The Cold War: What Do “We Now Know”?

Abstract

DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS, we have had a spate of important new books, articles, and essays reinterpreting the Cold War. Many of them have been based on new documents and memoirs from the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China as well as from European governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The books are provocative and insightful. They focus attention on the role of ideology and the importance of culture. They illuminate the complex interactions within the American and Soviet empires. They assess the influence of small powers as well as highlight the strength of the two superpowers. They add greatly to our understanding of such key events in the Cold War as the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and the Cuban missile crisis. They demonstrate the importance of individual leaders like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, but they also highlight contingency and inadvertence. They suggest that we have to think more deeply about the connections between power, culture, and political economy as well as the linkages between beliefs, perceptions, and behavior. None of this can be done without appreciating the interaction between national decision-making and the evolution of the international system. The object of this essay is to review some of the most important new scholarship, and to argue that the new evidence and the new writings do not leave us with a clear and unambiguous view of the Cold War. Although the most important and most influential of the new books is entitled We Now Know, my own view is much more modest.1 Recent books provide us with new information, fresh insights, and provocative argumentation. Sometimes, they revive old controversies; at other times, they reconfigure these controversies in fascinating and unexpected ways. But what is striking is the extent to which the new scholarship leaves itself open to diverse conclusions. It is striking, but not surprising. As students of international history weave more and more factors into their narratives-as they take ideas, values, language, and culture more seriously,2 as they think about race and gender,3 as they probe