Abstract
The French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville shrewdly predicted more than 100 years ago that Russia and the United States would eventually become antagonists in world politics because of their vast power resources and immense size. Although de Tocqueville was to a large extent right, the postwar East-West confrontation took place in a specific historical context that heightened existing Russo-American differences. Accordingly, mistrust superseded confidence in the relationship that developed between the “East” and the “West” in the late 1940s, and subsequently it has disappeared only temporarily.1
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Endnotes
For a discussion of postwar superpower relations see, for example, Richard J. Barnet, “Why Trust the Soviets?” World Policy Journal 1, no. 3 (Spring 1984), pp. 461–482.
For a brief overview of postwar plans for the restoration of Europe, see, for example, Richard J. Barnet, The Alliance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), especially pp. 95–143.
See Boris Meissner, Die “Breshnew-Doktrin”, (Köln: Dokumentation, 1969).
Regarding postwar patterns of Soviet control of Eastern Europe, see Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 104–137.
See also Christopher Jones, Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe: Political Autonomy and the Warsaw Pact, (New York: Praeger, 1981), pp. 1–4.
Quoted in Stanley R. Sloan, East-West Relations in Europe (Foreign Policy Association Headline Series, March/April 1986), pp. 5–6. For a brief analytical overview of the most recent scholarly debate that tries to combine both Eastern and Western approaches, see Allen Lynch, “Is the Cold War Over … Again?” (unpublished manuscript).
Quoted in Ralph B. Levering, The Cold War, 1945 to 1972 (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1982), p. 15.
See, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Future of Yalta,” Foreign Affairs 63, no. 2 (Winter 1984/85), pp. 279–302, and “A Proposition the Soviets Shouldn’t Refuse,” The New York Times, March 13, 1989.
Harto Hakovirta, East-West Conflict and European Neutrality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 37–44.
Regarding postwar bipolarity as a basis for a stable peace order, see John Lewis Gaddis, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System,” International Security 10, no. 4 (Spring 1986), pp. 99–142.
Michael Mandelbaum, “Is the Cold War Over?” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 16–36.
See for example André Fontaine, History of the Cold War (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp. 11–24. The concept of the Cold War was introduced to the public debate by the noted American Bernard Baruch in 1947, but it had already been making the rounds in Western capitals in 1945–1946.
The Americans realized in the spring of 1947 that Europe was on the verge of economic collapse. Secretary of State George Marshall was convinced that the Soviet leaders had a political interest in seeing the economies of Western Europe fail under anything other than communist leadership. For a brilliant background to the Marshall Plan preparations, see George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 388.
Scholarly interest in the Marshall Plan has been strong. For a brief overview of the most recent literature, see William Diebold, Jr., “The Marshall Plan in Retrospect: A Review of Recent Scholarship,” Journal of International Affairs 41, no. 2 (1988), pp. 421–435.
George F. Kennan (“Mr X”), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25 (July 1947), pp. 566–582.
Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950, p. 417. War and conquest have played a large part in shaping modern Europe. The European state system from the outset was characterized by war. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which laid down the basis for that system, was certainly not the work of Germans. The treaty enshrined and made permanent German disunity by creating “the mosaic of petty States which conventionally forms the immemorial background of Germany,” as A. J. P. Taylor characterizes the issue. The paradox of history demonstrated its triumph during the coming centuries in the numerous small German states that remained outsiders for decades in the European war games. The inhabitants of these states escaped the burdens of military service and taxation. In addition, German culture and art remained free from absolutism and militarism—but, as Taylor puts it, “free from reality” too. Indeed, the German states owed their existence not to German sentiment but to the determination of the great powers, Russia, France and Britain. It can be said that throughout modern European history, the basic geopolitical problem has remained by and large the same: Russia, France and Britain have constituted nationally unified great powers, and Germany, although “great” in terms of size, economic power and cultural innovation, has been subject to disunity, and as a consequence, has held equal footing with other great powers only temporarily. For a comprehensive analysis of the history of Germany in Europe, see A. J. P. Taylor, Europe: Grandeur and Decline (London: Penguin, 1971), in particular pp. 121–123.
For the most judicious treatment of the origins of the division of Europe, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). In fact, at the end of the war neither superpower had a clear conception of Germany’s future.
For a responsible discussion, see Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 504–514, 535–537. As late as March 19, 1952, Stalin expected that Germany could be unified at some point. In Stalin’s view, a “Rapallo” policy—the Russo-German agreement in the 1920s—would have offered a number of advantages. First of all, a neutral Germany could form part of a group of neutral states that could act as a “Cordon Stalinaire” between the Soviet sphere of influence and the West.
See F. Stephen Larrabee, “The View from Moscow,” in The Two German States and European Security, ed. F. Stephen Larrabee (New York: St. Martin’s Press, for the Institute for East-West Security Studies, 1989), pp. 184–185.
Eric G. Frey provides a brief overview of the postwar West German foreign policy in Division and Detente, pp. 3–7, as does George F. Kennan in Memoirs, 1950–1963 (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 229–266.
See also George F. Kennan, The German Problem: A Personal View (Washington, DC: American Institute of Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 1989), pp. 2–3.
Helga Haftendorn, Security and Detente: Conflicting Priorities in German Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1985), p. 60.
For an overview of European history, and Germany’s role in Europe, see Gordon A. Craig, Europe Since 1815 (New York: Holt & Winston, 1974);
Anton DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
In a historical perspective, the so-called German question was, and to a certain extent still is, how to constrain Germany so that it could not seek European hegemony from its Central European base. Regarding the role of geopolitics in German history, see, for example, Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978), pp. 164–165.
Ibid., p. 6. By the mid-1950s the institutional organization of the two military alliances had been completed, with the two German states included in them. On the evolution of the European postwar system, see F. Roy Willis, France, Germany and the New Europe, 1945–1963 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965);
Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: European-American Relations since 1945 (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1980);
and David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
See Catherine McArdle Kelleher, “Germany and NATO: The Enduring Bargain,” in West Germany’s Foreign Policy: 1949–1979, ed. Wolfram F. Hanrieder (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980), pp. 43–60.
In regard to the impact of the Cuban and Berlin crises on international politics and East-West relations in particular, see, for example, Robert J. Jordan and Werner J. Feld, Europe in the Balance (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986), pp. 211–264.
Lynch, “Is the Cold War Over … Again?” For a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Berlin crisis on FRG-U.S. relations and as a source of permanent mistrust, see Walter Lafeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1750 (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1989), pp. 565–566.
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© 1991 Institute for East-West Security Studies
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Rusi, A.M. (1991). The Conflict in Retrospect. In: After the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21350-4_2
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