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Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism Author(S): Douglas J

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Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism Author(S): Douglas J Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism Author(s): Douglas J. Macdonald Reviewed work(s): Source: International Security, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Winter, 1995-1996), pp. 152-188 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539142 . Accessed: 09/01/2012 01:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Security. http://www.jstor.org Connunist Bloc DouglasJ. Macdonald Expansionin the EarlyCold War Challenging Realism, RefutingRevisionism W as there ever a unifiedcommunist threat facing the UnitedStates during the Cold War?Or did U.S. decision-makersmisperceive Soviet and communistbloc "defensive- ness"and "caution"as expansionistthreats? Did U.S. leaders,realizing that the Sovietsand theirideological allies posed no securitythreat to theUnited States and its allies,create such claimsfor various domestic political reasons? Such questionshave dominatedanalyses of the Cold Warin theUnited States for thepast thirtyyears. To thesurprise of some and theconsternation of others, thedemise of theCold Warand theresulting flow of new evidencefrom the Eastin recentyears has reinvigoratedmany of these arguments over its origins, theprimary responsibility for its creation, and U.S. actionsduring that era. The Cold War is over,but the controversiessurrounding it and its meaningfor contemporaryscholarship and policyare not.' The argumentover the originsof the Cold Waris importantnot onlyfor historicalaccuracy, but also forthe consequencesit will have on theoretical questionsand thereforeon theirimplications for policy Since international relationsspecialists both learnfrom historical examples and utilizethem as illustrationand evidence,historical accounts and theirrelative plausibility directlyinfluence social sciencetheories. As thelate WilliamT.R. Fox used to tellhis students, good historywill not necessarily lead to good theory,but poor DouglasJ. Macdonald is AssociateProfessor ofPolitical Science at ColgateUniversity. I would like to express my deep gratitudefor the valuable commentsand advice that I received fromChen Jian,David Edelstein, Hao Yufan, Robert G. Kaufman, TimothyLomperis, Edward Rhodes, Randall Schweller,James Wirtz, and anonymous reviewers. 1. For recentdiscussions of the new evidence, see Jacob Heilbrunn, "The Revision Thing,' The New Republic,August 15, 1994, pp. 31-34, 36-39; Gideon Rose, "The New Cold War Debate," The NationalInterest, No. 38 (Winter1994/95), pp. 89-96; Steven MerrittMiner, "Revelations, Secrets, Gossip and Lies: SiftingWarily Through the Soviet Archives," The New YorkTimes Book Review, May 14, 1995,pp. 19-21; Karen J.Winkler, "Scholars Refight the Cold War,"The Chroniclesof Higher Education,March 2, 1994, pp. A8-A10. InternationalSecurity, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Winter1995/96), pp. 152-188 ? 1995 by the Presidentand Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology. 152 CommunistBloc Expansionin theEarly Cold War | 153 historywill lead to poortheory History lays the groundwork for the creation, testing,and improvementof internationaltheories. Thisarticle utilizes some of the new historical treatments of evidence emerg- ing fromthe East to re-examinethe validity of Westernperceptions of Soviet bloc expansionin theearly Cold War.It beginswith a discussionof themajor schoolsof historicalthought on the Cold Warand theirrespective views on communistexpansion: traditionalism, revisionism, post-revisionism, and real- ism.I maintainthat many of the new interpretationsofthe Cold Warbased on thenew evidencesupport a traditionalexplanation and pose a challengeto the otherschools of thought.Supporting evidence is providedby recentBritish and Europeanscholarship on Westernthreat perceptions during the Cold War. I then examinetwo empiricalquestions: did a relativelyhierarchical and unifiedCommunist bloc existunder the leadership of theSoviet Union? If so, werethe perceptions of Western decision-makers accurate, that such a blocwas expansionistalong coordinated lines largely directed from Moscow? I answer both questionsin the affirmative.The firstanswer is based on the ample circumstantialevidence utilized by traditionalistsin thepast. The secondan- swerrelies on new interpretationsand primaryevidence that strongly support theearlier traditionalist claims. Taken together, the supporting, circumstantial, and new primaryevidence provide a compellingargument that the traditional explanationof theCold Waris superiorto thecompeting explanations. A case studyof the bloc's interventions in Asia exploresin greaterdetail the questionof bloc solidarity.With Europe and theMiddle East deniedthem as targetsof opportunityby 1948,the Soviets turned to Asia. I arguethat Soviet attemptsto expand into the regionwere made, not in responseto Western threats,as securitydilemma critiques of containmentsuggest, but becauseof the lack of such a threat,that is, the lack of a unifiedWestern containment policy.Moreover, Soviet bloc actionsin Asia stronglysuggest that had robust containmentpolicies not been followedin Europeand the Middle East,the Sovietswould have triedto expandtheir influence into those areas also. The new evidencesuggests that we need to modifymany of thenegative views of Westernthreat perceptions during the Cold War,widespread criticisms of robustcontainment policies, and theubiquitous but incorrect view of the Soviet Unionas an inherentlycautious imperial power.2 2. I do not examine the question of which areas of the world were objectivelyimportant to the national interestsof the United States and its allies, only the narrower,yet related,question of whetherthere existed expansionistSoviet bloc policies. InternationalSecurity 20:3 | 154 The HistoricalDebate over U.S. Policies:Traditionalism, Revisionism,Post-Revisionism, and Realism As withmany historical events, a Hegelianpattern of argumentation-thesis or traditionalview, antithesisor revisionistview, and synthesisor post- revisionistview-developed foranalyses of the Cold War.The traditionalview ofthe Cold Warheld that the Soviet Union was an expansionistnation primar- ily responsiblefor political and militarycontention, and thatthere was a real and globalcommunist threat to independentbut internally weak nations, both thosethat ringed the Soviet Union in Europe,the Middle East, and Asia in the aftermathof World War II and theemerging new nations.U.S. securitypolicies weretherefore mostly reasonable and necessary,or at theleast understandable and defensible.The SovietUnion, according to thisview, headed a grouping of ideologicallylike-minded revolutionary entities and nationsthat were ac- tivelyexpansionist through the selectivesupport of non-rulingcommunist partiesin theirquests for power. The essenceof theearly Cold Warwas that theSoviet Union and itsideological clients were united and expansionist,and thatthe UnitedStates was relativelyslow in reactingto the globalnature of thethreat posed by thatexpansion. It was onlychecked when the West, and especiallythe UnitedStates, took strong,unified stands againstthe Soviet Unionto containit.3 Beginningin themid-1960s, largely in reactionto theVietnam War, a revi- sionistschool evolved among U.S. historianswho proposedthat the United Stateswas primarilyto blamefor the Cold War.U.S. leaderswere driven by an unreasonablehostility to communism,largely generated by domesticpoliti- cal and economicneeds. Since the Soviets had at mostonly tenuous influence over communistgroups, U.S. actionsduring the Cold War,especially in the ThirdWorld, were unnecessary and overdone,even at timescriminal. In this view,the UnitedStates was seen as activelyexpansionist, while the Soviet Union was simplyresponding to U.S. provocations.These starklydrawn 3. See generallyJerald A. Combs, AmericanDiplomatic History: Two Centuriesof ChangingInterpre- tations(Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1983), pp. 220-257, 322-346; Geir Lundestad, "Moralism, Presentism,Exceptionalism, Provincialism, and Other Extravagances in American Writingson the Early Cold War Years," DiplomaticHistory, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Fall 1989), pp. 527-546; Anders Stephanson, "The United States," in David Reynolds,ed., The Originsof theCold War in Europe:International Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 23-52. For examples of traditionalistscholarship, see Hugh Seton-Watson,Neither War Nor Peace: TheStruggle forPower in thePostwar World (New York: Praeger,1960); HerbertFeis, FromTrust to Terror:The Onsetof the Cold War,1945-1950 (New York:W.W. Norton, 1970); Paul Y. Hammond, The Cold War Years:American Foreign Policy Since 1945 (New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969); Adam Ulam, Expansionand Coexistence:Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-73, 2nd. ed. (New York:Praeger, 1974). CommunistBloc Expansion in theEarly Cold War | 155 argumentsaffected much of U.S. historiographyof the Cold War untilthe 1980s.In general,traditional analysis defended U.S. and Westerncontainment policies;revisionism rejected them.4 In the lateryears of the
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