The World the Cold War Made: Order, Chaos and the Return of History

345 Pages·2021·25.006 MB·English

by  James E. Cronin

The World the Cold War Made

The World the Cold
War Made
ORDER, CHAOS,
AND THE RETURN
OF HISTORY
JAMES E. CRONIN
ROUTLEDGE
New York & London
Published in 1996 by
Routledge
270 Madison Ave,
NewYorkNY 10016
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Transferred to Digital Printing 2009
Copyright© 1996 by Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cronin, James E.
The world the Cold War made: order, chaos and the return of history I by
James E. Cronin.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-90820-5.-ISBN 0-415-90821-3 (pbk.)
1. Cold War. 2. World politics-1945- I. Title.
D843.C688 1996
909.82-dc20 96-1042
CIP
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
To Mary

Contents
Preface 1x
Introduction:
The Cold War As Structure and History 1
1 The Legacy of Depression and War 15
2 Nations, Boundaries, and Cold War Realities 33
3 American Power, American Dreams 63
4 Economic Miracles, East and West 87
5 The Cold War and the "Socialist Project" 117
6 Liberalism Eclipsed:
Politics and Economics in the Advanced
Industrial Nations, 1968-1989 163
7 Communism's Endings 197
8 The World after the Cold War 23 7
Notes 283
Index 325

Preface
The Cold War is over. What shall we make of it? The question must
be posed with particular urgency at present, for it is essential to have
at least a provisional understanding of the world that has recently
ended if we are to make any sense at all of the more confusing and
possibly more treacherous world bequeathed to us by the passing of
the Cold War. Not only is it necessary to begin to summarize and
interpret the era of the Cold War; it is now also possible to do so in a
new way. So long as the Cold War lasted and engaged our passions
and political identities, scholarship suffered. The problem was not a
matter of bias so much as the way in which the ongoing character of
the phenomenon prevented scholars from stepping back and view
ing it broadly. So long as the arms race persisted and the United States
and the USSR confronted one another in strategic locations around the
world, it was inevitable that the Cold War would be understood pri
marily in terms of foreign policy, defense, and war-making, rather
than as a world order composed of states whose internal structures
were linked to their place in the geopolitical rivalry of the super
powers and in which were embedded rival social systems guided
and described by contrasting ideologies. The ending of the Cold
War, then, offers historians the possibility of studying the phe
nomenon anew, of constructing a narrative with a begin-
ning and an end and many exciting moments in the mid-
dle, and, in the process, the opportunity to grasp its
dynamics and consequences.