What did the cold war teach us?

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2004 by James M. Goldgeier

Finally, what about superpower interests in the periphery? Nichols argues that much of the Third World conflict was unnecessary given the interests of both superpowers. The United States should have felt secure enough to avoid many far-flung conflicts, and the Soviets expended resources that could have been used more productively for their own people. Based on the author's argument on ideology, however, was it really so preposterous for the USSR to seek allies among underdeveloped countries? In the 1970s, both the Soviets and the Americans bought into the notion that the correlation of forces was shifting in favor of the Soviets. However, Europe and Japan were already in the U.S. camp, and after 1972 the United States was engaging China. All major power centers were arrayed against the Soviet Union. What else could Moscow do but court an Ethiopia or an Angola?

Although Nichols argues that many lives and resources were wasted in places of little strategic value, he stresses the importance of the war in Vietnam. "If it was really only one theater of many in a world war, then the question becomes one of whether fighting is better than surrender, what price should be paid to slow the enemy's advance, and perhaps even to avoid having to fight another day in another place." Why would that be true in Vietnam and not in Africa?

Nichols argues that the "Cold War of 1945-1991 was only the first of its kind," because "the war with terrorism, like the war against communism, is a war of ideas against people who will one day seek again to hold us hostage with nuclear weapons." Will America again really face that kind of war with that kind of adversary? Are we in a war of ideas or a war against a network of disaffected people willing to blow themselves up to kill us? Is there truly an alternative vision in how to organize the world, followed by our adversaries in the way Lenin provided? Should we not be more concerned that nonstate actors, who feel no compunction about using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, gain access to the technology they need than tear they will seek to "hold us hostage"?

The study of the Cold War has become increasingly exciting in recent years. Nichols makes some use of new material from places like the Cold War International History Project and the National Security Archive, but he spends so much time expressing his rage at those who did not understand Soviet evil that he misses how much the new materials enable us to explore these themes in even greater detail. We now have access to open archives in places like Central and Eastern Europe, including the former East Berlin. Scholars are exploring in depth from multinational sources the very issues that Nichols raises. Scholars around the world are trying to understand what happened in their own countries. Cold War studies programs and journals have sprouted up on campuses like George Washington University, University of California at Santa Barbara, London School of Economics, Harvard University, and New York University. Young scholars, who do not have the baggage of those who debated each other during the Cold War, are studying and enriching our understanding.