From: STEVEN SCHWARTZBERG <sidubang@nevada.edu>


Looking back on my original post, I was needlessly vague.  I did not mean
to imply, as Prof. Gardner seems to assume, that I thought there was some
sort of blueprint for world conquest locked away in the Kremlin.  The
letter from Stalin which I quoted seems to me striking evidence that--at
least in October 1950--he worried that recovery in the capitalist world
would significantly worsen the medium-term global position of the
Soviet empire and that he was willing to run some risk of a third World
War by encouraging the dramatic escalation of a military venture to
improve his empire's position after that venture appeared to be turning
sour.  If he looked at the world in a similar fashion in 1946, it would
hardly seem useful to describe him as a counter-revolutionary who was
attempting to work things out with an American empire.  One could, at least
as appropriately, describe him as a revolutionary opportunist who thought
that the global correlation of forces provided a temporary window to
pursue an expansionary policy, at considerable risk, the limits of which
were unclear.  Hence my question as to whether Prof. Gardner thought
Stalin's basic ideology and ambition had changed between 1946 and 1950
and, if so, what his grounds for thinking this were.

Perhaps Prof. Gardner is correct in his suggestion that Stalin ran the
risks that he did in encouraging the escalation of the Korean War in the
hope that "a Chinese move might forestall any American inclination to
move right up to the borders" and also to help maintain his stake in
"perfecting coalition unity around an ideal."  The analogy that he
seems to offer is with Bush's "anti-Saddam coalition."  Does he think
Bush wished to establish a counter-revolutionary modus vivendi with
Saddam?  If so, on what terms?

In his original post, Prof. Gardner seemed to suggest that the harshness
of Soviet rule, and its relative inability to "serve the needs of its
clients," was a function of the global position of the Soviet empire and
that giving that empire greater resources, more secure borders, and the
like, would have helped to mellow it.  That, at any rate, is what I made
of the set of his assertions which I quoted:

"Now, finally, the question of empire presupposes a metropole and
surrounding areas.  The distribution of benefits depends upon several
things: the resources of the metropole, the need for secure boundaries,
the cultural affinity of metropole and client, and the degree of
flexibility of its leadership, plus others you may want to add.  In each
of these categories, save perhaps (?) the third, the American Empire was
far more able to serve the needs of its clients.  That being the case, the
harsher the rule in the Evil Empire became."

As against this view, I suggested that the harshness of Soviet rule and
the treatment that empire accorded its clients was more obviously a
function of Stalin's ideology and the antidemocratic traditions of the
Bolshevik state.  In his reply, Prof. Gardner seems to agree, suggesting
only that Soviet experience in the twentieth century had helped to harden
Soviet ideology and that there was not much that anyone in the outside
world could do "to thaw out such an ideology."

The question then turns to the American side of Prof. Gardner's analysis
of metropole-client relations.  Here my original post was particularly
muddled.  What I mean to say was that in contrast with the harsh
character of Soviet imperial rule, the more generous character of
American imperial rule does appear in part to have been a function of the
contemporary global position of the American empire.  Can one imagine the
Marshall Plan being funded if Congress had not seen a Soviet threat?  But
this more generous American rule was also in part a function of the
strength of democratic traditions in both the United States and in
Western Europe.

By emphasizing the importance of antidemocratic traditions and ideology on
the Soviet side and democratic traditions and ideology on the American side
I hardly imagine I am saying anything new.  But as Prof. Gardner's analysis
did not appear to leave much room for such an emphasis, and explicitly
suggested that other factors were more relevant, I thought it worthwhile
to suggest why that analysis was in need of revision.

As to the options which American officials had during the cold war, I
think we can expect to see a good deal of helpful material from the
Soviet archives in the future.  Without such material, historical
arguments as to what Soviet foreign policy was about, and what sorts of
alternatives might have been successfully pursued, will necessarily
remain of fairly limited sophistication and persuasiveness.

Steven Schwartzberg




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