Trapped in the Cold War

The Cold War, Melvyn Leffler writes in his superb new book, “is about men and their ideas and their fears and their hopes.” “[O]fficials in Washington and Moscow,” Leffler argues, “intermittently grasped the consequences of the Cold War, glimpsed the possibilities of détente, and yearned for peace, but they could not escape their fears or relinquish their dreams. Around the globe peoples were struggling to define their future and disputing the benefits of alternative ways of life, so the Cold War was indeed a struggle for the soul of mankind” (p. 8).

Leffler’s prior work—especially his prize-winning book, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War—set the standard for analyzing the intersection of threat perception, political economy, and military power in the postwar world. He famously described the combination of prudence and foolishness that led American leaders to seek global preponderance after the Second World War: “It meant creating a world environment hospitable to U.S. interests and values; it meant developing the capabilities to overcome threats and challenges; it meant mobilizing the strength to reduce Soviet influence on its periphery; it meant undermining the appeal of communism; it meant fashioning the institutional techniques and mechanisms to manage the free world; and it meant establishing a configuration of power and a military posture so that if war erupted, the United States would prevail. If adversaries saw the handwriting on the wall, they would defer to American wishes.”¹

From a coherent strategy of “preponderance” to a “struggle for the soul of mankind,” Leffler traces a number of cogent themes. First, he points to the profound insecurities that dominated American and Soviet thinking. American leaders, especially President Harry Truman, feared the growth of communist power in Eurasia. Seared by the experience of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism, they were acutely conscious of the fragility of democratic capitalism, and the threat posed by an authoritarian regime with an ideology promising to redistribute power and wealth to the masses. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin feared exactly the reverse—the relative weakness of his communist regime, Russia’s vulnerability to attack and encirclement (proven twice in his own lifetime), and the rise of a revitalized postwar Germany. In his new book, Leffler quotes Stalin expressing sentiments that he and most of his successors in the Kremlin until Mikhail Gorbachev shared: “I HATE THE GERMANS. . . . It’s impossible to destroy the Germans for good, they will still be around. . . . That is why we, the Slavs, must be ready in case the Germans can get back on their feet and launch another attack against the Slavs” (p. 30–1).

Second, both of Leffler’s Cold War books show how American and Soviet leaders addressed their fears by preparing for the worst-case threats and seizing apparent opportunities for preventive action—strategic defense through political and economic expansion. Leffler is particularly good at documenting the Soviet side of this dynamic in his most recent book, drawing on a wealth of newly available materials. Both the Kremlin and the White House consistently overestimated military and political risks and underestimated possibilities for trust and cooperation, according to Leffler. From Berlin to Cuba to Vietnam to Afghanistan, leaders took what appeared to be safe but aggressive forward moves. They deployed more weapons, intervened in more places, and relied on greater public bombast to show strength rather than weakness, courage rather than cowardice.

Leffler is clearest on this point in For the Soul of Mankind, where he devotes an excellent chapter to President Dwight Eisenhower’s actions after Stalin’s death. Leffler shows that Eisenhower, like British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, wanted to pursue peace with Stalin’s successors. Despite what Leffler describes as promising signals from the Kremlin, Eisenhower remained conscious of Western vulnerabilities. The president sought peace, but only by building strength as a hedge against the...