Critically evaluate the revisionist position that it was the expansion of US power that led to the outbreak of the Cold War.

Some of the revisionist ideas itself can be criticised and be deemed to be narrow and simplified. This can be especially seen through the ‘open door theory’. Radical revisionist e.g Williams argues that the fundamental objective of American policy makers was the attainment of an open door world for American business. For example he says “it was the decision of the United States to employ its new and awesome power in keeping with the traditional Open Door Policy which crystallized the Cold War.”  This shows the approach to have  a high focus on economics and ignores political and strategic considerations. This  criticism is further substantiated by Gaddis who criticises  the revisionist for placing emphasis on economic factors to the exclusion of political considerations which, he argues, were critical determinants of foreign policy. Therefore there is a failure to understand the role of soviet policy in the origins of the cold war.  As one critic corroborates, “it is difficult to conceive of any American policy, or any evidence about the reasons for its adoption that could not be incorporated into the Williams interpretation”. As Schlesinger stated more bluntly: “Because it explains everything, it explains very little.It is not a testable historical hypothesis at all. It is a theological dogma’’.   Kolko’s  book The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945–1954 is well-researched however it has a simplistic view of American foreign policy .As the basis of American foreign policy, he interprets only a plot to further American capitalism and repress the left.  As  he says that “the United States’ ultimate objective at the end of World War II was both to sustain and to reform world capitalism.” The very notion of a Cold War was, for Kolko, merely to obfuscate the real aim of U.S. policy. In his view, the disorder in Western Europe at the end of the second world war presented American officials with an opportunity to restructure the world economy in line with U.S. economic interests. As a consequence, Washington was encouraged to press its own hegemony in Eastern Europe on the conviction that it was a vital region in the rehabilitation of Western capitalism. The question of U.S. foreign policy, therefore, “was not the containment of communism, but rather more directly the extension and expansion of American capitalism according to its new economic power and needs.”  American foreign policy, however, never had such a simple foundation. Nevertheless  Paterson  supports Kolko’s view as he explains that “American diplomacy was not accidental or aimless: rather, it was self-consciously expansionist”. They concluded therefore that the soviet union decision to impose its socio-economic model on its sphere in eastern Europe could be interpreted as essentially a reaction to America expansionism.

Another assumption from the revisionist theory that can be scrutinised is the assumption stating that the united states expansion of power had been primarily to blame for the cold war as the soviet union had displayed no aggressive designs towards the west, as the USSR was too weak and exhausted at the end of the second world war to be able to pose as a serious threat towards the US. Additionally America, the revisionist claimed, had used its nuclear monopoly to attempt to threaten and intimidate Stalin therefore Soviet responses had reflected a legitimate fear of capitalist encirclement. However the problem with these assumptions is that the USSR is portrayed  to be innocent and a victim whereas the USA is deemed to be the bully. For example this is seen in Gardner’s work  in Architects of Illusion (1970) who stated that the US was in 1945, the most potent power in the world and should have shown more compassion in policies to the USSR who was weak due to the war. And the main problem of this is that these were strong portrayals without a balanced sufficient use of sources especially from the Soviet side. Also when evaluating both the revisionist and traditionalist thesis we can see that there is almost a sort of ‘blame game’ and “historiographical warfare”. This is illustrated when Kolko in his 1968 monograph, The politics of war proclaimed US intended to expand a global capitalist system and policy makers were subservient to big business interests. Orthodox countered famously in 1982 with Thomas Hammonds witness to the origins of the cold war, that communism was infallible and would inevitably fail due to lack of competition. This ‘blame game’ shows no attempt  to see what is right but who is right. Therefore omissions are not filled and unanswered questions are left, leaving there to be no progress, until  post-revisionist literature existed.

Through the study of a variety of cold war literature concerning its origins from different schools of thought, it is noticed that cold war histography reinforces certain political tendencies. For example Geir Lundestad says that ‘more would have been achieved in the cold war history if historians had concentrated on what happened and why, rather than following their own political views, and one might add personal agendas of apportioning blame for the cold war.’ This means that historical interpretation is no longer about the meaning and truth of the past, but is rather an effect of linguistic and social practices in the present, which form the basis of our cultural and political universe. According to Hayden White, “‘[p]ure’ interpretation, the disinterested inquiry into anything whatsoever is unthinkable without the presupposition of the kind of activity which politics represents.” Therefore it is important to ‘Study the historian before you begin to study the facts’’. For example Kolko is a Leftist and an anti-capitalist, consequently this explains why he belongs to the revisionist school of thought and this reinforces the fact that politics can never be separate from historical interpretation.

Another criticism that is a cause for concern is the context in which the revisionist position was written in. The context of any source is important to the historian in order to see how reliable it is. Historians have recognised the contemporaneity of all historical writing. For example Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in the 1890’s that “[e]ach age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time”.  This can certainly be seen through the historgraphy of the cold war, especially in terms of its origins, as  each generation of historians are influenced by a ‘climate of opinion’ or ‘the spirit of the age’.    For example, the revisionist position that it was the expansion of the US power that led to the outbreak of the cold war, one could argue should be read with caution due to the context in which this idea became popular, as it flourished due to the events of   Cuba and Vietnam, a time where there was great hostility towards the US government.   Therefore this position can be rightly seen as an attack towards the US administration rather than a real defence of soviet policy therefore this theory was not simply a progressive endeavour towards the ‘truth’. Although this argument is true the same criticism can be applied to the traditionalist school of thought.  This is because the traditionalist analysis was constructed during McCarthyism and the red scare, which explains a lack of critique of US policies and actions within their thesis. For example  Schelesinger Jr asserted that the cold war was the ‘brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression’, which highly reflects the administrations views as that time. Consequently showing that history is never separate from current concerns and values.

 Furthermore an additional problem is presented due to the context in time in which the revisionist position was written in. The problem is due to the lack of variety of sources.  As it was not until after the rise of the popularity of this position that archives were opened, for example McCauley states ‘The revisionist school ….led to the opening up of the archives, if only to disprove their theses’ therefore showing that archives were still tight during the writing of revisionist literature. Consequently the orthodox and  revisionist approach share the same criticism in that there are no use of Soviet sources due to there not being any access to them at that time. For both sides only US sources were available and many of these documents were inaccessible. Contact with the soviet scholars was non-existent. The USSR had no institute for the study of the USA until the détente era. All this led to overconcentration on US actions and a schematic image of the USSR. Therefore there is a clearly an issue with the evidence used in both thesis. Moreover  as European archival material became more accessible in the 1970’s as well as newly released government documents, led to new developments in the cold war historgraphy  e.g Post-revisionism, this in-turn led to an erosion of the revisionist critique.

In conclusion, the ideological struggle of the cold war is clearly reflected in its historiography. Although the revisionist t theory has some faults most of the criticisms mentioned can also be accounted for the orthodox approach. Drawing from all of the  critical evaluations presented in this paper, it is shown that Cold war historiography draws on to many debates  in historiography itself, as to whether it is possible to know the truth about the past ,whether historians can ever really be objective, and weather History is determined by the preferences, biases and partiality of the historian.  This paper also shows that theories show an ignorance of historical reality. The best history provokes no controversy therefore the revisionist  position that the expansion of US power led to the outbreak of the cold war is clearly not the best analysis in cold war history , as it has received many criticism, and contributed to the emergence of the post-revisionist theory. Overall the Orthodox and revisionist theory have been a distraction to discovering the truth, through pointing fingers based on limited sources.

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