Vasile Puşcaş

THE ORIGIN AND THE END OF THE COLD WAR. HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE GEOPOLITICAL AND GEOSTRATEGIC CONTEXT

Already before the end of the Cold War was "proclaimed", the historians initiated the process of "revealing documents" concerning the Cold War history. This time, many expected that the Soviet archives would add historiographical revelations to the Western reconstitution attempts from until the late 80's. At least some confirmations of the historiographical interpretations which outlined some major lines of understanding the Cold War period were needed. The main difference between the Western expectations - shared with and even more intensely expressed in East-Central Europe, and the historiographical approach of the former "Eastern Bloc" countries regarded the objectives: 1) de-politization and dis-ideologization; 2) the conceptual and methodological modernization (Kren, 1992). This last requirement would be more and more acute as it addressed the objective of research, reconstitution and writing of contemporary history.

The renewal of concepts and contemporary history methods - thus applied also to the Cold War period, was also a part of the Western historiographical agenda. However, the post-1990 cooperation between the Western and Eastern historians on this issue has been one of weak concern. Applying these remarks to our subject - the Cold War history, we will underline the necessity of modernizing the concepts and methods of analysis by referring us to two valuable books, related to the subject we approached. The first belongs to V. Mastny and it was published in Oxford University Press (Mastny, 1996). The author, known as an authoritative figure in Cold War history issues, in its final remark concluding his book: The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, noticed that the bipolar order and the Cold War should not be regarded as historical curiosities or as a pathological state of the international relations. The second book is a piece from the collection "Cambridge Studies in International Relations" (Bowler & Brown, 1993). Fred Halliday's study (comprised in the mentioned book) starts with the finding that the Cold War literature is dominated by two main debates: 1) Historical arguments regarding the causes and "responsibilities" for the Cold War; 2) The conflict dynamics within the context of international relations of the second half of the 20th Century. Thus, a historian and a political scientist found a line of convergence on the Cold War phenomenon, namely that the Cold War is a research object both for history and for international relations. And, in our view, it is and will continue to be a research object for other social sciences too. A more complete reconstitution and a more correct understanding of the Cold War phenomenon will urge historiography to appeal more insistently to inter-disciplinary studies.

There is also a difference regarding the research approach between the Western and Eastern historiography concerning the selection of topics/thematic options. Generally speaking, the Western historiography was and still is usually focused on the reconstitution of the most important crises, which occurred in the East-West relations and their main actors (political/state units, individuals, and institutions). Instead, the East-Central European public still waits for not only the presentation of those types of events, but also for explanations on how the Cold War contributed to the radical/structural changes of the internal characteristics of the societies from that area. From this point of view, the objectives of the East-Central European historiography are not only more ample, but also more complexes. Regarding the methodological and conceptual aspects, a combination between the traditional and the contemporary history is strongly required. Even the history of our times, from the political to the economic, social and cultural, or from the institutional to the mentalities perspectives, from foreign policy to international relations/politics etc. is particularly important in this research.

The beginning and the end of the Cold War took place not only in distinctive historical contexts - generally speaking, but also in different geopolitical and geostrategic contexts. However, what we want to stress is the following: the two chronological sections of the period we approach have generated by themselves certain very interesting geopolitical and geostrategic contexts (Tinguy, 1990). And, most frequently the political discourse both in the West and the East is determined by the geopolitical and geostrategic context. Why do we address geopolitics and geostrategy in relation with the historiography? Because more than any other period or modern historical phenomenon before World War II, the beginning of the Cold War generated a normative geopolitical model (Gavrilov, 2000), which determined in a manner unknown before, the writing of history in general, and of the Cold War history in particular. Raymond Aron wrote that the "clash" between the two blocs was caused by power rivalry and ideological competition (Aron, 1984). The association geopolitics-geostrategy reflects also the distribution of power within the international system. The post-World War II actors were more than ever before correlated with the evolution of the international system. From these propositions, it seems obvious that the writing of the Cold War history was strongly influenced not only by ideological values, but also by the geopolitical and geostrategic ones. Geopolitics and geostrategy are also instruments for investigation and knowledge of the international relations. And if we admit, as many historians and political analysts do, that the Cold War was a phenomenon of prolonged crisis in the international system, it is clear why the Cold War history was frequently approached as a history of the international relations (Bonanate, 1997). Even when the roots of the conflict could be traced in the determinations of the internal situation and in the ideology of USSR (Mastny, 1996), in the end the historiographical interpretation evolves toward an explanation correlated with the geopolitical and geostrategic characteristics of the age (Vigezzi, 1987). If we insisted so much until now on the relation between the Cold War historiography and geopolitics and geostrategy, this does not mean that we support this single orientation. Instead, our aim was to emphasize its predominance. Only the access to the ensemble of classical historical sources (archives) and the non-classical ones (radio and TV recordings etc.) will open and multiply the other areas of the history of societies from the two former antagonistic blocs.

The historiographical history of the Cold War presented, in successive order, two steps: 1) "orthodox", until the 50's; 2) "revisionist", after the 60's. Concerning the beginning of the Cold War, the "orthodox" point of view (in the West) alleged that the crisis was caused by the Soviet aggressive behavior, and the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were logical defensive gestures from the US point of view. "The revisionists" introduced a nuance in the causal relationship, admitting that Washington acted also in order to protect the American economic and financial interests. Also, the defensive impulse of the world capitalist system explains the Western actions. At the same time, some "revisionists" accept that the Soviets reacted aggressively also under the impulse of some specific security interests. Only after the end of the Cold War (argued some historians), if both (superpower) initiators of the crisis will provide for historians the access to new documentary references, a correlation of the events could be build. As this will be achieved, we could aspire to the knowledge of a comprehensive and truthful history both of the Cold War and of the post-1947 entire international situation (Parrish, 1993).

The debate of the Cold War topic from the international relations perspective is even more diverse than that of the traditional history. F. Halliday identified four approaches explained by the geopolitical conjecture. In this case, geopolitics means the particular way in which the global space was projected (O'Tuathail, 1998). These categories are rather conventional, having only the purpose of systematizing the Cold War historiography. The approaches employed here are the realist, subjectivist, internalist and inter-systemic ones. From the realist point of view, the Cold War was essentially a continuation of the Great Powers politics in the new context of nuclear arms emergence and escalation of the arms race, and of the ideological rivalry: capitalism versus communism. The central debate was related to the USSR and the US foreign policies as expressions of the international conflict. The subjectivists insist on explaining the Cold War from a perspective of individual and collective perceptions (much more appropriately labeled misperceptions) of those who designed the foreign policy during that period, and also the population's perceptions (see the writings of Janis and Jawis). This view starts from the assumption according to which a conflict can be avoided if the parties involved are very well informed about each other. The internalists' approach the Cold War from an inside perspective, and not only as a relation between the blocs. They sustain that the social-economic policies and the social-economic structure of the two great powers and of the other participant actors to the Cold War represent in fact the sources of conflict. The building of the blocs would be the result of this internal reality, which manifested in a certain international context dominated by the hegemonism of the respective powers. The inter-system approach rejected the "classical" model (East-West rivalry as an expression of the traditional great power vision). Instead, its focus is on diversity, heterogeneity, and characteristics of the competitive states, both at internal and international levels. The history of the Cold War phenomenon, from the inter-systemic perspective, focuses on the following assumptions: 1) East-West rivalry is a consequence of the conflict between two distinctive social systems; 2) This competition involved a competitive universalistic dynamics; 3) A result can be achieved only with one bloc prevailing upon the other. If we look at the "international system" according to the conventional theory of the international relations, than the Cold War phenomenon is a particularity in the system with a heterogeneous expression. Thus, the end of the Cold War means the accomplishment of a new homogeneity, not a compromise or convergence, therefore, only the prevailing of a sub-system upon the other (Halliday, 1993). This approach, even though it looks abstract, is in fact logical since the explanation of the Cold War phenomenon by employing the system level is absolutely necessary. But the explanation needs concrete elements, including geopolitical ones, which do not always belong to the system level itself. Therefore, a co-operation between historians and international relations theorists is strongly expected, since, as Richard Crockatt remarked, the historians and the international relations theorists have many things to learn from each other (Crockatt, 1993).

The chronology of the Cold War and its various historiographical understandings suffered a variety of interpretations. The geopolitical vision on the beginning and the end of the Cold War focus on the both ends of the chronological line concentrating on the creation of two opposite blocs (1947 - Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Cominform) and their dissolution (1989). Traditional history did not refute this chronological representation but it defines the Cold War in a more complex manner than reducing it to the ordering of international relations. This approach suggests taking in account when the division of Europe really started (Oct., 1944) and when this division became a reason of conflict between those Powers turning out to be the main actors of the Cold War = Potsdam, 1945 (Kissinger, 1994). However, even if the democratic revolutions at the end of 1989 denoted the beginning of the Eastern Bloc disintegration, the Two Great Powers admitted on specific occasions (1987 - Soviet Union, Bonanate, 1997) and 1989 - USA (Garthoff, 1994; Blanton, 1996) that they would not support any longer the confrontation patterns of the Cold War. Some analytical predisposed scholars extended the timeline of the Cold War until 1991. They explained this extension through some specific events like the formalization of German unification, self - suspension of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. These so diverse chronological options are justified if we take in account that the Cold War phenomenon became exhaustively investigated by historiography only during the last decade. In this context, the assumption of David Wolff that "Cold War ended at different time on different places" (Wolff, 1998) is not rhetorical at all. Actually, this statement rather illustrates the current status of historiographical research. More, the historiographical debate regarding the end of the Cold War can be characterized by multiple political determinants (Blanton, 1996; Wolff, 1998), as well as the beginning of the Cold War was filled with the some political tension after 1947. But after 1947, the normative geopolitics leaded the debate towards the same conclusion. The transitory geopolitics after 1989 concerning the anarchy of the post Cold War international system explains the variety of chronological options by temporary support of the envisioning the new global design.

Luigi Bonanate defined the Cold War as a formula of "international order" that was slowly but robustly consolidated (Bonanate, 1997) after the end of the World War Two. This general definition by recourse to geopolitics does not offer a consistent explanation of the Cold War phenomenon. Consequently, even he was a supporter of this type of defining; Kissinger completed it with some elements deducted of geopolitics and geostrategy: "The United States and the Soviet Union, two giants of the periphery, were now facing off each other in the very heart of Europe" (Kissinger, 1994). It was a geopolitical paradigm that the Cold War started by the confrontation of these two superpowers - US and Soviet Union - in Central and Southeastern Europe. But when the German problem was augmented and that zone came under Soviet domination, there were voices arguing that the division of Europe was accomplished through the division of Germany. There were the "revisionists" those that look back on this thesis demonstrating the tragic role of Central - Eastern Europe in that game played by Soviet Union on one side and by the US and Britain on the other side during 1944 - 1946 (Misse, 1964).

It must be underlined that the signal of the Eastern Bloc disintegration came from the Central Europe, an area where Germany had played a significant role and where the ideas that put the population and the political leaders on the move were: democracy, market economy, Europeanism. However, USA and other West European states stimulated this movement of reforming and geopolitical / geostrategic redirection of Central and Southeastern Europe. This reality ought to be more attentively analyzed in the historiography of the above mentioned area's countries and also in the historiography of the formal central actors of the Cold War and not only in the geopolitical and geostrategic projections. The phenomenon of communist authoritarianism in these countries associated with the consequences imposed on them by the main players of the Cold War generated that type of effects, as Naimark and Gibianskii remarked that "their emergence from behind the "Iron Curtain" has been a wrenching process" (Naimark and Gibianskii, 1997).

A major distinction between geopolitics and historiography regarding the beginning and the end of Cold War appears because the geopolitics and geostrategy are more dynamic, developing their discourse and projecting ideologies and political visions on short and medium term, while the historiography, if does not agree to be politically operated, has to collect multiple series and categories of data. Only after such a process, historiography must reconstitute the events, the phenomena and the processes that had defined the society during specific temporal segments. The historiography of the Cold War phenomenon in the very period of its beginning suffered from the limitations of the political context. It was dominated by the impulses of the Cold War generated situations (Halliday, 1993) in direct connection with the geopolitical and geostrategic projections of that time. The end of the Cold War also induced the intensification of the historians' access to archives or to the use of oral history in order to investigate and reconstitute the beginning and the phases of the Cold War (at this moment, only the episodes of the great crises, as already were mentioned). Of similar or even greater interest is the final phase of the Cold War and the post Cold War stage. This time, even if the geopolitical and geostrategic projections were directed towards ideological, cultural, economic, politic, etc. experiences, the influences of the political or geopolitical / geostrategic factors on the historians has not been so severe, in the sense of following their directives. Rather the individual political discourses and the geopolitical discourses expected to receive from historiography conclusions extracted from the analyses of facts. But because not in all cases historiography succeeded to produce clear reconstitution and convincing interpretations, the geopolitics and international relations borrowed more and more from the historiographical and sociological methods, employing empirical and factual analyses. Thus, the last decade, proved that the co-operation between the historiography of contemporary history and geopolitics / geostrategy is not only in the benefit of the advancement of knowledge and understanding local and global phenomena but it also has to be a necessary component both of the scientific discourse and sustaining the rationality in common and specialized perceptions of the social life.

The intellectual and political efforts of multidimensional geopolitical and geostrategic rethinking of the post Cold War world is impressive both as intensity or as form (see Jean, 1996; Santoro, 1997; Wallerstein, 1991; O'Tuathail, 1998, etc.) If during the period 1945-1989, the determinant geopolitical formula was "Ideological geopolitics", after 1989 a generalization is more difficult to be accomplished because diverse and different geopolitical models are tested. However, the last years proved a larger preference for the strategy of enlarging the democratic, market oriented community (Clinton named this community through the questionable paradigm of "market democracies"), what cause some geopoliticians to call this strategy "enlargement geopolitics" (Tuathail, 1998). Other scholars argued that the tendency is toward "post-modern geopolitics".

This intense preoccupation for updating and modernizing methodology and concepts in geopolitics and geostrategy can encourage historians toward not only a more conceptual flexibility, but also a more insistent methodological perfecting rigor. The historiographical research projects and programs of the Cold War history are impressive too; quoting those accomplished by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and other American universities, but also by the Institute of Universal History from Moscow, or other countries. But if the desire for a immediate research of the new archive documents is understandable for the professional mentality of the historian, we must accept the growth of expectations in the post-Cold War milieu for new historiographical approaches, including a new historiography of the Cold War history.

At least by now, it dominates a trend for the old historiographical themes, studied before 1989, as well as for the methods registered until then. Of course, there are exceptions, but this demonstrates the public need for knowledge and understanding the history of the Cold War (Tannenwald, 1998; Stratfor, 2000). In this anarchy period in the international system (Kaplan, 2000), more and more citizens, politicians, and those involved in statecraft or the practice of global visualization need historiographical papers to present the Cold War history from not only a positivist but an interpretative point of view too. That is why I believe that the historiographical research programs of the Cold War history should include more extended studies about the historiography's modernization, with a special approach on researching and writing the contemporary and ultra-contemporary history. And we are convinced that editing new data collections, systematically, critically and correlative built, in the English language (the FRUS type) would become an extremely valuable instrument for the writing the Cold War history and for the international historiographical communication. "Cold War International History Project Bulletin" represents an excellent means of documentation and information for historians but it can be characterized further as a specialized periodical publication, which serves the historiographical community in this transitory period.

Finally, I would like to present few issues about the Romanian historiography concerning the Cold War. Although Romanian historians are less included, until now, in congenial international programs dealing with the Cold War history, the Romania's last decade historiography produced substantial data volumes, as well as historic reconstitution (Buzatu, 1998). The Romanian archives offer the same research conditions along with other Central or Western European states. Although not all archives are adequately organized, documents provided from the Communist party, former secret services, army, diplomatic services, administrations, etc., join a high degree of accessibility for Romanian and foreign researchers. The historical and public interest in Romania has been growing regarding the understanding of the principal crisis of the Cold War that affected directly Romania (1956, 1968, and 1989). There have also been investigated some domestic social-political phenomena - the anticommunist resistance, the communist regime installation, collectivization and the governing process, the personality's cult role, etc. - historians searching frequently to present the foreign perceptions on specific phenomena, also. There are not specific programs or a systematic historiographical research preoccupation toward the Cold War history, unless certain work groups at the Romanian Academy, the Institute for Defense Policy Studies and Military History and few universities. The historiographical dialogue with centers, institutes, congenial international programs is following an ascendant course, especially at the individual level (exception being made by the same Institute for Defense Policy Studies and Military History and few university departments).