What is your analysis of the argument put forth in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy? Rethinking the Marshall Plan? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this thesis? Limit your responses to 2 pages MAX. There is an excellent site, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/ , that includes video interviews with several key figures in Cold War politics. See in particular Episodes 2, 3 & 4.
Required Blog #3 - DUE WEDENSDAY 4/12!!!! I will NOT accept them after this date.
2 comments:
In their article, Cox and Kennedy-Pipe presented a clear thesis. They wrote, "The central purpose of this article is to question the increasingly influential thesis that new evidence does indeed bear out old truths about the Cold War.... Our analysis of the Marshall Plan will show that it was American policies as much as (and perhaps more than) Soviet actions that finally led to the division of Europe and thus to the Cold War itself" (101-102). They proceeded to argue that U.S. policies limited Soviet options and forced the Soviets into a more defensive, antagonistic stance. The hostilities between the West and the East that this eventually provoked were, the authors claimed, the last thing that Stalin or any of the Soviets wanted. Cox and Kennedy-Pipe outlined evidence that Stalin had hoped and tried to repair the Soviet Union's relationship with the Western nations and had adopted in vain a conciliatory attitude toward the Western powers. According to this article, then, the responsibility for starting the Cold War fell more into Western than Soviet hands.
However, a clear thesis does not necessarily mean a strong thesis. Blame is a hard thing to assign, especially for a "war" that lasted for decades and that for the first time presented the threat of nuclear annihilation. Cox and Kennedy-Pipe made the point that the U.S., with its huge economic capacities, had a greater number of options after WWII than did the Soviet Union. This seems reasonable, but the link between this and the assertion that the U.S. made the first moves toward a worldwide schism is a questionable one. In writing their article, the authors must have sifted through volumes of research, from which they extracted choice material that supported their thesis. Everything else was conveniently left out--everything that would have suggested that blame for the Cold War rested not on the West alone, or even primarily on either side, but on both sides in equal measure. If historians have maintained for years that the Soviet Union was the aggressor, then surely they had a sound basis for their stance. Cox and Kennedy-Pipe, in advancing a contrary thesis, undermined the strength of their argument by mostly ignoring the contributions of these past analysts. There is no reason why the Marshall Plan and the Soviet response, or any of the events before and after, should be made to reveal the responsibility of one or the other party in starting the Cold War. If one nation was belligerent, then the other was accommodating. If one nation wanted to risk global tensions that could plague and even destroy a generation, then the other certainly did little to forestall such a conflict. Ultimately, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, each with their allies and satellite states, resolved on a policy of ideological expansion that set them inevitably at odds. Both sides, East and West, bear the guilt for their lack of foresight, their surfeit of self-confidence, and their willingness to compromise peace for worldwide domination.
The thesis of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was very interesting but I disagree with it greatly. I also thought that the way it was written was very unprofessional sounding and in a very, dare I say, "cocky" tone. The authors only addressed their ideas and opinions making no mention of other theories or thoughts of other historians for back-up evidence. The authors seemed to insist on the fact that the United States had unlimited power in deciding what happened during the events leading up to, during, and after the Cold War. When the Marshall Plan was being "acted out" the authors wrote that they did whatever they could to keep out the Soviet Union. To an extent, I believe this is true but I don't think that the United States and it's allies could have really done anything to block the Soviet Union's entrance into the Cold War if Stalin had really had his mind set on it. I also felt as if the authors were victimizing the United States and making them out as the "little kids" being bullied and trying to keep away from the big bully Soviet Union.
But the Marshall Plan, in the earlier periods, did acheive what the United States and its allies intended. The Allied "Powers" did, in fact, keep the Soviet Union out of the Marshall Plan and forced them to stay within their eastern borders. But by confining Stalin to the east he was able to ensure that his power and rules were strictly enforeced in to areas that he did control. This hampered the United States because it left them worrying about the state of people in these countries and how Stalin's values and ideas were being impressed. Also, the little value that these countries could contribute the Soviet Union was milked out of them to the fullest extent.
So, in all I believe if the authors addressed both sides of the issue then it would have been a more powerful document.
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