[A copy of this essay was transmitted to Professor Gaddis for any comment he might wish to make. He declined to comment. - Editor]

'I am persuaded no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.'
         - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1809

This paper seeks to critique John L. Gaddis's 'new'⁽¹⁾ history on the origins of the Cold War. Gaddis's assertion that Stalin was a primary cause of Cold War is given too much importance. In a series of recent publications, this new history is revealing but is weakened by certain value-based principles that justify empire; it lessens the contributions of the American empire; it uses the myth of the 'peaceful' democracy against the 'evil' tyranny. Gaddis minimizes the Allied contribution to the origins of the Cold War. His work also falls into conceptual traps: Gaddis believes in reactive, unplanned empires, making Stalin a grand imperialist; he rejects moral equivalence (the U. S. empire was better); he focuses on exclusive causative agents (Stalin was a romantic, individual agent of causation). Finally, he cites few dissenting opinions, opposing arguments, or the broader setting of Soviet actions in the origins of the Cold War.

Which condition was necessary and sufficient for causing the Cold War' The new history is unequivocal from the start: it was Generalissimo Stalin. Gaddis, using new sources to find old conclusions, places the dictator at the crib of the Cold War. 'Here I think the new history is bringing us back to the old answer: that as long as Stalin was running the Soviet Union a cold war was unavoidable.'⁽²⁾ Stalin was a mirror of domestic and international policy. He 'waged cold war' within alliances, his family, his party.⁽³⁾ This psychological picture, while being accurate,⁽⁴⁾ underscores the context of American contributions to the Cold War dynamic. Gaddis sees Stalin as a lone historical agent. He pushes the hero (or tyrant) version of history, a method flawed in explaining meta-historical movements like the Bolsheviks. Gaddis's underlying assumption that Stalin had supreme agential power has weaknesses. As Philip Pomper has claimed, the period between 1914 and 1991 has challenged the exclusive individual agent of history. It 'violates the historian's sense or proportion' to attribute the deaths of millions to the agency of a select few.⁽⁵⁾ Vast power in the hands of Stalin does not explain the social picture that produced it. It simplifies Cold War origins if nothing more.

Gaddis' concept of agency is weak on several levels. Firstly, advisers, ambassadors and close comrades fall into the background. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Internal Security Chief Lavrenti Beria, and advisers who analyzed Allied movements in the first few years of the conflict become ineffectual.⁽⁶⁾ Secondly, the broader incidents of economics and social history are discounted as valid modes of historical analysis.⁽⁷⁾ Why Gaddis quoted William A. Williams in his SHAFR address becomes a mystery. Williams saw the American Empire as a tragic miscalculation of collective forces and ideas, but Gaddis only intended using him as a starting point to show why such a tragedy was in fact exclusively one of ideas.⁽⁸⁾ The expansiveness of the American Zeitgeist diminishes in the Gaddis purview ' it is crammed into a noble vision of good or lesser evil; instead Stalin's ideas remain the dominant theme in starting Cold War aggression, ideas detached from Soviet society.⁽⁹⁾

 Perhaps the most glaring weakness in the Gaddis edifice is his unconditional acceptance of the person over the event. History is often a complicated dialectic between the controller of history and the figure controlled by it. Stalin's nemesis was closer to the mark: 'As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistance is smashed and the boundaries of 'individuality' lost.'⁽¹⁰⁾ Events overtake historical figures. Stalin and the Allies were glancing at a Europe without a centre of power. Nazism had placed them in a situation where power had to be shared. Explaining the rupture of the failed project took two players, two emporiums. Stalin was not the lone iconoclast.

It would seem that Gaddis has become less amenable to structures. In such works as The Long Peace, ideas underscore a play of power structures.⁽¹¹⁾ The old Gaddis acknowledged bi-polarity as a structured game, where 'systemic interests tend to take precedence over ideological interests.' Ideologues are functionaries in a scheme that prefers "predictable anomaly over unpredictable rationality."⁽¹²⁾ But the Stalin of We Now Know is liberated from such interpretations. He becomes an autocrat who linked the fate of communist world revolution to the territorial ambitions of the Soviet Union.⁽¹³⁾ Gaddis' revised historiography is repackaged orthodox history under another name: the good coalition fighting an evil empire. Gaddis has shed his neo-revisionist skin that mediated between empires and strategic goals.⁽¹⁴⁾ His born-again orthodoxy in the post-revisionist fever of 1993 has diminished his role as a serious navigator between orthodox history and revisionist scholarship.⁽¹⁵⁾ Gaddis attributes complete control to Stalin the empire builder. His Stalin is aware, controlling, a romantic, the single greatest causal agent of the Cold War. He omits studies that conflict with the image of a less autonomous Stalin.⁽¹⁶⁾ This is not surprising ' any such studies tend to focus on Stalin's role within a binding social structure. They focus on depersonalization, individuals as tools of culture, and locate agents within a wide historical framework.⁽¹⁷⁾ The historian of ideas tends to downplay the structure in favour of ideas. Consequently, Gaddis ignores other factors within the Soviet bureaucracy, power structure and society that may have inhibited, influenced or controlled Stalin. George F. Kennan illustrated this point when he wrote that Stalin did not have 'effective control over the machinery of Soviet Government.'⁽¹⁸⁾

Gaddis assumes that these prior histories have become irrelevant. A classic study, Isaac Deutscher's 1949 portrait of Stalin, is notably absent. Deutscher's Stalin was a somnambulist prone to mad schemes, with all the tendencies of an oriental despot. His anti-western orientation was very much a provincial contempt nurtured in the Georgia. Stalin was the raw matter of other tyrannical dynasts: Deutscher referred to other events, other revolutions for precedents. This Stalin is a condition rather than a man, an archetype: the condition of European tyrants stretching over centuries.⁽¹⁹⁾

Stalin was the bureaucrat, if anything, unromantic, coloured by the system that reflected an indefatigable lack of adventure. Gaddis' constructed Stalin is an adventurer with 'unlimited ambitions' and no 'time-table'.⁽²⁰⁾ Leon Trotsky, Stalin's intellectual opposite and true romantic, vanishes from We Now Know, appearing in neither footnotes nor text. It was Trotsky who wrote as part of his theory of permanent revolution that Russia should 'give a push to the socialist development of Europe' once Russian socialism had been consolidated.⁽²¹⁾ Stalin becomes Trotsky's mirror in Gaddis's study, an inversion mastered by the speculative study of Richard C. Raack, who claimed the dictator ran on a 'secret Trotskyite programmatic leitmotif of war and revolution'.⁽²²⁾ Both authors, without sufficient evidence, subvert the bureaucratic Stalin with the romantic world revolutionary.

Robert C. Tucker in a more coherent study juggles structure and agency, using structurist methods that do not entirely destroy individual agency, but recognize the individual as a product of social norms and variations. His Stalin is a picture of several political cultures.⁽²³⁾ The party had its own logic but Stalin took it upon himself to accelerate the terror. The Purges were fed by the custom of how to dispose of 'traitors.' Stalin thus became a creator of a system that was also creating him. Gaddis cites Tucker, but never evaluates his dialectical premises. In fact, a dialectics free Tucker is a favourite citation for Gaddis, who merely scans Tucker without analysis.⁽²⁴⁾ These histories illustrate the dangers of placing ideas in an exclusive criterion.

Gaddis's evaluation of Stalin as a conscious romantic does not sit easily with the conclusions of other historians. Ideology must be analyzed within a broad social frame.⁽²⁵⁾ Stalin combined universalism with security, the language of expansion with the language of security.⁽²⁶⁾ Zubok and Pleshakov's Stalin fostered a cautious expansionism without a master plan. Their Stalin is cautious; 'he wanted to avoid confrontation with the West,' preferring cooperation to assist building influence. Their Stalin, different from Gaddis' monolith, feared both economic and military encirclement from a West determined to undermine his order from within.⁽²⁷⁾ The Stalin of Kennedy-Pipe is another variant, another version: cooperative, calculating but not imperial. The Soviets were invited to take part in occupying all liberated territories.⁽²⁸⁾ Instead, they were willing to cede areas of influence in the West to Allied forces. Kennedy-Pipe advances the proposition that Stalin was willing to use the presence of Allied troops in Europe to his advantage. The Soviets did not see themselves as alone in post-War Europe even viewing Anglo-American influence as essential in checking German revanchism.⁽²⁹⁾

Vojtech Mastny by the nature of his work tends to parallel Gaddis. His Stalin did not want Cold War but created it because he was psychologically menaced. Whilst Mastny conveys a dangerous Stalin, he does not define the parameters of his ideological analysis. He notes that the Kremlin 'exaggerated' the threats, but this was a common feature of Stalin's enemies as well.⁽³⁰⁾ This reconstructed Stalin is similar to Gaddis's. Whilst Mastny's study is useful, his failure to focus on the American contribution weakens the new history's focus on unilateral aggression on Stalin's part.

Gaddis falls into a conceptual trap when he makes a value judgment about democracies and autocracies.⁽³¹⁾ The Russian system is rendered unique, Tsarist and wicked.⁽³²⁾ Gaddis' SHAFR address can be taken as the starting point for eliminating Williams' pieties and writing history as a nationalist act.⁽³³⁾ Tyrants start cold wars; democratic enterprises do not. Gaddis is not the only one to entertain this sophism. The central proposition of American orthodox history on the Cold War idealizes good nations fighting against evil essences from the outside. Transparent, relative evils never figure in such studies as Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s who wrote that the, 'Cold War was the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression.'⁽³⁴⁾ This analytical mistake has rendered the American empire invisible, necessary, reactive. The free and brave became the reaction to the cause of Communist expansion. The chief agent became Stalin, raised in the despotic milieu of tsarist repression that encroached into Eastern Europe and the Asiatic steppes. America had no such imperial sentiments, raised on the empire dimming universalism of Woodrow Wilson that spread good news through benevolent design. Russia on the other hand was merely a player of sphere-of-influence games.

Schlesinger made a similar mistake to Gaddis, with a slight difference. The former saw universalism as incompatible with empire. The latter believes that both are compatible, as Gaddis endorses felicitous imperialism. Both universalize American values. If American values are universal, it follows that Stalin and his detractors were irrational and evil; but if its values are universal and good, no empire can come about since empires are inconsistent with the Atlantic Charter and United Nations polity.⁽³⁵⁾ This carefully contrived image renders Realpolitik subordinate to benevolence. Good nations don't oppress, expand their frontiers or violate the rules of war. When they do, the thesis is justified by assuming that enemies not in line with American universalism deserve such harsh punishment, whether through retribution or occupation.

The fairy tale of good empires (or benevolent polities of brave and free coalitions) binds Gaddis's new framework for Cold War analysis.⁽³⁶⁾ Lacking what Bruce Cumings calls 'the fallacy of insufficient cynicism,' Gaddis approaches the good empire as a contradiction. He admits the existence of an American empire, but denies its imperial habits: it was anti-colonial, even democratic.⁽³⁷⁾ For Gaddis, the Soviet empire was a straight forward model of belligerency, tyrannical, imperial. This dual concept of good-bad empires enables Gaddis to draw the next conclusion: that the good American empire was benign due to its leaning towards democracy. Democracies tend to be peaceful, authoritarian regimes belligerent. Implicitly, Gaddis's history makes the tyrant untouched by checks and balances force reactions from innocent opponents. More consensus-oriented policy, it is implied, would have lessened Stalin as a cause. Democracies in Gaddis speak could not have created a Cold War.⁽³⁸⁾ No Stalin no Cold War.

Democracies do build empires and cause wars. A 'democratic' Athenian Republic sought possessions through war; Great Britain, equipped with a formally representative Parliament and a Bill of Rights, controlled a quarter of the globe by 1900;⁽³⁹⁾ and World War I was caused by, if not actual, then formal democracies. Abundant literature analyzing the mutual antagonism, even conflict, between democratic industrialized systems in their quest for possessions and territories, disappears in Gaddis's history.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Aware of these trends, Molotov and Stalin tried exploiting what they erroneously thought to be antagonistic contradictions in the Anglo-American alliance.⁽⁴¹⁾ Democratic capitalist nations existed as mutually hostile entities in their concept of Realpolitik.

Gaddis tries to add weight to this 'democratic' argument by denying the American empire's imperial habits. The United States anticipated to dominate the post-war international scene 'well and before the Soviet Union emerged as a clear and present antagonist.' Gaddis sees this domination without sting or consequence; one can lead the world order without rivals, 'acting in concert rather than in competition.' He admits Woodrow Wilson's subterfuge in hiding self-interest through disinterested benevolence. He admits that the United States prepared militarily for an international role in a world order it wanted to lead, but it was consensus building, using coalitions, permitting choice amongst allies.⁽⁴²⁾ Ignoring parts of the empire that did not fit into this consensus paradigm, Gaddis overcomes the moral ambiguity of American empire through omission. Latin America is excluded ' Gaddis seems to labour under Jeffersonian assumptions that the western hemisphere could only contain American governments.⁽⁴³⁾ The Shah's Iran, a CIA creation, is an aside, and the Indo-China misadventures become accidental to the good empire.

The 'consensus' empire argument distorts the impositions from above and justifies the empire. It says nothing of causation ' even consensus empires cause wars. Nor does Gaddis realize that the American empire of 1945 was not as consensual as he sees it. It was a de facto oligarchy.⁽⁴⁴⁾ One study, using public polling records, actually shows that during the Cold War, it was the decisions of American leaders rather than public opinion which drove the engine-room of global anti-communism ' another sure indicia of oligarchic decision making.⁽⁴⁵⁾

What is perhaps most glaring in the 'New' history are its limited horizons. Where is the organic, long-term history' Gaddis is trapped in the Cold War as an inescapable medium. He rarely, with the exception of brief notes in the first chapter, focuses on what came before the Cold War.⁽⁴⁶⁾ This enables him to sever the imperial link between pre-1945 America and the founding of the National Security State.

Thomas Jefferson, suffering the imperial itch, believed that no one could 'limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively'.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Jefferson also endorsed empire-speak, fusing federalist and republican philosophies in an imperial crusade that made him repudiate Montesquieu's small republic model in favour of James Madison's expansive vision of government. Gaddis's assertion that America possessed 'an anti-imperial tradition dating back to the American Revolution'⁽⁴⁸⁾ is unfounded. He persists in insisting that Americans have always had an anti-colonial disposition, actually calling the colonization of the Philippines an accident. He cites the most imperial of documents, The Federalist, writings that emanated from writers in search of strong centralized government and the elimination of confederacies.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Through a concerted, perhaps unconscious omission, the grand dynasty of American planners who shaped the coming empire vanish in Gaddis' reverent tone. Gaddis' American Empire lacks its Jeffersons, but it also omits the Teddy Roosevelts and James K. Polks. A. T. Mahan, who advocated the logic of American empire early in 1890 through exemplary studies of sea power, is also absent. He had no illusions that America wanted an external empire.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Mayan's world had rivals, balances and fellow empires. World War II erased them. Moscow and Washington acted in a world where the old empires had imploded, where vacuum was filled by bipolarity. This glaring oversight by Gaddis is again a feature of his conversion to orthodoxy.

Shifting the argument away from an autonomous American policy enables Gaddis to find reactions rather than plans when America did more than react.⁽⁵¹⁾ Containment of Stalin, exemplified by such devices as the Marshall Plan, would not have occurred 'had there been nothing to contain.' Why, asks Gaddis, was there no American empire in the 1920s in the wake of an unstable Europe torn by World War?⁽⁵²⁾

The answer is simple: the American empire stalled in 1920. The League of Nations would have been a perfect platform to realize President Wilson's borderless market revolution and transparent government. Even Gaddis concedes that Wilson desired to alter world politics and the global economy, though he refuses to accept an imperial content in those motives.⁽⁵³⁾ Isolationism had the last word and the American empire went into the hibernation of a 'return to normalcy' under President Warren Harding. This is not to say that Harding never discounted the possibility of an empire beyond the western hemisphere, provided the threat was sufficient: 'Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace, our ears never deaf to the call of civilization.'⁽⁵⁴⁾ Gaddis follows Harding's caveat to a tee: a fortuitous American empire arose against 'a perceived external danger powerful enough to overcome American isolationism.'⁽⁵⁵⁾

Secondly, Wilson's 'non-existent' American empire was very active in intervening in the affairs of the fledgling Bolshevik state of Lenin's creation. There was a perceived threat to the American Weltanschauung even then, enough to send servicemen to the Russian landmass: 'In failing to meet the challenge by honouring the principle of self-determination in dealing with the Bolshevik Revolution, Wilson and other Americans began the corrupting and dangerous practice of equating freedom with similarity to the United States.'⁽⁵⁶⁾ French historian Andre Fontaine went further, claiming that the origins of Cold War found their roots in that same coalition intervention.⁽⁵⁷⁾

Gaddis, by abstracting America's push for hegemony, distorts Stalin's contribution to the Cold War. While Truman's decisions may have been necessary conditions, they were not it would seem, sufficient for Cold War. Gaddis increases Stalin's causal potency by showing a dictator in conflict with a benign empire. This is the result of some Gaddis magic: contrasting 'benign' and 'malignant' authoritarianism. In other words, on the point of who caused the Cold War, the abnormal conditions that created the necessary and sufficient factors for conflict came from the Soviet Union and not Washington. Gaddis's interpretation lessens the imperial sting in American hegemony, making it reactive ' a response 'to the manner in which Stalin managed his own empire.'⁽⁵⁸⁾

The new history tries to synthesize the good empire with foreign policy. Thus Gaddis must make the following observations: empires in Gaddisland can arise accidentally; the respective empires were 'not of the same kind;' the Europeans and Japan invited empire; the Soviets imposed theirs.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Moral equivalence would be wrong here:⁽⁶⁰⁾ American control of Europe and Northeast Asia had the ring of collaboration about it.⁽⁶¹⁾

The first conclusion is easily dealt with by showing that no empire is ever accidental. As early as 1943-4, planners within the Pentagon envisaged a world system of bases to counter threats.⁽⁶²⁾ These recipes do not suggest a cessation in the American drive for overseas security. What they do suggest is the potential for conflict with a rival who interfered with the expansive albeit loose strategy of American foreign policy. Empires arise because plans are hatched at the highest level to act or omit to do something in foreign policy. Truman's Doctrine was a calculated move to expand American influence using a policy 'to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities by outside pressure.'⁽⁶³⁾ The Marshall plan added the other half of American security.⁽⁶⁴⁾ According to Melvyn P. Leffler, the American vision (its 'core values') of democracy, free enterprise and territorial integrity were threatened.⁽⁶⁵⁾ The refusal to negotiate with the Soviets over security interests became the correlative of simplifying the Soviet threat as a dilemma of power. Such simplification was needless. Kennan's advice to Washington mechanized the Soviet behemoth: it was linear, concise and understandable. It clashed with the new role America was fashioning for itself; even by Gaddis's own admission, the United States sought to 'lead the new world order.'⁽⁶⁶⁾ Hence any American response, empire or otherwise, was planned. Containment became code for empire.

Second, the invitation argument as pressed by Geir Lundestad, hardly elevates Stalin as a greater cause relative to American contributions. Europeans, he claims, invited the American empire. NATO was a European, not American initiation.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Stalin hoped for a similar gesture that never came. Invitees do not cause cold wars. It does not occur to Gaddis that invitation might well have provoked Stalin, who surmised that the Americans 'have their Allies to fight for them in Western Europe.'⁽⁶⁸⁾ The comment that NATO was also a response to 'clear and present danger'⁽⁶⁹⁾ is fictitious. Stalin anticipated a joint military control of Europe with the Soviets ordering their zone and the Allies theirs.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Invention and supposition was necessary to justify the security status of the new empire. Kennan claimed that it did not matter what threat existed ' communist or otherwise, it would have to have been invented, 'to create a sense of urgency we need to bring us to the point of decisive action.'⁽⁷¹⁾ As a highly secret Pentagon history written by a panel of historians and political scientists observed (specifically on nuclear arms), 'The history of the Soviet strategic program is at the same time a history of U.S. perceptions.' Create a perception of fear, then the hearts and minds will follow. Senator Vandenberg's advice for Truman to, 'Scare the hell out of the American people' illustrated the point. In fact, according to the Secret History, Stalin's post-war decisions gave 'little provocation' for a 'stepped up competition in armaments.'⁽⁷²⁾ In a broader sense the American empire often acted independently of the evil empire.

As Gaddis' acceptance of the invitation argument tacitly denies that invitee empires caused the Cold War, it should follow that Stalin's 'invited' empire in East Asia need not have accelerated the Cold War in 1950. Gaddis's argument would have to apply in reverse: Mao Zedong's alliance with Stalin, his fawning for the dictator, his desire for a strong alliance with the Soviets would indicate that Stalin's imperial 'foothold' in China and East Asia was 'invited'.⁽⁷³⁾ Kim Il Sung who likewise invited Soviet support acquiesced in Soviet imperial ambitions. After all, his badgering of Stalin to invade South Korea, being given 'the green light',⁽⁷⁴⁾ should not have caused an acceleration of Cold War hostility. The fact that it did should not make an invited NATO any less causative of Cold War. Invitees cause wars.

Thirdly, the idea of moral-equivalence is legitimate in determining the strategic form of empire. The new history's overestimation of benevolent empire impairs interpretations of the American imperium. On the rarefied level of power an empire ceases to be a noble concept: it assumes meaning through acts. On this level, the acts of the American empire cease to become 'good' ' they are only intelligible in an instrumental sense. The Soviet empire is likewise unintelligible as evil except through its ambitions. In this context, both empires had similar aims. The Soviets did not conceive of a post-war Europe free of U.S. or British cooperation. Nor was Truman entirely inflexible to Soviet cooperation even after his famous confrontation with Molotov on 23 April, 1945.⁽⁷⁵⁾

Gaddis's 'good' empire becomes unintelligible towards issues such as German unification where 'benevolent' designs constrained American goodwill for a united Germany. The label is inappropriate for calculating empires. Carolyn Eisenberg has shown that the Allied powers found the creation of the West German state useful as it enabled them to retain some control over the new German government. Her study emphasizes an inflexible Allied response to Soviet gestures for re-unification, exemplified by such dissimulating representatives as Secretary of State Acheson who was willing to sacrifice a unified Germany for an antagonistic Western Europe.⁽⁷⁶⁾ Rather than seeking durable peace, the good empire preferred creating a potential battleground in central Europe. This liking for Realpolitik calls into question the whole dualistic paradigm that Gaddis would like us to believe: would a good empire have refused to negotiate in the name of peaceful co-existence'

The benevolent empire was terrified at Truman's attempts to placate Stalin in the course of the Berlin airlift begun by the Soviets to halt partition.⁽⁷⁷⁾ It is remarkable to hear Truman at one address late 1948 when he stated, to the chagrin of observers that 'rival powers can exist peacefully in the world.'⁽⁷⁸⁾ While 'Munich' appeasements were to avoided there was no excuse not to negotiate. Against his diplomats Truman wanted a diplomatic channel. The question the new history must ask is whether benevolent-good empires that refused to negotiate with rivals on the eve of potential world war remained 'good'. The dualism in such a framework, the good and evil, falls flat. Yes, British and American governments cited Soviet atrocities in the Eastern Zone for their obstruction to negotiations but the real motivations lay in refusing to consider Soviet terms of re-unification.⁽⁷⁹⁾

Finally, 'good-evil' assumptions are weak if for no other reason that they distort the behaviour of nations and collectives. Gaddis's history is not a history of the gulag but a history of diplomatic relations. Within the gulag, moral equivalence becomes crude; in diplomacy it is unavoidable. The good state will kill if it has to; the evil state will concede ground if it furthers their interest. To unpack diplomatic relations, moral equivalence becomes an essential tool.

In the final analysis what can be said of the new Gaddis' Stalin had no world program, though the new history asserts this. The new history uses ideas as an exclusive criterion. This has two problems: it distorts the context of those ideas and neglects the structure that produces them. In placing ideology in a bracket above society, Gaddis's Stalin becomes a creature free of a society that made him. As an exclusive historical agent, the new history does not consider the society that controls its representative agents.

Historical experience falls out of the picture in the analysis of Soviet history while ignoring the organic nature of American history. The new history misreads the original sources of American empire. In doing so it also suffers from value based assumptions: the American empire was a good that triumphed over evil condemning moral equivalence as a mistake. An empire is hardly comprehensible within a duality of good and evil. Manichean self-interest eliminates this duality altogether. Seeing empires as morally equivalent creatures breaks down the fiction of benevolence and passivity.

The new history also promotes a few myths: the possibility of good empires with moral scales of whether it is 'imposed' or invited through 'consensus;' and the assumption that all democratic powers practice benign aggression-free foreign policy. Closer analysis shows that the acts of 'good' empire do not match the premises. The new history is selective, excluding parts of Freeland that did not fit into this 'consensual' empire. Nor does an 'invitee' empire lessen its potency in causing Cold War. Finally, democracies of past have caused wars vis-ý-vis one another.

The final problem with the Gaddis's new history is its unilateral assumptions. If ever there was a conflict based more on perception than truth, the Cold War remains that conflict. Stalin did not act alone. His conduct is impossible to understand without the complex of American-Allied decisions. In making Stalin an appellation that was unique and individual, the new history distorts the underlying reasons why two empires fought each other. Within this triumphalism the new Cold War will rest alongside the orthodox histories of old. A new history beyond the Cold War will have to be written ' a history that will find heroes not in its statesmen but in those who had to endure them.

     ¹The 'new' history in this paper is primarily in reference to John Lewis Gaddis's writings, infra, fn. 2, 8.

     ²John L. Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 292.

     ³Ibid., p. 293.

     ⁴Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 13, 15.

     ⁵Philip Pomper, 'Historians and Individual Agency,' History and Theory 35, 3 (1996): 281-308, 281.

     ⁶To name a few: Nikolai Novikov, Moscow's ChargÈs D'Affaire to Washington (early 1945); Counselor Tarasenko, Soviet Embassy in Washington; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, pp. 102-3.

     ⁷Mark L. Kleinman, (Review Essay), 'Revision of "Revisionism' or Return to Orthodoxy," Peace and Change 23,3, (July 1998): 386-398, 389.

     ⁸John Lewis Gaddis's SHAFR Presidential Address, 29 December 1992, 'The Tragedy of Cold War History,' Diplomatic History 17(1) (1993): 1-15, 1-2.

     ⁹John Lewis Gaddis, 'The Tragedy of Cold War History,' at pp. 11,12.

     ¹⁰Leon D. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, trans. Max Eastman, 3 Vols. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1932), I, p. 93.

     ¹¹John L. Gaddis, 'The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System,' in Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller, The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 1-44; We Now Know, esp. Chapter 7.

     ¹²Gaddis, 'The Long Peace,' pp. 33, 34, 40.

     ¹³Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 203.

     ¹⁴John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972); Carolyn Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe,1943-1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). p. 198.

     ¹⁵John L. Gaddis, 'The Tragedy of Cold War History,' p. 2; Melvyn P. Leffler, 'The Cold War: What Do 'We Know Now''' American Historical Review 104(2) (April 1999): 501-524, 503.

     ¹⁶Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 11, 25. I make generous use of these examples from P. Pomper, 'Historians and Individual Agency,' pp. 289-295, 301-4.

     ¹⁷Pomper, 'Historians and Individual Agency,' pp. 286-8.

     ¹⁸George F. Kennan, 'Excerpts from a Draft Letter,' Slavic Review (1968): 481-84.

     ¹⁹Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, A Political Biography, 2nd Edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 326, 229-230, 327, 343.

     ²⁰Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 290, 29-31.

     ²¹L. D. Trotsky, Permanentnaya revolyutsiya (Berlin, 1930), p. 16; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, trans. Harold Shukman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1995), p. 104.

     ²²Richard C. Raack, Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938-1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 20.

     ²³Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929-1941 (New York: Norton, 1990), Ch. 12; Pomper, 'Historians and Individual Agency,' p. 301.

     ²⁴Gaddis, 'The Tragedy of Cold War History,' p. 5, footnote 17.

     ²⁵See Odd Arne Westad, 'Russian Archives and Cold War History,' Diplomatic History 21 (Spring 1997): 264-266.

     ²⁶Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, p. 12.

     ²⁷Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, pp. 74, 75, 275-6, 70, 276.

     ²⁸Implicit in the American delegation's suggestion: Summary of the Proceedings of the Third Session of the Tripartite Conference, October 21, 1943, FRUS General 1943, I, p. 596-7, especially Clause 2.

     ²⁹Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943-1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 44.

     ³⁰Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 11, 23,83.

     ³¹See John Lewis Gaddis, 'Face-Off,' U.S. News and the World Report, October 18, 1999, p. 38.

     ³²Anatol Levin, 'Against Russophobia,' World Policy Journal, Winter 2000, 17(4): 25, 25-7.

     ³³Michael H. Hunt, 'Commentaries: The Three Realms Revisited,' in Michael J. Hogan, America in the World, pp. 148-155, 151-2.

     ³⁴Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 'The Origins of the Cold War,' Foreign Affairs 46 (October 1967), 22-52, available in J. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. Susman, eds. The Origins of the Cold War (Waltham, MA: Ginn-Blainsdell, 1970), 41-77, at p. 43.

     ³⁵Schlesinger, 'The Origins of the Cold War,' pp. 43.50.

     ³⁶Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 286-7; John Lewis Gaddis, 'On Starting Over: A Naive Approach to the Study of the Cold War,' in Arthur L. Rosenbaum, Chae-Jin Lee (eds.), The Cold War - Reassessments (Claremont McKenna College: Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, 1999), pp. 1-25, 20-22.

     ³⁷Bruce Cumings, ''Revising Postrevisionism' Revisited,' in Michael J. Hogan (ed.), America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 127-139, 135; Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 155, 289.

     ³⁸Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 289, 198, 220.

     ³⁹See Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars, trans. Benjamin Howett (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1963).

     ⁴⁰For a classic study see Vladimir Dedijer's On Military Conventions, cited by Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Vietnam: Imperialism and Genocide,' in Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. John Matthews (London: Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press, 1974), pp. 67-83, 68-9.

     ⁴¹Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, p. 96; Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943-1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 193.

     ⁴²Gaddis, 'The Tragedy of Cold War History,' pp. 34.

     ⁴³Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), pp. 1311-4, 1312.

     ⁴⁴Gore Vidal, 'The Day the American Empire Ran Out of Gas,' The Nation, January 11, 1986 in Gore Vidal, United States: Essays, 1952-1992 (London: Abacus, 1994), p. 1010.

     ⁴⁵George H. Quester, 'Origins of the Cold War: Some Clues from Public Opinion,' Political Science Quarterly 93 (1978-79): 647-663.

     ⁴⁶In contrast to his earlier history Russia, The Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978).

     ⁴⁷Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805; Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1809, in William A. Williams, Empire as a Way of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. v. Jefferson has said, 'We all republicans, we are all federalists.'

     ⁴⁸Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 39.

     ⁴⁹See especially Alexander Hamilton's commentary on Federalist 6, 'To the People of the State of New York, N. Y., November 14, 1787,' The Independent Journal or the General Advertiser, 'The Federalist No. 6' in Harold C. Syrett, Jacob E. Cooke, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), IV, pp. 309-317, 310.

     ⁵⁰Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea power Upon History Upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little Brown, 1890).

     ⁵¹See William O. Walker III, 'We Now Know: Re-Thinking Cold War History,' The Historian 61(4) (Summer 1999): 904-5.

     ⁵²Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 38.

     ⁵³Ibid., p. 5.

     ⁵⁴Warren Harding, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1921.

     ⁵⁵Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 38.

     ⁵⁶William A. Williams, 'American Intervention in Russia: 1917-1920,' in David Horowitz (ed)., Containment and Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 26-75, 69.[Williams's emphasis].

     ⁵⁷Andre Fontaine, Histoire de la guerre froide (Paris: Fayard, 1965-7), I, p. 15; Raymond Aron, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945-1973, trans. Frank Jellinek (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1974), p. 9.

     ⁵⁸Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 35, 39.

     ⁵⁹Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 284, 285.

     ⁶⁰Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 51; 'The Tragedy of American Diplomacy,' pp. 8-9.

     ⁶¹Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 285.

     ⁶²Melvyn P. Leffler, 'The American Concept of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War,' American Historical Review 89(2) (1984): 346-381.

     ⁶³The Congressional Record, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., Vol. 93, Pt. 2, March 12, 1947, pp. 1980-1.

     ⁶⁴The expression is from Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992, 7th Ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993), pp. 49-73.

     ⁶⁵Melvyn P. Leffler, 'National Security,' Journal of American History 77 (June 1990): 148-9.

     ⁶⁶Gaddis, 'The Tragedy of American Diplomacy,' p. 4.

     ⁶⁷Geir Lundestad, 'Empire by Invitation' The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952,' Journal of Peace Research 23 (Sept. 1986): 263-77; Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 285, 49.

     ⁶⁸Minutes of the Conversation with com[rade] Stalin of leaders of the SED W. Pieck, W. Ulbricht, and O. Grotewohl, 7 April, 1952, APRF, Fond 45, opis 1, delo 303, list 179.

     ⁶⁹Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 168.

     ⁷⁰See particularly Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War, pp. 44-5.

     ⁷¹Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 36.

     ⁷²Ernest May, John Steinbruner, and Thomas Wolfe, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972, ed. Alfred Goldberg (Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office, March 1981 declassified with deletions, December 1990), p. 634, 96-105.

     ⁷³Michael Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pps. 7, 193.

     ⁷⁴Kathryn Weathersby, 'New Findings on the Korean War,' Cold War International History Project Bulletin 3 (Fall, 1993), 1, 14-18.

     ⁷⁵Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War, pp. 44-5.

     ⁷⁶Carolyn W. Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 480-1.

     ⁷⁷Ibid., pp. 444-5,491.

     ⁷⁸Ibid., p. 445.

     ⁷⁹Eisenberg, Drawing the Line, p. 487.