Abstract
In the by now extended debate about the end of the Cold War and its causes, very little attention has been paid to the role played by historical memory in helping shape the way policy-makers approached the collapse of the post-war order. As this article shows, many, if not most policy elites at the time, confronted the passing of the old world with a great degree of caution and trepidation; and one of the key reasons they did so, it is argued here, is because of their reading of the past. This reading, I go on to suggest, made many of them especially cautious and fearful when faced with great change. In the end of course these changes proved irresistible, and for liberals at least seemed to augur in more peaceful and prosperous times. However, as we shall see here, this unguarded optimism was not much in evidence as the old international system and the other superpower collapsed after 1989. Looking backwards rather than forwards, policy-makers approached the new dawn with much less enthusiasm and optimism than their public pronouncements seemed to indicate at the time or later.
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Notes
The quote is taken from the most eminent Marxist historian of the last 30 years, Eric Hobsbawm (2002, p. 32).
For the by now classic study on how peace is made at the end of great power conflicts, see Ikenberry (2000).
This of course was the point made at the time by various realists. John Mearsheimer famously predicted that the West would come to regret the passing of the Cold War order (Mearsheimer, 1990).
For different explanations as to why experts may have failed to ‘predict’ the collapse of Soviet power see my 1998 volume (Cox, 1998).
This extraordinary quote from Mitterrand can be found in the official British Documents on British Policy Overseas Series III, Volume VIII: German Unifications 1989–1990. Hereafter Documents (2009, pp. 164–165).
The ‘bad Germans’ remark was made by Mitterrand on the 20 January 1990 in a meeting in Paris with Thatcher (Blitz, 2009).
On why a ‘reunited Germany could present various disadvantages to our interests’ see ‘Draft Paper on German Reunification’. Drafted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 11 October 1989 (Documents, p. 50).
Documents, p. 105.
Documents, pp. 502–508.
As a very frustrated UK Ambassador admitted in January 1990: ‘Despite our supportive line on the German wish to achieve unity through self-determination, the UK is perceived here’ in West Germany ‘as the least positive of the three western allies’; and he added ‘the least important’ (Documents, p. 190). On growing American dismay with Mrs Thatcher's negative attitude towards developments in Germany, see also Documents, pp. 31–33.
See the CIA assessment of April 1991 that argued that ‘economic crisis, independence aspirations and anti-Communist forces are breaking down the Soviet empire and the system of governance’ (Oberdorfer, 1998, p. 450).
Adam Smith (1776) wrote: ‘When the German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country. The towns were deserted, and the country was left uncultivated, and the western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed a considerable degree of opulence under the Roman empire, sunk into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism’. Edward Gibbon in his book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (also published in 1776) was equally scathing about the ‘priest ridden superstitious dark times’ that followed the barbarian destruction of the empire.
Obviously, the speech delivered by Bush in Kiev in 1991 caused him great embarrassment; so much so, that several years later he felt compelled, not to defend it, but instead to argue that he had been ‘misunderstood by critics’. See ‘Bush snr. clarifies “Chicken Kiev speech” ’ in Washington Times, 23 May 2004.
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Cox, M. The uses and abuses of history: The end of the Cold War and Soviet collapse. Int Polit 48, 627–646 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2011.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2011.24