John Lewis Gaddis

International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War

I Pr inces have always sought out soothsayers of one kind or another for the purpose of learning what the future holds. These hired visionaries have found portents in the configurations of stars, the entrails of animals, and most indicators in between. The results, on the whole, have been disappointing. Surprise remains one of the few things one can count on, and very few princes have succeeded in avoiding it, however assiduous the efforts of their respective wizards, medicine men, counselors, advisers, and think tank consultants to ward it off. Surprise is still very much with us. The abrupt end of the Cold War, an unanticipated hot war in the Persian Gulf, and the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union astonished almost everyone, whether in government, the academy, the media, or the think tanks. Although there was nothing inherently implausible about these eventsthe Cold War did have to end sometime, war had always been a possibility in the Middle East, and communism’s failures had been obvious for years-the fact that they arose so unexpectedly suggests that deficiencies persist in the means by which contemporary princes and the soothsayers they employ seek to discern the future course of world affairs. No modern soothsayer, of course, would aspire to total clairvoyance. We have no equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s famous character, the mathematician Hari Seldon, whose predictive powers were so great that he was able to leave precise holographic instructions for his followers, to be consulted at successive intervals decades after his death.’ But historians, political scientists, economists, psychologists, and even mathemati-

The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System

An M-shaped electrical connector is fabricated by initially forming one or more elongated slots in a flexible planar strip of electrically conductive material. The slotted strip then is bent into an M-shaped configuration so that each slot defines spaced center or intermediate legs spaced apart in a first direction for receiving first sections of one or more electrical conductors therebetween with a press-fit, and so that end portions of the slotted strip define outer legs spaced apart in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction for receiving and aligning second sections of the electrical conductors therebetween with a press-fit. Each slot in the planar strip may be enlarged intermediate its ends to define a flared entrance to the slot when the strip is formed into the M-shaped configuration. Adjacent ends of the conductors also may be beveled, and the outer legs of the connector may be formed with flared portions, to facilitate insertion of the electrical connector over the ends of the electrical conductors.

Grand Strategy in the Second Term

RECONSIDERATIONS SECOND TERMS in the White House open the way for second thoughts. They provide the least awkward moment at which to re place or reshuffle key advisers. They lessen, although nothing can remove, the influence of domestic political considerations, since re-elected presidents have no next election to worry about. They enhance authority, as allies and adversaries learn-whether with hope or despair-with whom they will have to deal for the next four years. If there is ever a time for an administration to evaluate its own performance, this is it. George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The basis for Bushs grand strategy, like Roosevelts, comes from the shock of surprise attack and will not change. None of F.D.R.s successors, Democrat or Republican, could escape the lesson he drew from the events of December 7, 1941: that distance alone no longer protected Americans from assaults at the hands of hostile states. Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can ignore what the events of September ii, 2001, made clear: that deterrence against states affords insufficient protection from attacks by gangs, which can now inflict the kind of damage only states fighting wars used to be able to achieve. In that sense, the course for Bushs second term remains that of his first one: the restoration of security in a suddenly more dangerous world.

The United States and the end of the cold war : implications, reconsiderations, provocations

This collection of eleven essays provides one of the first explanations of how and why the United States forty year struggle with the former Soviet Union has finally ended. The book contains significant new interpretations of the American style in foreign policy, the objectives of containment, and the role of morality, nuclear weapons, and intelligence and espionage in Washingtons conduct of the Cold War. It controversially reassesses the leadership of two distinctive cold war warriors, John Foster Dulles and Ronald Reagan, and employs new methodological techniques to account for the sudden and surprising events of 1989. Chapters One through Seven are reconsiderations of Cold War history in the light of the fact that we can now view that history as a whole, from its beginnings to its end. Chapters Eight through Eleven (and to some extent Chapters Six and Seven) represent preliminary attempts, from several different analytical perspectives, to deal with how the end of the Cold War came about and what the implications of that development might be for the future. Each chapter is meant to question conventional wisdom with regard to the topics they address. Moreover, Gaddis questions our inability to foresee very clearly the future during these past few years. He contends that we understood much less about this conflict than we realized, and may, in turn, face even greater surprises - not all of them pleasant - in the Cold Wars aftermath. He points to the fact that we are, on the whole, greatly unmoved by this victory and possibly unprepared to deal with the inevitable challenges ahead, both national and international.

History, Theory, and Common Ground

1 Sigmund Freud once pointed out that ”it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other.” He called this ”the narcissism of minor differences,” explaining it as ”a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier.”’ Freud had nationalism in mind, of course, not the long and uneasy relationship between theorists and historians of world politics. But shoes may fit several pairs of feet. Are we academic nationalists? We have been trained since graduate school to defend our turf against assaults from deans, dilettantes, and adjacent disciplines. We organize our journals, scholarly organizations, and university departments within precisely demarcated boundaries. We gesture vaguely in the direction of interdisciplinary cooperation, rather in the way sovereign states put in polite appearances at the United Nations; reality, however, falls far short of what we routinely promise. And we have been known, from time to time, to construct the intellectual equivalent of fortified trenches from which we fire artillery back and forth, dodging shrapnel even as we sink ever more deeply into mutual incomprehension. The world is full of what seem to be ancient patterns of behavior that are in fact relatively recent: real-world nationalism is one of them.* Another, as it happens, is disciplinary professionalization: a century ago historians and political scientists had only begun to think of themselves as distinct comrn~nities.~ Might there be a connection? Could we have allowed a “narcissism of minor differences,” over the past several decades, to Balkanize our minds?

NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered

In the Fall 1979 issue of International Security, historian Samuel F. Wells, ]r. presen ted an especially provocative analysis of the landmark governmental study, NSC 68, completed on April 7, 1950. Its principal author was Paul H . Nitze, then director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and head of the interdepartmental working group that drafted NSC 68, and currently serving as Director of Policy Studies on the Committee on the Present Danger. Wells contended that the document’s contemporary ring reflects the continuation over three decades of both American anxiety about the Soviet threat, and the continuing role of Paul Nitze as a leading advocate of increased efforts to meet that challenge. Wells’ article, “Sounding the Tocsin,” concluded that a knowledge of ments of the 1950s can help sensitize us to some of the persisting requirements of national security decisions in the coming decade. Nonetheless, con troverises arising from different interpretations of Soviet intentions, as well as divergent assessments of U.S. defense needs, were at least as prevalent in 1950 as they are in 1980. In light of the debate generated by ”Sounding the Tocsin,” we have asked for the views of two unusually authoritative commentators.