held, the
Berliners would see that they could no longer count on their
protectors, who would presumably retreat at each successive test.
Already the more pessimistic among them were moving with their
families to West Germany, the population was beginning to decline;
doubts about West Berlin's future were threatening the economic
and cultural life of the besieged community. This growing exodus
might easily become a mass movement, and the decline in vitality
might reach the proportions of a disaster--until, at last, those
who remained in the dying city would feel themselves obliged to
make whatever terms they could with a triumphant East German
regime acting as the catspaw of a triumphant Moscow.
Moscow now accompanied its proposal for a summit meeting with an
obligate of saber-rattling. This put the Western governments under
pressure from their own populations by making it appear that the
choice was between such a meeting and an intolerable risk of
nuclear annihilation. The proposal, moreover, seemed altogether
reasonable to an important part of Western opinion, especially in
Britain and the United States, which shared a traditional belief
that all disputes could be settled amicably if only the top men on
either side, as distinct from professional diplomats, would sit
down together, get to know each other, and talk matters out. The
American Government, however, was conscious of the fact that a
formal summit conference would inevitably be held on the world's
great stage, with every syllable and gesture of the principals
reported around the globe. The principals would necessarily find
that they were playing to the galleries rather than talking to
each other. While the Western negotiators would be under the
embarrassment of constantly having to negotiate among themselves a
common position (which was likely to represent the views of the
least resolute among them) and would be constantly having to
glance back over their shoulders to see whether public opinion at
home was still with them, Khrushchev would be under no like
limitations. He would be able to set a new trap for his Western
opponents every hour. By offering guarantees of the continued
freedom of the West Berliners, albeit on terms that made them
worthless, and guarantees of their communications across a
sovereign German Democratic Republic, he could easily make it
appear to the world audience that the Western governments were
stubbornly advancing toward the holocaust of all civilization, not
for the freedom of Berlin, which could not be saved, but simply on
grounds of abstruse legal quibbles and a pedantic aversion to
recognizing the German Democratic Republic.
Eisenhower might have resisted Moscow's demands for a summit
conference, which were to be so generally supported in the West,
on the understandable grounds that he refused to negotiate under
the pressure of an ultimatum. Now, however, Khrushchev began to
play the role of the reasonable and conciliatory statesman. On
March 5, three days after proposing the summit conference, he said
in an address at Leipzig that there was no question of an
'ultimatum' over Berlin, or of regarding May 27 as an irrevocable
'deadline' for the transfer of Soviet control to the German
Democratic Republic. If negotiations were begun 'in a reasonable
way,' that date could be moved to June, to July, or 'even later.'
On the 9th he told an audience in East Berlin: 'If need be, we are
ready to have the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet
Union, or neutral countries, maintain in West Berlin a minimum of
troops to assure the observance of the free-city status, without
the right, however, to interfere in the city's internal life.' Two
days later, the leaders of the German Democratic Republic joined
him in a statement that it was prepared to guarantee free access
to West Berlin from both east and west, and to respect its status
as a demilitarized free city.
Finally, Moscow backs down:
Finally, on March 19, after Moscow had maintained for four months
that the Western powers had no rights entitling them to remain in
Berlin, Khrushchev told a press-conference: 'I believe that the
United States, Britain, and France do have lawful rights for their
stay in Berlin. These rights ensue from the fact of German
surrender as a result of our joint struggle against Nazi Germany.'
This was precisely the argument that the Western powers had made
from the first, and that Moscow had been rejecting categorically.
Here was a poignant demonstration of a traditional Russian
strategy, learned during the long centuries when the Russians had
been dealing so deviously with the Mongols, the strategy of what
might be called opportunistic retreat while waiting some new
occasion for opportunistic advance.
The sword of Damocles, however, was not removed. At any time--if
not in May then in June, if not in June then in July, if not in
1959 then in 1960--Moscow might abruptly turn over to its East
German puppet responsibility for Berlin and for the access of the
Western powers to it. Therefore the suspense would continue. The
war of nerves would go on, perhaps for years to come, with such
varying degrees of intensity, from month to month, as Moscow might
find opportune....
Moscow's aggressive diplomacy, and the refusal of the West to
retreat before it, represented the kind of situation that in past
ages had commonly been resolved by the test of armed conflict. In
this case, the Government with the initiative saw that, in the
nuclear age, this test was no longer acceptable even as a last
resort. It could threaten, but the instinct of self-preservation,
itself, told it that it must not force matters to the point of
carrying out the threat. While not prepared to abandon the new
diplomacy after a trial of only a few months, after what was only
an initial failure, we now see how, on repeated occasions over the
next few years, Moscow advances toward the brink of finality,
while the world holds its breath, only to stop short of it on each
occasion.
After 1956 it had appeared to those who were the most
sophisticated in the time-tested principles of power-politics that
the altered balance of power would have to be registered, now, in
victories for Russian diplomacy from Berlin to Turkey. The West
would have to give way at points which its relative strength no
longer allowed it to hold. The logic that led to this conclusion
was accepted by the best minds in the West as well as by
Moscow. Nevertheless, it was a logic that would have to be
revised, at last, in the light of experience.
This is what "containment" meant. The West closed a ring of military
encirclement around the Soviet Union and prevented the Soviet Union
from breaking out of this ring, despite its superior military force;
but there were a number of terrifying confrontations along the way.
Eventually Soviet power collapsed and the Cold War was over.
Don't forget to vote on November 5.