Misinterpreting the Cold War: The Hardliners Were Right

Forty years ago the foreign policy debate in the United States revolved around the question, "Who lost China?" Today one of its most contentious issues is, "Who won the Cold War?" Advocates of the hard line feel that the events of the past five years have vindicated their strategy. They claim that it was the policy of containment, reinforced by a technological arms race, economic denial, and psychological warfare, that brought down the Soviet Union and communism. Advocates of the soft line will have none of it. They contend that, far from contributing to the demise of communism, the hard?line strategy prolonged the Cold War by arousing deep?seated anxieties in the Russians and making them even more truculent. As for the causes of communism's demise, they are less certain.

Raymond Garthoff's account of the final phase of the Cold War is meant to justify the soft line. By virtue of its massive research, it is likely to acquire the status of a primer for adherents of this approach. The book, which traces the course of U.S.?Soviet relations during the Reagan and Bush administrations, picks up, with some overlap, where its predecessor, Détente and Confrontation, left off. The two volumes, similar in approach and format, complement one another, surveying in minute detail relations between the two superpowers from 1969 to 1991. They are imposing treatises, totaling some two thousand fact?filled pages, nearly every one supported by references to the sources.

Mr. Garthoff identifies three basic approaches to communism and the Soviet Union, each with corollary policy implications. The first, of which President Ronald Reagan was the outstanding champion, he labels "essentialist." This approach assumed that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state driven by a militant ideology and hence intrinsically expansionist; such a power could be restrained and rendered harmless only by determined confrontation. The second, "mechanical" approach, while conceding that the Soviet Union was indeed expansionist, viewed it above all as a pragmatic power that could be "managed" by the astute application of rewards and penalties. The third, "interactionist" approach made light of both Soviet ideology and behavior, focusing instead on the conflict between the two superpowers, which it saw as propelled by a dynamic of its own. For this school, the ultimate reality was the competition itself; to reduce tensions, it was necessary above all to understand and allow for the concerns of the adversary. Mr. Garthoff, whose mission is to enlighten readers about the motives behind Soviet actions, makes no secret that his sympathies lie with the third school. Although he has some good words for the proponents of the mechanical approach, he has nothing but scorn for the "ideologues" espousing the essentialist cause.

Faithful to his premise, Mr. Garthoff depicts in his two histories the complex story of U.S.?Soviet relations from Nixon to Bush as a series of interacting moves by the contending parties. In Détente and Confrontation, he seemed to perceive no difference between the United States and Russia: they were simply armed camps wrestling for global supremacy. In the present volume, written after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., he is willing to concede, rather discreetly, that perhaps, after all, communist ideology, by positing the inevitability of a global conflict between socialism and capitalism, influenced Soviet behavior. Even so, his narrative consists of a succession of episodes, each dominated by a pattern of action, reaction (or overreaction), confrontation, and resolution. None of these conflicts is seen as possessing any substance; each originates in a misunderstanding of the opponent's intentions coupled with misguided views on one's own security. There are no contending values or even interests; there are only misperceptions and fears. Almost all Soviet aggression is explained in this fashion. Explanation used in this manner amounts to justification: Mr. Garthoff's methodology enables him to justify every Soviet aggression, be it the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the crushing of Poland's Solidarity movement, or the shooting down of a Korean airliner in 1983.

A good example of Mr. Garthoff's apologetic treatment of Soviet Cold War policies can be seen in his account of the December 1981 events in Poland. He gives no credit to Solidarity for its remarkable success in peacefully challenging the Communist Party's dictatorship. Nor does he try to explain why Solidarity arose and what its emergence meant. His treatment is coldly geopolitical: the rise of democratic forces in Poland posed a threat to the Soviet regime and left it no choice but to react by either invading Poland to suppress Solidarity or deputizing its Polish surrogates to do so. It chose the second, less violent alternative. Although regrettable, the imposition of martial law in Poland was understandable and justifiable. It was how both sides played the game.