Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism

Rating:
Summary: Shrecker, the fraud, strikes again
Review: Ellen Schrecker is a committed Communist and revisionist historian. No amount of evidence from Soviet archives open since 1991 will dissuade her from her position that it is the free nations and peoples of the world that caused the cold war, rather than the aggressive and murdering nations that she loves so and whose passing she laments.

Ellen Shrecker is part of the politburo of the American historians that are trying to rewrite history. It won't work. The facts are out and she is swimming against a flood of paper that give the lie to her beliefs. If you REALLY want to understand where things stand, read David Horwitz, Ron Radosh, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr.

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Refutation of Treason
Review: Spinsanity wrote in its critique of Treason, "...Coulter presents a detailed historical argument regarding the McCarthy era and how it is portrayed in the media. She appears to make a credible case against the caricature that is often portrayed, but any statement beyond this is outside the scope of this column. The specifics of her analysis require close scrutiny by an expert conversant in the wide range of scholarship that is now publicly available about the era."

That close scrutiny is now available in the form of Cold War Triumphalism. Yes, there were Soviet spies in the U.S. in the 1940s -- big surprise. But the rank-and-file of the CP was *not* a bunch of traitors -- nor even arguably was the leadership to the extent that is commonly presented. McCarthy was *not* right, his spurious accusations having come some years after the spies were revealed and purged. The "caricature" is no caricature.

Required reading!

Rating:
Summary: An interesting collection
Review: The end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union has certainly encouraged American anti-communists. Nor has this triumph merely been confined to the CPUSA or to Marxists. Even moderate liberals like Mondale or Dukakis stand discredited in the Orwellian weltanschung. This book is a collection of essays by a series of leading scholars which criticize this consensus.

There is much to be said for it. (1) We have an essay by Carolyn Eisenberg that draws on her book on how American partioned Germany. Discussing the Berlin Blockade, she points out the United States negoiated in bad faith, avoided possiblities to compromise, and undercut the Allied Control Council and the United Nations. (Fortunately for the American reputation, the Canadians successfully prevented the UN Security Council President from releasing a report that would criticize the United States.) The United States never wanted to discuss the currency questions that sparked the blockade, because it would hamper its plans to partition Germany. Moreover, the blockade was not as complete as people think (West Berlin still had access to the rest of Berlin and the Eastern Zone). (2) Chalmers Johnson contains a good piece of muckraking about the pathologies of American dominance. The United States, along with Somalia is the only country to oppose the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It opposes the ICC, the land mines treaty, and UN resolutions to adhere to the ABM treaty. We've learned that Chilean secret police man who ordered the Letellier/Moffit murder was a "paid CIA agent" and continued this status after blowing up a bomb in the streets of Washington. Another DINA officer helped to torture and murder a UN official in 1976, and then served as an instructor at Fort Benning in human rights in 1987. (3) We also have useful essays by Nelson Lichtenstein on how postwar intellectuals as varied as Schumpeter, Bell, Galbraith, Drucker and Mills thought that the new corporate factory bureaucracy was making capitalism obsolete, only to be rudely refuted by history. (4) We have a typically nuanced essay by Leo Ribuffo discussing the morality of the cold war as discussed by Reinhold Niebuhr, William Appleman Williams and John Lewis Gaddis. We also have more caustic essays by Bruce Cumings about the fatuities of Cold war triumphalism, taking special aim at the castrated Nietzche of Francis Fukuyama. We also have Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman provide some useful context about the VENONA spy disclosures, and Corey Robin about neoconservative rhetoric on 9/11. (He is effective about the contrast between neoconservative chatter about noble striving and sacrifice and a free market mindset so powerful that 62 senators could vote in March 2002 against higher fuel efficiency standards.)

However, I would like to point out some reservations. (1) There is nothing that directly discusses John Earl Haynes' recent polemic "In Denial" which accuses several of the contributors of being like Holocaust deniers. (2) Not all of the essays are equally useful. Michael Bernstein's paper just reiterates the flaws of Reaganomics. An article by Marilyn Young on the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars is uninspiring, as is another paper on the role of the United Nations. There is little new material; the Lichtenstein and Ribuffo articles are an exception. (3) There is little specifically on Eastern Europe, except for the Eisenberg essay on the Berlin Blockade. This makes Ribuffo's comment, that historical research suggests that the Soviets were rather hesistant about invading Hungary in 1956, all the more tantalizing. (4) The articles do not all agree on everything. That in itself is not a problem, but I must make a reservation over Ribuffo's discussion of Williams. Williams was willing to grant Japan a sphere of influence in China, and the USSR a sphere in Eastern Europe. But Japan's conduct in China was incredibly vicious, and the United States was not obliged to sell them the materials to conduct war there. Nor was it unfair to wish that the Warsaw Pact countries were as democratic as Finland, though somewhat hypocritical that dictatorships in the rest of the world could be glibly ignored. And to describe neoconservatives as "utopian," as Robin does, for claiming to encourage the spread of democracy is to give them too much credit and to take their rhetoric at face value.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting collection
Review: The end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union has certainly encouraged American anti-communists. Nor has this triumph merely been confined to the CPUSA or to Marxists. Even moderate liberals like Mondale or Dukakis stand discredited in the Orwellian weltanschung. This book is a collection of essays by a series of leading scholars which criticize this consensus.

There is much to be said for it. (1) We have an essay by Carolyn Eisenberg that draws on her book on how American partioned Germany. Discussing the Berlin Blockade, she points out the United States negoiated in bad faith, avoided possiblities to compromise, and undercut the Allied Control Council and the United Nations. (Fortunately for the American reputation, the Canadians successfully prevented the UN Security Council President from releasing a report that would criticize the United States.) The United States never wanted to discuss the currency questions that sparked the blockade, because it would hamper its plans to partition Germany. Moreover, the blockade was not as complete as people think (West Berlin still had access to the rest of Berlin and the Eastern Zone). (2) Chalmers Johnson contains a good piece of muckraking about the pathologies of American dominance. The United States, along with Somalia is the only country to oppose the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It opposes the ICC, the land mines treaty, and UN resolutions to adhere to the ABM treaty. We've learned that Chilean secret police man who ordered the Letellier/Moffit murder was a "paid CIA agent" and continued this status after blowing up a bomb in the streets of Washington. Another DINA officer helped to torture and murder a UN official in 1976, and then served as an instructor at Fort Benning in human rights in 1987. (3) We also have useful essays by Nelson Lichtenstein on how postwar intellectuals as varied as Schumpeter, Bell, Galbraith, Drucker and Mills thought that the new corporate factory bureaucracy was making capitalism obsolete, only to be rudely refuted by history. (4) We have a typically nuanced essay by Leo Ribuffo discussing the morality of the cold war as discussed by Reinhold Niebuhr, William Appleman Williams and John Lewis Gaddis. We also have more caustic essays by Bruce Cumings about the fatuities of Cold war triumphalism, taking special aim at the castrated Nietzche of Francis Fukuyama. We also have Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman provide some useful context about the VENONA spy disclosures, and Corey Robin about neoconservative rhetoric on 9/11. (He is effective about the contrast between neoconservative chatter about noble striving and sacrifice and a free market mindset so powerful that 62 senators could vote in March 2002 against higher fuel efficiency standards.)

However, I would like to point out some reservations. (1) There is nothing that directly discusses John Earl Haynes' recent polemic "In Denial" which accuses several of the contributors of being like Holocaust deniers. (2) Not all of the essays are equally useful. Michael Bernstein's paper just reiterates the flaws of Reaganomics. An article by Marilyn Young on the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars is uninspiring, as is another paper on the role of the United Nations. There is little new material; the Lichtenstein and Ribuffo articles are an exception. (3) There is little specifically on Eastern Europe, except for the Eisenberg essay on the Berlin Blockade. This makes Ribuffo's comment, that historical research suggests that the Soviets were rather hesistant about invading Hungary in 1956, all the more tantalizing. (4) The articles do not all agree on everything. That in itself is not a problem, but I must make a reservation over Ribuffo's discussion of Williams. Williams was willing to grant Japan a sphere of influence in China, and the USSR a sphere in Eastern Europe. But Japan's conduct in China was incredibly vicious, and the United States was not obliged to sell them the materials to conduct war there. Nor was it unfair to wish that the Warsaw Pact countries were as democratic as Finland, though somewhat hypocritical that dictatorships in the rest of the world could be glibly ignored. And to describe neoconservatives as "utopian," as Robin does, for claiming to encourage the spread of democracy is to give them too much credit and to take their rhetoric at face value.