Analysis on Revisionist & Post-Revisionist Approaches

Cold War

MAIR – 601 – International Politics A Presentation ByDr. Nirmala Wijegoonewardena Nishan Magodaratna – MAIR/2012/32

Cold War – 3 Approaches

• Orthodox – Traditional (placing responsibility for the Cold War (CW) on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe)

• Revisionist – New Left (placing more responsibility for the breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.)

• Post Revisionist – Neo-orthodox (seeing the events of the CW as more nuanced, and attempting to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the CW)

A closer look at the differences of Revisionism & Post-Revisionism (PR)

• Its an emergence of a genuine synthesis of previously antagonistic view-points, based on an impressive amount of new research.

• Revisionism was more attractive with more public opposition to then Vietnam War.

• Intense rivalry among revisionists themselves on certain aspects.

• PR could be called a ‘new-consensus’ which draws from both orthodox & revisionist interpretations with a more balanced explanation of the beginning of CW.

• PR is based on systematic archival research rather than political conviction or personal experience.

A closer look at the differences of Revisionism & Post-Revisionism (PR)

• But PR should not be thought as simply ‘orthodoxy plus archives’

• PR is something new, not merely a return to old arguments.

Revisionist Claims1. US foreign policy equated to

imperialism – searching for markets & investment opportunities overseas, without which the capitalist system in US could not survive.

2. Left little room for accommodating the legitimate security interests of USSR, thereby ensuring the breakdown of war-time cooperation.

Revisionist Claims3. US imposed its empire on a mostly

unwilling world, recruiting it into military alliances, forcing it into economic dependency through bribery, intimidation & covert intervention.

4. All these took place against the will of the people of US, who were tricked by cynical but skillful leaders into supporting, by propagation a myth of a monolithic communism.

Post-Revisionist Responses - #1

1. Though there was a concern for a post-war depression it was the experience of war, which had sensitized US leaders of future external threats hence domestic economy played a much lower priority.

2. It has become clear that US made no systematic effort to suppress socialism in it’s sphere-of-influence as expected from a militantly capitalist nation to promote free enterprise.

Post-Revisionist Responses - #1s

3. Economic instruments were used to serve political ends.

4. US economic strength was used as a potent weapon to redress the political-military balance-of-power.

Post-Revisionist Responses - #21. Stalin at no point was willing to

entrust Soviet post-war security to a policy of cooperation with the west.

2. He was never clear in his mind as to the limits of his country’s security needs. At the expense of his western neighbours he insisted on surrounding himself with subservient states.

3. Failure of west was not a failure to accommodate Stalin but facilitating & passivity. Had the west acted more firmly at an earlier point, the CW would not necessarily have been more intense.

Post-Revisionist Responses - #3

1. US sphere-of-influence arose as much by invitation as by imposition.

2. US influence was welcomed after the war as a counter-weight to the Russians.

3. There was US intervention in the internal affairs of countries – but it was what the political leaders wanted. US intervention against the Left was preferable.

4. US was not alone in perceiving the USSR as a threat after WWII.

Post-Revisionist Responses - #4

1. Policy makers did not have to work very hard to convince the public into support containment.

2. Public & congressional opinion moved in this direction before the policymakers did.

3. Policymakers sought to move public opinion in anti-soviet directions at a time it was shifting in that direction of it’s own accord.

4. Curious passivity among military leaders of that day, who seemed content to leave key decisions upto civilians in the state department .

Conclusions1. PR historians have almost totally neglected the debate over ‘dependency theory’

2. Impact of US policies on foreign societies made profound changes of which only few have been researched & deliberated – much remains to be done.

3. Until Russians institute their own version of a Freedom of Information Act anything written on west on Soviet Policy needs to be further verified.

4. Certain mysteries needs to be unraveled to why, Post WWII international order – which no one designed more durable than

of WWI? A divided Germany less disruptive force than a unified Germany? The CW at one level a period of unprecedented tension, has at another level

- a period of unusual order & stability?

Thank You