The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War 0195043367, 9780195043365

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T H E

The Long Peace

THE LONG PEACE lnquirie� Into the History of the Cold War

John Lewis Gaddis

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York

Oxford

Oxford University Press Oxford Delhi

New York Bombay

Petaling Jaya Nairobi

Toronto

Calcutta Singapore

Dar es Salaam

Melbourne

Madras

Karachi

Hong Kong

Tokyo

Cape Town

Auckland

and associated companies in Berlin

Ibadan

Copyright © 1987 by John Lewis Gaddis First published in 1987 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1989 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gaddis, John Lewis. The long peace. Includes index. I. United States-Foreign relations-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union-Foreign relations-United States. 3. United States-Foreign relations-19451. Title. E183.8.S65G33 1987 327.73 86-33334 ISBN 0-19-504336-7 ISBN 0-19-504335-9 (PBK)

46 810 975 3 Printed in the United States of America

For John and Elizabeth Baker Peacemalcers

Preface

This book shows what happens when curiosity and serendipity combine with shameless opportunism. The curiosity grew out of my sense that an earlier and conceptually more ambitious analys is of postwar United States national se· curity policy* had nonetheless left certain questions unresolved: What exactly had Americans found threatening about Soviet behavior at the end of World War II? Did Washington really want a sphere of influence in postwar Europe, or did it not? How was it that the Truman administration endorsed, but then almost immediately backed away from, a strategy of avoiding military com· mitments on the Asian mainland? Why did the United States refrain from using nuclear weapons during the decade in which it was immune to any possibility of a Soviet retaliatory attack? Did American officials really believe in the existence of an international communist "monolith"? How did Russians and Americans fall into the habit of not attempting to shoot down each other's reconnaissance satellites? And, most important, why, given the unprecedented levels of super-power tension that have existed since 1945, has World War III not occurred? The serendipity came in three forms: First, the progress of declassifica­ tion brought about the release, in vast quantities, of once-secret American and British documents that made it possible to begin to answer these questions. Second, it has been my good fortune to have participated in a series of con­ ferences and symposia-in locations as diverse as Kiev, Beijing, Oslo, Palo • Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: 1982).

viii

Preface

Alto, and Mount Kisco-which provided opportunities to present findings, test hypotheses, and secure the always valuable (if not always followed) sugges­ ti�ns of colleagues in my own and related fields. Third, as a consequence of having prepared papers for these occasions, I found myself in the surprising but pleasing situation of having written a book without quite having set out to do so. The opportunism resides in the fact that I am, to an extent, republishing myself. Three of the essays included in this volume have already appeared in slightly different versions as articles in journals or conference volumes; three others are to be published in that latter format at some point in the future. The difficulty with such publications, though, is that what appears in them necessarily stands apart from what one has published on related topics elsewhere and is not, therefore, easily connected with one's wider concerns. If that sounds like a flimsy excuse for reworking old material, I will not wholly deny the charge. But I can plead in my defense the established eco­ logical soundness of the principle of recycling, together with the fact that I am not, I believe, the first historian to have discovered it. My intention in pulling these essays together in one place is to make sev­ eral in�erconnected points: that the sources now exist for producing carefully documented studies in "contemporary history"-that is, the period that falls in between what journalists write about and what history textbooks teach; that what is contained in these sources modifies, at times in striking ways, our perception of the recent past; and that an awareness of how recollections of "what happened" differ from "what actually happened" can provide new and at times valuable angles of vision from which to comprehend, and perhaps even to attempt to modify, the present.'t I should like here to express my gratitude to those who made possible the occasions upon which these essays in their original form were presented: spe· cific individuals and organizations are identified at the beginning of each chapter. None of them, I hasten to· add, is to be held responsible for what resulted. I am indebted as well to the librarians, archivists, and editors with­ out whom we who write about the recent past would be totally adrift: in particular, to those at the Office of the Historian in the Department of State, which produces the indispensable series, Foreign Relations of the United States; the Diplomatic and Modern Military Branches at the National Ar­ chives; the Public Record Office, London; the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower Libraries; the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton Univer­ sity; and, not least, the Ohio University Library, where the staff have long since learned to brace themselves when they see me coming. Publishing with Sheldon Meyer and the Oxford University Press has be­ come a pleasant habit, not only for me but for seve,ral of my colleagues in the History Department at Athens. I am particularly grateful this time around l

"' For an engaging and thoughtful elaboration of this last point, see Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: 1986).

Preface

ix

to Leona Capeless for a superlative job of copy-editing. For perm1ss10n to use previously-published material under their copyright, my thanks as well· to the Norwegian University Press (Chapter Three), and the Columbia Uni· versity Press (Chapter Four). Barbara, Michael, and David have tactfully pointed out to me that readers who remember nothing whatever about the substance of my books nonetheless tend to recall, years afterward and with unnerving precision, what I write in prefaces about my family. Lest I mark them all for life, therefore, I will say here only that all are well and happy, thank goodness, and (as our Finnish friends say) send regards. Two people who deserve special credit for this book are Richard Barr, of Vere Smith Audio-Visuals, who patiently introduced me to the multiple bene­ fits of word processing, and Robert Martin, of Martin Builders, who with great care and competence constructed the study in which most of it was composed, and in which the all-important computer now resides. The dedication is my way of paying respect-and expressing gratitude­ to two individuals whose long, full, and fruitful lives have greatly enriched the town in which I live and the university in which I teach, but whose vision extends to much wider things as well.

Athens, Ohio February, 1987

J. L. G.

Contents

3

1

Legacies: Russian-American Relations Before the Cold War

2

The Insecurities of Victory: The United States and the Perception of the Soviet Threat After World War II

20

Spheres of Influences: The United States and Europe, 1945-1949

48

3

4 Drawing Lines: The Defensive Perimeter Strategy in East Asia, 1947-1951

72

5

The Origins of Self-Deterrence: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1958

104

6

Dividing Adversaries: The United States and International Communism, 1945-1958

147

7

Learning to Live with Transparency: The Emergence of a Reconnaissance Satellite Regime

195

8

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

215

Notes

247

Bibliography

303

Index

321

The Long Peace

I Legacies: Russian-American Relations Before the Cold War

THE HISTORY of Russian-American relations* is of sufficient duration, complexity and ambiguity that it is capable of sustaining remarkably different interpretive perspectives. The first full-length account of that relationship to be published in the United States, that of Foster Rhea Dulles, which appeared at the height of wartime cooperation in 1944, concluded that there existed no permanent basis for hostility between the two countries: "They have had no grounds for conflict that have involved them in war against each other, and they should be able to continue to live together in harmony." 1 But by 1950, another American historian, Thomas A. Bailey, had drawn from roughly the same set of experiences the conclusion that "Czarism was about as antipa· thetic ideologically to democracy as is present-day Stalinism." Coexistence, for Americans, required keeping "our heads clear, our nerves steady, and our powder dry."2 Nor is this "phenomenon of deriving differing conclusions from the same body of evidence limited to historians in the United States: Soviet This paper was originally prepared for the Fifth Colloquium of Soviet and American Historians, co-sponsored by the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the American Historical As5ociation, and held in Kiev in June, 1984. It is a distillation of certain themes devel· oped in my 1978 book, Russi.a, the Soviet Union, and the United States, but it has not been previously published in this form. • Throughout much of this chapter I shall use, purely for reasons of convenience, the term "Russian-American relations," fully cognizant of the fact that neither "Russia" nor "America" are accurate or wholly satisfactory appellations for the countries and peoples involved.

3

4

THE LONG PEACE

historians have had their own firmly held viewpoints on this subject, and these have at times differed markedly from those of their American counterparts.3 · That this is s_o should not be at all surprising. Historians bring to the writing of history a considerable quantity of intellectual baggage, made up not only of their own personal experiences and their own understanding of the past but also of the political and social context from which these derive. When that context differs as much as it does in the case of the Soviet Union and the United States, it becomes "no accident," as the Russians like to say, that we view history from such different perspectives. Certainly that has happened in the area of Russian-American relations in which I concentrate my own work­ and on which this book concentrates-the period of the Cold War. But relations between Russia and the United States did not begin with the Teheran Conference, or with Yalta, or even with Harry S. Truman's famous confrontation with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov less than two weeks after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death. Americans and Russians have been dealing with one another, at various levels, and with varying degrees of amica· bility and hostility, since the latter part of the 18th century. If we are to understand the relationship that has so preoccupied us during these past four decades, then we ought not to cut ourselves off from the eighteen or so de­ cades of Russian-American contacts that preceded them.

I There is, in fact, a long tradition of Russian-American "friendship," although unfortunately it manifested itself more during the early history of our rela­ tions than during the latter. It began with Francis Dana's unsuccessful mission to St. Petersburg in 1780 in search of recognition for the new American re· public, and ended shortly after the sale of Russian-America, or Alaska, in 1867. The Soviet historian N. N. Bolkhovitinov, whose work on the first half of this period has not been surpassed in either of our countries and is not likely to be, has reminded us that we should not "present an idealized picture and create an impression that no disagreement or antagonism existed between Russia and America." For him, the lesson of early Russian-American relations "consists not in the absence of differences and conflicts, but in the fact that history testifies to the possibility of overcoming them."4 Cynics might find this platitudinous. Given the infrequency of contacts be­ tween Russia and America in the 19th century, they might observe, the "friendship" that existed between these two countries was about as remarkable as that which prevails today between, let us say, Swaziland and Iceland: there just were not that many opportunities for antagonism in the first place. But that is a narrow view. There were potential areas of conflict: one thinks of the ideological challenge to monarchism posed by the first successful republican revolution in modern history; or rivalries over territory and fish­ ing rights in the Pacific Northwest; or the threat of Russian support for the

Legacies

5

restoration of European colonial rule in Latin America; or even the possi­ bility of small but critical "tilts" in the balance of power at delicate moments during the Crimean War or the American Civil War. There were, in addition, recurring irritations over the treatment of each other's citizens and diplomatic representatives, as well as complaints over what appeared in each other's press. It is worth inquiring how these 19th-century antagonisms were man­ aged in such a way that they had so little impact upon the relatively cordial relations that existed between Russia and the United States for so many years. The principal explanation, to borrow from a more recent terminology, was a mutual willingness to tolerate the coexistence of states with differing social systems. As the late Professor Nikolai Sivachev has observed, one could hardly have found a more striking disparity between the political organiza· tion, class structure, and ideological orientation of the United States under Andrew Jackson and Russia under the Tsar Nicholas I.5 And yet, upon ar­ riving in St. Petersburg in 1832, American minister James Buchanan found that "the Emperor is very willing to be upon good terms with the most free people upon earth, and . . . is still more gratified at their disposition to cul­ tivate his friendship." One reason for this, Buchanan reported, was the Ameri­ can tradition "of attending to our own affairs, and leaving other nations to do the same," a way of doing things that "has had the happiest influence upon our foreign relations." 6 Indeed, Americans of that era did feel little compulsion to attempt to alter-or even to comment officially upon-political or social conditions inside other countries. Foreign policy, for diplomats of that generation, was a means of promoting the interests of own's own state, not an instrument for seeking to reform others. But Buchanan's dispatch hinted at another reason as well for the relative absence of conflict in early Russian-American relations: this was the realiza­ tion on Russia's part that "Europe is at this time a vast magazine of gun powder," that "the first spark applied to it will probably produce an explo­ sion which may shake all it's [sic] thrones to their centre," and that, "in such contest, she is well aware, that England and France must be arrayed against her." 7 Americans of that era-or at least their leaders-were hardly innocents when it