Gaddis' book, The Cold War

The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis is enormously encouraging in recounting three great triumphs that took place between 1945 and 1991. In 1945 the world was divided between capitalist, free market economies of the West and socialist, command economies of the East, and beginning to be armed with nuclear weapons. In the previous three decades there had been two world wars that had killed tens of millions of people, a great depression,  and there was a considerable fear that there would be a third world war that would be much worse than the first two, perhaps ending civilization. The East based its projections on a belief that the capitalists in charge of the Western empires would through their greed lead the West into self destruction. The West based its projections on the belief that the Communist economic system would not function well and that the authoritarian regimes would eventually moderate or become unsustainable. Yet, in 1945, the USSR had undeniably played the major role in defeating the Nazis, Communists had played an important role opposing Nazi Germany in the rest of Europe and Communist parties were important in many European countries, Communists were fighting a war for Control of China that would eventually prove successful, and many people in the world were poor and dissatisfied.

The Success of the West

The United States, with half of the world's GDP at the end of World War II, not only helped its former Western allies to recover from the war but also helped its former enemies; with that help, formerly autocratic enemies turned into democratic allies. The Western European imperial powers decolonized. They gave up part of their sovereignty to create a common military command with the United States, created a European common market, and eventually a European Union. The likelihood of another war between Western European imperial powers was greatly reduced.

The Success of the East


In the late 1980s it had become clear to many within the Communist sphere that the authoritarian, command economy system was not working for most of its people. Within a few years the Warsaw Pact was abolished, former satellite countries moved to more participatory governance, free market economies, and integration with Western European countries. The Soviet Union was dissolved, allowing self government in Central Asia and the Baltic states. The Russian Federation too embraced Capitalism and achieved a less authoritarian government. China and Viet Nam embraced free markets and opened their economies to the West.

The Success of the Two

There was no nuclear war, no general war between the East and the West. The danger of nuclear holocaust was contained for five decades, and indeed progress was made in preventing testing of nuclear weapons, limiting their spread, and reducing their numbers. While the United States and the USSR came to the brink of nuclear war on at least a couple of occasions, they stepped back and found peaceful resolutions. The threat of future East-West war seemed much less in 1991 than it had seemed in 1945.

How Did This Happen?


There was no general plan in either the West or the East for achieving these successes. Leaders arose at key moments in both the West and the East to embrace change and promote reforms. They managed to muddle through to success. Those leaders within each camp managed often enough to work together to achieve common purposes promoting peace, prosperity and freedom. Leaders of the West and East managed to establish and utilize channels of communication between East and West in order to keep the peace.

The world changed during the Cold War. It was richer, and many more people had emerged from poverty and became concerned with satisfying higher order needs. The education level had increased and many people were much more aware of geopolitical issues. Indeed, Gorbachev was the first premier of the USSR to have a college education. People demanded what they had come to regard as their human rights, and indeed political leaders too had come to regard those as rights. Information infrastructure changed radically and people began to see how others in the affluent countries lived, to see no reason that they too should not have such a style of life.

The Book

John Lewis Gaddis is apparently the leading U.S. scholar of the Cold War, having written a number of well received books on topics relevant to the subject. This book is a short, readable distillation of decades of scholarship, making it available to the general reader. It is well organized in chapters focusing on key themes in the sequence that they became most relevant to the situation. He writes a beautiful sentence and a beautiful paragraph! My book club put it in the top five percent of the more than 100 history books it has discussed. I recommend it wholeheartedly.