Abstract This survey explains how the field of Cold War studies has been able to survive and even flourish in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2000 to the present, despite all the practical and political obstacles. It reviews several areas that Chinese scholars have been exploring: the economic Cold War; foreign intelligence operations and psychological warfare; nuclear strategies; the sciences during the Cold War and overseas education projects; and China's policies toward neighboring countries during the Cold War. The article outlines the major practical challenges facing Chinese scholars and the potential for overcoming these challenges.
{"title":"Cold War History Studies in China in the 21st Century: The State of the Field","authors":"Zhiyong Liang, Ya-Feng Xia","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01140","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This survey explains how the field of Cold War studies has been able to survive and even flourish in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2000 to the present, despite all the practical and political obstacles. It reviews several areas that Chinese scholars have been exploring: the economic Cold War; foreign intelligence operations and psychological warfare; nuclear strategies; the sciences during the Cold War and overseas education projects; and China's policies toward neighboring countries during the Cold War. The article outlines the major practical challenges facing Chinese scholars and the potential for overcoming these challenges.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"11-40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44872274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In late 1959, Mao Zedong publicly articulated his Anti-Peaceful Evolution strategy in response to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's promotion of the “peaceful evolution toward democracy” in a series of recent speeches. Mao's new strategy, which was heavily influenced by the internal and external pressures he faced, became the ideological foundation of his ultra-radical, uncompromising policy toward the United States. This article analyzes the influence of his anti-revisionist ideology and permanent revolution theory, as well as the distorting effects of incoming information. Mao was intent on countering Dulles and undercutting U.S. foreign policy more broadly.
{"title":"Strategic Vigilance: Mao's “Anti-Peaceful Evolution” Strategy and China's Policy toward the United States, 1959–1976","authors":"Yang Zhang","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01143","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In late 1959, Mao Zedong publicly articulated his Anti-Peaceful Evolution strategy in response to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's promotion of the “peaceful evolution toward democracy” in a series of recent speeches. Mao's new strategy, which was heavily influenced by the internal and external pressures he faced, became the ideological foundation of his ultra-radical, uncompromising policy toward the United States. This article analyzes the influence of his anti-revisionist ideology and permanent revolution theory, as well as the distorting effects of incoming information. Mao was intent on countering Dulles and undercutting U.S. foreign policy more broadly.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"93-111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45820486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract After the Second World War ended in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to seize Qingdao, a major port city on the Shandong Peninsula. The landing of U.S. Marines there foiled the CCP's attempt. With the support of the Kuomintang (KMT)—the CCP's main enemy—the U.S. Marines stayed in Qingdao throughout the civil war in China, from late 1945 to mid-1949. Drawing on archival sources from China, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Japan, this article explores CCP-KMT-U.S. interactions regarding the presence of U.S. Marines in Qingdao. The KMT-CCP civil war influenced—and was influenced by—the presence of the Marines in Qingdao. The KMT government depended on the U.S. Marines for security, whereas the CCP, opposing the U.S. presence, took a tough propaganda stance but remained cautious in its actions. The United States ultimately decided to withdraw the Marines to avoid overt involvement in the Chinese civil war. This type of triangular engagement influenced the future pattern of Cold War confrontations among the three parties.
{"title":"The Qingdao Pattern and U.S.-Chinese Crisis Management: The KMT, the CCP, and the U.S. Marines in Qingdao during the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949)","authors":"Weizhen Zhang, Tao Peng","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01145","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract After the Second World War ended in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to seize Qingdao, a major port city on the Shandong Peninsula. The landing of U.S. Marines there foiled the CCP's attempt. With the support of the Kuomintang (KMT)—the CCP's main enemy—the U.S. Marines stayed in Qingdao throughout the civil war in China, from late 1945 to mid-1949. Drawing on archival sources from China, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Japan, this article explores CCP-KMT-U.S. interactions regarding the presence of U.S. Marines in Qingdao. The KMT-CCP civil war influenced—and was influenced by—the presence of the Marines in Qingdao. The KMT government depended on the U.S. Marines for security, whereas the CCP, opposing the U.S. presence, took a tough propaganda stance but remained cautious in its actions. The United States ultimately decided to withdraw the Marines to avoid overt involvement in the Chinese civil war. This type of triangular engagement influenced the future pattern of Cold War confrontations among the three parties.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"150-178"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42925085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract During the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, the Eisenhower administration used nuclear weapons to deter Chinese shelling of the Quemoy islands. Zhao claims that the oblique nuclear threats had no effect on Beijing's decisions and operations and instead created problems for the Eisenhower administration by generating widespread opposition at home and abroad. Based on recently declassified U.S. and Chinese materials, this article examines U.S. and Chinese leaders’ perspectives on nuclear weapons during the crisis and other features of U.S.-China relations in the late 1950s.
{"title":"The Limits of Confrontation: Nuclear Weapons, the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, and China-U.S. Relations","authors":"Xuegong Zhao","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01144","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, the Eisenhower administration used nuclear weapons to deter Chinese shelling of the Quemoy islands. Zhao claims that the oblique nuclear threats had no effect on Beijing's decisions and operations and instead created problems for the Eisenhower administration by generating widespread opposition at home and abroad. Based on recently declassified U.S. and Chinese materials, this article examines U.S. and Chinese leaders’ perspectives on nuclear weapons during the crisis and other features of U.S.-China relations in the late 1950s.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"112-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45723154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article explores how North Korean leaders tried to maneuver between Iran and Iraq to gain greater leverage in the Cold War. Both of these Middle Eastern countries seemed potentially attractive partners for Pyongyang, but they were often on hostile terms with each other. The article considers how the Iraq-Iran rivalry and domestic changes in Iraq and Iran affected North Korean policy. Even when Pyongyang's cooperation with one or the other of the two states reached a high level, the North Koreans also reached out to the other country, regardless of the position of either state and of external actors such as the Soviet Union and China. The North Koreans generally avoided taking a public stand on the Iraq-Iran dispute, but on occasion they became more deeply involved. Mainly, the North Korean government sought to maximize the number of its partners, rather than to make a stable commitment to just one state. In turn, both Iraq and Iran eventually came to perceive North Korea as a state that was mostly out to benefit itself rather than helping either of them.
{"title":"Maneuvering between Baghdad and Tehran: North Korea's Relations with Iraq and Iran during the Cold War","authors":"B. Szalontai, Yoo Jinil","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01119","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores how North Korean leaders tried to maneuver between Iran and Iraq to gain greater leverage in the Cold War. Both of these Middle Eastern countries seemed potentially attractive partners for Pyongyang, but they were often on hostile terms with each other. The article considers how the Iraq-Iran rivalry and domestic changes in Iraq and Iran affected North Korean policy. Even when Pyongyang's cooperation with one or the other of the two states reached a high level, the North Koreans also reached out to the other country, regardless of the position of either state and of external actors such as the Soviet Union and China. The North Koreans generally avoided taking a public stand on the Iraq-Iran dispute, but on occasion they became more deeply involved. Mainly, the North Korean government sought to maximize the number of its partners, rather than to make a stable commitment to just one state. In turn, both Iraq and Iran eventually came to perceive North Korea as a state that was mostly out to benefit itself rather than helping either of them.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"179-247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41645969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Drawing on recently declassified Chinese sources, this article traces the history of open-source intelligence (OSINT) research in the PRC and discusses its impact on Chinese foreign policymaking during the Cold War. From the time the Fourth Bureau of the Central Investigation Department (CID) was founded, it was headed by veteran intelligence expert Xue Qiao, who collected and analyzed OSINT to produce intelligence estimates for Chinese political leaders. These intelligence estimates covered a host of global and regional topics crucial for Chinese foreign policy, including U.S. politics and foreign policy, decolonization movements in the Third World, and political and economic developments around the world. Available evidence shows that politics and ideology marred the quality of China's OSINT research. When Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, the CID's intelligence estimates were distorted to advance his radical political agenda. Later on, China's intelligence research came under attack during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Kang Sheng and other radicals attacked OSINT analysts as traitors, and the CID ceased to function in the late 1960s and 1970s. After Mao's death, the CID was revived, but its intelligence estimates no longer served the new Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. Deng's personal tension with CID Director Luo Qingchang, who had criticized him during the Cultural Revolution, hindered the CID's estimates. This political schism in the post-Mao years contributed to the CID's dissolution in 1983.
{"title":"The Eyes and Ears of the Dragon: Open-Source Intelligence and Chinese Foreign Policy during the Cold War","authors":"Huajie Jiang, Kazushi Minami","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01141","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on recently declassified Chinese sources, this article traces the history of open-source intelligence (OSINT) research in the PRC and discusses its impact on Chinese foreign policymaking during the Cold War. From the time the Fourth Bureau of the Central Investigation Department (CID) was founded, it was headed by veteran intelligence expert Xue Qiao, who collected and analyzed OSINT to produce intelligence estimates for Chinese political leaders. These intelligence estimates covered a host of global and regional topics crucial for Chinese foreign policy, including U.S. politics and foreign policy, decolonization movements in the Third World, and political and economic developments around the world. Available evidence shows that politics and ideology marred the quality of China's OSINT research. When Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, the CID's intelligence estimates were distorted to advance his radical political agenda. Later on, China's intelligence research came under attack during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Kang Sheng and other radicals attacked OSINT analysts as traitors, and the CID ceased to function in the late 1960s and 1970s. After Mao's death, the CID was revived, but its intelligence estimates no longer served the new Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. Deng's personal tension with CID Director Luo Qingchang, who had criticized him during the Cultural Revolution, hindered the CID's estimates. This political schism in the post-Mao years contributed to the CID's dissolution in 1983.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"41-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41921329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the fall of 1946, the U.S. military conducted a pair of hemisphere-spanning nonstop distance flights. In purely aeronautical terms, the flights of the Truculent Turtle, a Navy P2V patrol plane and the PACUSAN Dreamboat, an Army Air Forces B-29 bomber, were of little technical significance. But as a harbinger of Cold War power projection, the flights carried much greater importance. They showcased an increasingly ambitious U.S. capability to project power further than both allies and opponents, without having to rely on the basing that allies and partners had provided on a global scale during World War II. The Navy flight from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio, implicitly demonstrated that the island-hopping campaigns of World War II were no longer necessary to put much of the world in range of land-based nuclearcapable patrol planes. The Army Air Forces’ nonstop voyage from Oahu to Cairo via the North Pole signaled an even more ambitious intent. The same type of aircraft that had dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could now reach most of Europe and Asia from U.S. territory. Jim Leeke’s The Turtle and the Dreamboat: The Cold War Flights That Forever Changed the Course of Global Aviation is a highly readable and engaging narrative of the experience of these flights. In the words of the U.S. War Department, such efforts were to “‘demonstrate the aeronautical smallness of the world and what can be accomplished with today’s conventional bombers’” (p. 4). Most Cold War scholarship on U.S. airpower development in the late 1940s has focused on the Berlin Airlift or on the interservice rivalry between the newly independent Air Force and the Navy that led to the “revolt of the Admirals.” Hence, Leeke’s book is a useful addition to the oftenneglected historiography of the transition from World War II to the national security state of the late 1940s amid escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. Cold War scholars will also find it frustrating for its lack of analysis or insight into the geopolitical and strategic implications of the flights. This shortcoming reflects the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented for scholarly research. Leeke’s monograph shows both the opportunities and the limits of digital scholarship. Leeke, a U.S. Navy veteran and former journalist whose prior monographs focused on World War I, draws mainly on newspaper databases to provide a chronological retelling of the crews’ struggles to complete their flights, which the press tended to portray as a race between the services. He supplements this with context drawn from secondary sources. Presumably, with the National Archives closed during much of the pandemic, the papers of Navy and Army Air Forces headquarters and leadership that might define the intent and vision for these flights were unavailable. This absence mitigates the significance of the book. Leeke tells an interesting story but makes little substantive contribution to early Cold War studies.
{"title":"The Turtle and the Dreamboat: The Cold War Flights That Forever Changed the Course of Global Aviation by Jim Leeke","authors":"R. Connor","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01149","url":null,"abstract":"In the fall of 1946, the U.S. military conducted a pair of hemisphere-spanning nonstop distance flights. In purely aeronautical terms, the flights of the Truculent Turtle, a Navy P2V patrol plane and the PACUSAN Dreamboat, an Army Air Forces B-29 bomber, were of little technical significance. But as a harbinger of Cold War power projection, the flights carried much greater importance. They showcased an increasingly ambitious U.S. capability to project power further than both allies and opponents, without having to rely on the basing that allies and partners had provided on a global scale during World War II. The Navy flight from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio, implicitly demonstrated that the island-hopping campaigns of World War II were no longer necessary to put much of the world in range of land-based nuclearcapable patrol planes. The Army Air Forces’ nonstop voyage from Oahu to Cairo via the North Pole signaled an even more ambitious intent. The same type of aircraft that had dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could now reach most of Europe and Asia from U.S. territory. Jim Leeke’s The Turtle and the Dreamboat: The Cold War Flights That Forever Changed the Course of Global Aviation is a highly readable and engaging narrative of the experience of these flights. In the words of the U.S. War Department, such efforts were to “‘demonstrate the aeronautical smallness of the world and what can be accomplished with today’s conventional bombers’” (p. 4). Most Cold War scholarship on U.S. airpower development in the late 1940s has focused on the Berlin Airlift or on the interservice rivalry between the newly independent Air Force and the Navy that led to the “revolt of the Admirals.” Hence, Leeke’s book is a useful addition to the oftenneglected historiography of the transition from World War II to the national security state of the late 1940s amid escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. Cold War scholars will also find it frustrating for its lack of analysis or insight into the geopolitical and strategic implications of the flights. This shortcoming reflects the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented for scholarly research. Leeke’s monograph shows both the opportunities and the limits of digital scholarship. Leeke, a U.S. Navy veteran and former journalist whose prior monographs focused on World War I, draws mainly on newspaper databases to provide a chronological retelling of the crews’ struggles to complete their flights, which the press tended to portray as a race between the services. He supplements this with context drawn from secondary sources. Presumably, with the National Archives closed during much of the pandemic, the papers of Navy and Army Air Forces headquarters and leadership that might define the intent and vision for these flights were unavailable. This absence mitigates the significance of the book. Leeke tells an interesting story but makes little substantive contribution to early Cold War studies.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"253-255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47381442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kentomania: A Black Basketball Virtuoso in Communist Poland by Kent Washington","authors":"Sheldon Anderson","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01150","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"255-257"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41584340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kennan: A Life between Worlds by Frank Costigliola","authors":"Wilson D. Miscamble","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01147","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"248-250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46594259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
After a perfunctory treatment of Kennan’s role as a policymaker, Costigliola resumes his cataloging of Kennan’s thoughts and feelings. Kennan’s emergence as a notable historian, along with his continuing (but usually failed) efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy, earn some attention. So, too, do the wide range of other issues that spurred Kennan to share his views as a prominent public intellectual—the student movement of the 1960s, civil rights, the environment, immigration to the United States, and the social fabric of America. His positions were usually provocative and occasionally outrageous. Costigliola does not hold back in identifying Kennan’s prejudices and even bigotry toward Jews and blacks. Ultimately, though, Costigliola proves rather forgiving of his subject. Kennan’s various but largely ineffective efforts in the post-Stalin era to seek a settlement with the Soviet Union in the Cold War win Costigliola’s approval. The biographer grants his subject some kind of retrospective absolution, although he is rather awkward in doing so. Costigliola laments that for most of his life Kennan “never articulated remorse for what he had done” in supposedly helping to forge elements of the strategy of containment. Costigliola seems to believe that Kennan should have engaged in much more self-flagellation and expressions of contrition. In an especially vacuous tabulation, he asserts that although Kennan “had spent the four years from 1944 to 1948 promoting the Cold War, he devoted the subsequent forty to undoing what he and others had wrought.” This is appraised “as not a bad record” (pp. 424–425). Costigliola’s judgment on this matter reflects his own defective understanding of both the onset and the course of the Cold War. Kennan’s service as director of the Policy Planning Staff is the one aspect of his long life that most warrants favorable treatment. Readers who want to understand why will need to look somewhere other than Costigliola’s book.
{"title":"Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War by William Michael Schmidli","authors":"R. Pee","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01148","url":null,"abstract":"After a perfunctory treatment of Kennan’s role as a policymaker, Costigliola resumes his cataloging of Kennan’s thoughts and feelings. Kennan’s emergence as a notable historian, along with his continuing (but usually failed) efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy, earn some attention. So, too, do the wide range of other issues that spurred Kennan to share his views as a prominent public intellectual—the student movement of the 1960s, civil rights, the environment, immigration to the United States, and the social fabric of America. His positions were usually provocative and occasionally outrageous. Costigliola does not hold back in identifying Kennan’s prejudices and even bigotry toward Jews and blacks. Ultimately, though, Costigliola proves rather forgiving of his subject. Kennan’s various but largely ineffective efforts in the post-Stalin era to seek a settlement with the Soviet Union in the Cold War win Costigliola’s approval. The biographer grants his subject some kind of retrospective absolution, although he is rather awkward in doing so. Costigliola laments that for most of his life Kennan “never articulated remorse for what he had done” in supposedly helping to forge elements of the strategy of containment. Costigliola seems to believe that Kennan should have engaged in much more self-flagellation and expressions of contrition. In an especially vacuous tabulation, he asserts that although Kennan “had spent the four years from 1944 to 1948 promoting the Cold War, he devoted the subsequent forty to undoing what he and others had wrought.” This is appraised “as not a bad record” (pp. 424–425). Costigliola’s judgment on this matter reflects his own defective understanding of both the onset and the course of the Cold War. Kennan’s service as director of the Policy Planning Staff is the one aspect of his long life that most warrants favorable treatment. Readers who want to understand why will need to look somewhere other than Costigliola’s book.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"250-252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45213926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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