Post by hollister on Mar 10, 2006 6:09:31 GMT -7
An interesting thesis... Do you agree with Gaddis that Reagan had more to do with the end to the "Cold War" than the JPII? ) The reviewer has issues with the thesis. Gaddis is a well respected but conservative historian. I have included a link to the entire review from today's St Pertersburg Times.
www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=16982
Ice breakers
By Archie Brown
Special to St. Petersburg Times
… In “The Cold War: A New History,” John Lewis Gaddis, the author of a number of significant books on the Cold War, has distilled his learning into a highly readable, concise volume. He has read widely and made good use of materials translated from Russian as well as the rich American sources.
Nevertheless, the book is stronger in its analysis of the making of U.S. than of Soviet foreign policy and is much more persuasive in its account of the early and middle years of the Cold War than of its ending. It is a very America-centered view of how the standoff ended, although it fails to take on board some of the best American literature on the subject. ….
In his interpretation of the last 20 years of the Cold War, Gaddis is in line with the conventional wisdom in Washington circles: he overstates the role of Pope John Paul II and of Poland in the process of bringing the Cold War to an end and gets the Gorbachev-Reagan relationship back-to-front, according primacy in making the decisive change to the U.S. president.
Let us take the case of Poland and the pope. Gaddis writes: “When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Poland — and ultimately everywhere else in Europe — would come to an end.” The author sees the domestic imposition of martial law in Poland by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in December 1981, rather than invasion from the East, as meaning the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine whereby the Soviet Union had accorded itself the right to intervene in any Warsaw Pact country to uphold a communist system. Gaddis believes that, from this point, the Soviet leadership was no longer willing “to use force to preserve its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”
The election of a Polish pope and his first papal visit to his homeland were events of great significance for the Poles, and they were a stimulus to the rise of Solidarity. However, although Solidarity was welcomed in the West and surreptitiously admired in parts of Eastern Europe, its example was not followed anywhere.
After the imposition of martial law, the Vatican — and, for that matter, the Pentagon — could do nothing to restore political pluralism in Poland until policy had changed fundamentally in Moscow. The year in which reform of the system turned to transformative change in the Soviet Union was 1988, the same year that saw the reemergence of Solidarity from its shadowy existence in church halls. The pope’s visit to Poland did not cause the end of communism. What did bring about the end of communism throughout Eastern Europe was the dismantling of the pillars of a communist system in the Soviet Union itself, together with the transformation of the foreign policy of the region’s hegemonic power.
Important arms-reduction agreements also played their part in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion, but the Cold War began with the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, and it ended when Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that there would be no more Soviet military interventions to sustain regimes rejected by their own people. It was in 1988 that Gorbachev made public this fundamental shift of policy — in the summer of that year at the 19th Party Conference, and in December in his speech to the United Nations.
Rather than take Gaddis’ view that the Brezhnev Doctrine ended in 1981, it is possible to see that the Soviet leadership had over several decades managed to retain their hegemony in Eastern Europe, even at times of trouble, by increasingly economic means. Very extensive bloodshed in Hungary in 1956, much less bloodshed in Czechoslovakia in 1968 despite the introduction of Soviet tanks, and a “virtual invasion” in Poland in 1981 when the Polish communist leadership was persuaded to crack down on the opposition for fear that if they did not, Soviet troops would do the job for them. Given the size of Poland, and the strength of Polish support in the United States, it was clearly preferable for the Brezhnev leadership to make the crackdown look like a domestic Polish affair. The idea, however, that any Soviet leader prior to Gorbachev was prepared to tolerate Warsaw Pact states becoming independent and non-communist is wholly fanciful. …
Archie Brown is emeritus professor of politics at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Antony’s College.
I think that Brown does identify an important point - recent American interpetation of world events has a tendency to maintain the importance and centrality of the role of the US. By doing so, I fear the US may be not seeing the forest for the trees.
www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=16982
Ice breakers
By Archie Brown
Special to St. Petersburg Times
… In “The Cold War: A New History,” John Lewis Gaddis, the author of a number of significant books on the Cold War, has distilled his learning into a highly readable, concise volume. He has read widely and made good use of materials translated from Russian as well as the rich American sources.
Nevertheless, the book is stronger in its analysis of the making of U.S. than of Soviet foreign policy and is much more persuasive in its account of the early and middle years of the Cold War than of its ending. It is a very America-centered view of how the standoff ended, although it fails to take on board some of the best American literature on the subject. ….
In his interpretation of the last 20 years of the Cold War, Gaddis is in line with the conventional wisdom in Washington circles: he overstates the role of Pope John Paul II and of Poland in the process of bringing the Cold War to an end and gets the Gorbachev-Reagan relationship back-to-front, according primacy in making the decisive change to the U.S. president.
Let us take the case of Poland and the pope. Gaddis writes: “When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Poland — and ultimately everywhere else in Europe — would come to an end.” The author sees the domestic imposition of martial law in Poland by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in December 1981, rather than invasion from the East, as meaning the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine whereby the Soviet Union had accorded itself the right to intervene in any Warsaw Pact country to uphold a communist system. Gaddis believes that, from this point, the Soviet leadership was no longer willing “to use force to preserve its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”
The election of a Polish pope and his first papal visit to his homeland were events of great significance for the Poles, and they were a stimulus to the rise of Solidarity. However, although Solidarity was welcomed in the West and surreptitiously admired in parts of Eastern Europe, its example was not followed anywhere.
After the imposition of martial law, the Vatican — and, for that matter, the Pentagon — could do nothing to restore political pluralism in Poland until policy had changed fundamentally in Moscow. The year in which reform of the system turned to transformative change in the Soviet Union was 1988, the same year that saw the reemergence of Solidarity from its shadowy existence in church halls. The pope’s visit to Poland did not cause the end of communism. What did bring about the end of communism throughout Eastern Europe was the dismantling of the pillars of a communist system in the Soviet Union itself, together with the transformation of the foreign policy of the region’s hegemonic power.
Important arms-reduction agreements also played their part in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion, but the Cold War began with the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, and it ended when Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that there would be no more Soviet military interventions to sustain regimes rejected by their own people. It was in 1988 that Gorbachev made public this fundamental shift of policy — in the summer of that year at the 19th Party Conference, and in December in his speech to the United Nations.
Rather than take Gaddis’ view that the Brezhnev Doctrine ended in 1981, it is possible to see that the Soviet leadership had over several decades managed to retain their hegemony in Eastern Europe, even at times of trouble, by increasingly economic means. Very extensive bloodshed in Hungary in 1956, much less bloodshed in Czechoslovakia in 1968 despite the introduction of Soviet tanks, and a “virtual invasion” in Poland in 1981 when the Polish communist leadership was persuaded to crack down on the opposition for fear that if they did not, Soviet troops would do the job for them. Given the size of Poland, and the strength of Polish support in the United States, it was clearly preferable for the Brezhnev leadership to make the crackdown look like a domestic Polish affair. The idea, however, that any Soviet leader prior to Gorbachev was prepared to tolerate Warsaw Pact states becoming independent and non-communist is wholly fanciful. …
Archie Brown is emeritus professor of politics at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Antony’s College.
I think that Brown does identify an important point - recent American interpetation of world events has a tendency to maintain the importance and centrality of the role of the US. By doing so, I fear the US may be not seeing the forest for the trees.
that cannot change their mind ever.
