13-04-2025
America, to blame for the Cold War? Please
It is an opportune time to publish a history of the Cold War, dealing with global Russian influence and that country's relationship with the West. Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, is Russian and, having been born in 1958, saw the Cold War at close quarters. He muses on whether he should have called his book The First Cold War. Given Putin's conduct, he has a point, though whether in a second such conflict America would be Russia's enemy, its ally or a mere spectator remains, in the Trump era, unclear.
The World of the Cold War is, in terms of research, immensely scholarly, and its sweep is considerable. At its heart are the tensions over the Soviet bloc, that great swath of Eastern Europe that Stalin's Soviet Union effectively annexed after 1945. Zubok reminds us, however, that the Cold War also manifested itself in proxy wars and other stand-offs around the world. There was Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and tussles in Africa and South America. These conflicts are meticulously described and set in their particular context: Zubok has complete command of his narrative, based on a deep knowledge of his subject. He also deals extensively with China and the saga of its relations with America and the Soviets, especially the visit of Richard Nixon in 1972, and Mikhail Gorbachev's revealing comment as his own regime imploded in 1989 that he did not want a repeat of Tiananmen Square in its Red counterpart.
Yet all history, never mind how factually accurate and comprehensive, must rely on the interpretation the historian places upon those facts. Zubok occasionally presents his readers with assertions that some might feel take interpretation to an extreme that is beyond interesting. For example, early on in the book, he says: 'I side with those who claim that the Cold War was caused by the American decision to build and maintain a global liberal order, not by the Soviet Union's plans to spread communism in Europe.'
This is a highly questionable judgment, to put it mildly. The great summit meeting that shaped the post-war world, at Yalta in February 1945, had relatively little to do with the foundation of a global liberal order, and much to do with Stalin's determination to extend the Soviet empire – a determination that was realised in his ruthless colonisation of eastern Europe. The doctrine of Marxist revolution was not, after all, to be confined to the Soviet Union, but exported to the workers of the world.
At Yalta, Roosevelt was fading – he was mere weeks from death – and caved to Stalin on the re-drawing of eastern Europe's boundaries. The Red Army had swarmed over those territories, and Stalin was determined not to give up the gains. If this book has a hero, it is Gorbachev, who four decades later saw the writing on the wall and realised that the Soviet empire, like all empires, was of finite duration. He sacrificed it, and his own position, to come to an accommodation with the inevitable.
Throughout The World of the Cold War, Zubok is quick to highlight the mistakes the Americans made during the period, though the attempted foundation of a global liberal order should not be considered to be one of them. Vietnam was certainly an act of insanity, and many thought so without the benefit of hindsight; and some of the sabre-rattling with Cuba was ill-advised, though it's clear that Kennedy won the Cuban Missile Crisis, which contributed directly to the ousting of Khrushchev, who was erratic and frequently drunk.
Zubok does refer to the distinct advantages of life in the West: freedom, democracy, choice – not merely choice between political parties at elections, but choice of where to travel, what to read and write and say, and of what to spend money on. But at times one does sense that he seeks to establish some sort of moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States. If that sense is mistaken, it's an easy mistake to make, given the assumptions behind some of what Zubok writes.
For example: in dealing with that apparently crucial Cold War event – the 1984-85 miners' strike – he writes that 'Thatcher used force to close the unprofitable mines and ignored miners' strikes.' The phrase 'used force' may suggest to the unwary some sort of armed or military intervention, which never happened: history relates that the mines closed as a matter of course, not by force of arms. Nor did Mrs Thatcher ignore the strike, either then or in the case of an earlier dispute: it was precisely because it had taken such notice of the first strike that her administration stockpiled coal at power stations and caused it to be victorious in the second.
One senses that Zubok is no admirer of capitalism, despite its inextricable link to freedom. Writing about the Yeltsin era, he argues that 'Russia… attracted primarily American seekers of quick profit, not serious investors.' There is no contradiction between being a serious investor and seeking a quick profit: quite the opposite. If you share such assumptions, this is the book for you. If you don't, grit your teeth.
