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The Soviet threat was a myth Stalin had no intention of attacking the west. We were to blame for the cold war Andrew
Alexander On a long and reluctant journey to
Damascus, as I researched the diaries and memoirs of the key figures involved,
it dawned on me that my orthodox view of the cold war as a struggle to the death
between Good (Britain and America) and Evil (the Soviet Union) was seriously
mistaken. In fact, as history will almost certainly judge, it was one of the
most unnecessary conflicts of all time, and certainly the most perilous.
The cold war began within months of the end of the second world war, when the
Soviet Union was diagnosed as inherently aggressive. It was installing communist
governments throughout central and eastern Europe. The triumphant Red Army was
ready and able to conquer western Europe whenever it was unleashed by Stalin,
who was dedicated to the global triumph of communism. But "we" - principally the
US and Britain - had learnt from painful experience that it was futile to seek
accommodation with "expansionist" dictators. We had to stand up to Stalin, in
President Truman's phrase, "with an iron fist".
It was a Manichean doctrine, seductive in its simplicity. But the supposed
military threat was wholly implausible. Had the Russians, devastated by the war,
invaded the west, they would have had a desperate battle to reach the Channel
coast. Britain would have been supplied with an endless stream of men and
material from the US, making invasion virtually hopeless. And even if the
Soviets, ignoring the A-bomb, had conquered Europe against all odds, they would
have been left facing an implacable US: the ultimate unwinnable war. In short,
there was no Soviet military danger. Stalin was not insane.
Nor was he a devout ideologue dedicated to world communism. He was committed,
above all else, to retaining power, and ruling Russia by mass terror. Stalin had
long been opposed to the idea that Russia should pursue world revolution. He had
broken with Trotsky, and proclaimed the ideal of "socialism in one country".
Foreign communist parties were encouraged to influence their own nations'
actions. But it was never Stalin's idea that they should establish potentially
rival communist governments. Yugoslavia and China were to demonstrate the peril
of rival communist powers.
The cold war began because of Russia's reluctance to allow independence to
Poland. Stalin was held to have reneged on promises at Yalta. Roosevelt and
Churchill had demanded that Poland be allowed a government that would be "free"
and also "friendly to Russia". It was a dishonest formula. As recently as 1920,
the two countries had been at war. No freely elected Polish government would be
friendly to the USSR. Furthermore, as Stalin pointed out at Yalta, Russia had
been twice invaded through Poland by Germany in 26 years, with devastating
consequences. The invasion of 1941 had led to the deaths of 20 million Russians.
Any postwar Russian government - communist, tsarist or social democratic - would
have insisted on effective control at least of Poland, if not of larger areas of
eastern Europe, as a buffer zone against future attacks.
The cold war warrior Harry Truman came to office in April 1945. The existing
White House, including the belligerent Admiral Leahy, convinced him that he must
make an aggressive start. In May, Churchill told Anthony Eden, the foreign
secretary, that the Americans ought not to withdraw to the lines previously
agreed. There had, he said, to be a "showdown" while the Allies were still
strong militarily. Otherwise there was "very little prospect" of preventing a
third world war.
Churchill's iron curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 - the
phrase originated with Dr Goebbels, warning of the same red peril - reflects the
great warrior's view of the Soviet menace. Not surprisingly, however, it was
seen by the Russians as a threat. Referring to the new "tyrannies", Churchill
said: "It is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to
interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries." The inevitable
implication was that there would be a time when difficulties were not so
numerous.
Truman had adopted an aggressive attitude to Russia the previous October. He
produced 12 points which he said would govern American policy, including the
importance of opening up free markets. The programme would be based on
"righteousness". There could be "no compromise with evil". Since half his points
were aimed at Soviet rule in eastern Europe, the evil he had in mind was plain.
He added that no one would be allowed to interfere with US policy in Latin
America.
So Russian interference in countries essential to its safety was evil. But
exclusive US domination of its own sphere of influence was righteous. In any
case, a programme based on "no compromise with evil" is a preposterously naive
basis for a foreign policy, destining a country to permanent warfare. (Perhaps,
as the war against terrorism suggests, this is the capitalist world's version of
Trotskyism.) The Atlantic Charter of 1941 was another example of humbug, with
its declaration that countries should be free to elect their own governments.
Churchill had later to explain that this did not apply to the British Empire.
Molotov inquired what Britain intended to do about Spain. Spain was different,
Churchill insisted.
Churchill's hostility to the Soviet Union was longstanding, despite the
wartime alliance. He had proposed in 1918 that the defeated Germans should be
rearmed for a grand alliance to march on Moscow. He supported the allied
intervention in the Russian civil war. More important was his wartime theme that
the Germans should not be disarmed too extensively because they might be needed
against Russia. Moscow also suspected, with reason, that some British
politicians had hoped appeasing Hitler would leave him free to attack Russia.
Against this background, it is unsurprising that the Soviet attitude was
nervous and suspicious. The west made virtually no moves to allay these fears,
but adopted a belligerent attitude to an imaginary military and political threat
from an economically devastated and war-weary Russia. The fact that the cold war
continued after Stalin's death does not, as some claim, prove the Soviets'
unchanging global ambitions. The invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 were brutal acts, but were aimed at protecting Moscow's
buffer zone. The same may be said of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980
(as a result of which, with the help of the CIA, the Taliban came into
existence). In none of these cases was there a territorial threat to the west.
At times even Eisenhower seemed ambivalent about the cold war, warning about
the vested interests of the American "military-industrial complex". Under his
presidency US foreign policy had fallen into the hands of crazed crusaders such
as John Foster Dulles. Followers of Dulles's crusading approach remained
prominent, especially under Reagan, until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Revisionist views of the cold war regularly surface in the US, though the
case is sometimes spoiled by the authors' socialist sympathies (something of
which I have never been accused). In Britain, the revisionist view has not had
much of a hearing.
One can, of course, understand why few in the west want the orthodox view
overturned. If that were to happen, the whole edifice of postwar politics would
crumble. Could it be that the heavy burden of postwar rearmament was
unnecessary, that the transatlantic alliance actually imperilled rather than
saved us? Could it be that the world teetered on the verge of annihilation
because post-war western leaders, particularly in Washington, lacked
imagination, intelligence and understanding? The gloomy answer is yes.
· Andrew Alexander is a Daily Mail columnist, and is writing a book
about the cold war. A longer version of this article appears in the current
issue of the Spectator
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