Talk:Cold War (1953-1962)/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Perhaps it's proper to mention the Sputnik crisis and the Space Race on this page? Nixdorf 18:28, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The anti-US bias in this borders on the comical; the invasion of Hungary gets two short sentences that don't even hint at the content in 1956 Hungarian Revolution, while the coup in Iran gets multiple pages complete with picture. The choice of words is interesting too; Khrushchev is "a dynamic reformist" while Dulles is an "obsessed" "visceral anticommunist". The choice of pictures is pretty slanted too. Might as well as be honest about this article and move it to US agression against the poor innocent USSR who was just trying to defend itself against the evil capitalists. It would be interesting to compare this content with the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, see if there are any differences. It's also interesting to see that despite all the talk about "depersonalizing history", there seems to be a pattern of attributing US actions in the Cold War directly to the personalities of the USians involved, rather than arguing that they were only acting as required by the forces of history. A double standard here! Stan 17:54, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Unless you marshal some data and evidence to challenge any of the content in the article, you aren't going to articulate any intelligent arguments.
Actually, this article barely strays from the school of thought that has come to dominate scholarly historical literature on the subject. It's actually a standard revisionist/post-revisionist article in its emphases, details, and analyses. Keep in mind that no serious scholar these days accepts the assumption of Soviet Communism was an international monolith with inherently hostile designs on the "free world." Rather than writing a ploemic, I'm focusing on why strategies, alliances, arenas that crystallized and shifted. In other words, I'm not on keeping taps on who's good or bad.
My changes added more the Eisenhower-Dulles reformulation of the Truman-Acheson foreign policy, as framed by NSC-68. Thus, I'm dealing with the sources of that reformulations and the ramifications. Iran received more attention than Hungary because the story of the '50s is a story of the focal point of the Cold War shifting from postwar Europe to East Asia and to the entire Third World.
Now let me explain the amount of attention that I devoted to US covert action. It's an essential aspect of the Cold War in the '50s. The United States faced serious stemming from the sheer instability of postwar Africa, Asia, and Latin America for which foreign policy-makers appeared to have no little workable solutions. In addition, the costly, conventional ground forces of the Truman administration were an undue burden on the US economy and society. We had a cost-cutting Republican president and Congress as the time as well. Due to these growing problems opening up in new arenas of superpower competition and these domestic constraints, covert action emerges as the second leading strategy of the fifties, behind only nuclear "brinskmanship."
Yes, the Hungarian Revolution and Berlin Wall are described with less detail. Perhaps you'd like to add more. If you do, you can elaborate on the latent problems within the Soviet bloc exemplified by the Revolution - the kinds of problems that would reach the surface at the end of the Cold War. After this point, the pro-Soviet bloc was in a chronic state of decline and a precarious position.
But since my additions dealt with the years between the drafting of NSC-68 and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (the years laying the groundwork for the Vietnam commitment), I focused on the Third World. Under ironclad Soviet domination, Eastern Europe, on the other hand, was more or less static and not a major arena, if an arena at all, for Cold War competition. That's why more attention is given to the Third World. This is not because I'm still venting steam over Iran in '53 and hoping that everyone is forgetting Hungary in '56.
BTW, writing vitriolic attacks against me on every page I've touched seems to be becoming a hobby of yours. I'm surprised you haven't accused me of Stalinist bias in Origins of the American Civil War yet. 172 19:48, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So "standard revisionism" includes using unprofessional pejoratives only for the US players and non-citation of sources? I bet not. Anyway, revisionists are just one faction of historian, they're not the only POV on all this. I did look at the ACW stuff and there were some questionable assertions, but nothing so blatantly biased as here. Stan 00:53, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I hope that you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said. I said that the article was typical of the standard revisionist and POST-REVISIONIST accounts. The post-revisionist school (called post-revisionist since it responds to the revisionist scholars) is the most recent school of thought and the dominant ones these days (how many do you want that run parallel to my discussion?). I can recommend a list of sources for you if you want to become acquainted with the historiography and the debates on the subject. BTW, your claims of "questionable assertions" are going to be meaningless to me unless you marshal facts and data rather than snide quips one one-liners. 172 05:48, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't tell me about the historiography, add it to this article, or make a special article for it. Revisionism mentions your apparent POV as one of several meanings of the term, but certainly not as mainstream history, and post-revisionism doesn't even have an article as I'm writing this, so I can't even tell if you're referring to a real concept or something you made up. (Your ACW writeup is better because it does cite some actual historians that I haven't read, and I'm suspending judgment on the parts I'm skeptical about until I get a chance to look over their works.) Since you have a habit of deleting material that you disagree with instead of discussing it first, I'm not going to touch these articles, not even to fix the typos, until I get your agreement that changes need to be made. Since my objections have to do with presentation evaluation rather than data and facts ("visceral anticommunist" is an assessment, not an objective fact), it's not an issue of factual content. Stan 07:08, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, I'm not spending time on this because I have a vendetta; it's because it's an important piece of 20th-century history, and deserves better treatment than something that reads like leftover Soviet propaganda. I'm all for revisionism - some of my earliest instruction in foreign affairs was at age 10, when my dad told me all about Eisenhower's interference in Vietnamese elections - but this article goes so far over the top that many people who read it will assume it was been written by a nutcase with an agenda, and take it as evidence that Wikipedia is not a serious encyclopedia. Stan 07:21, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Stan:

First, we have a brief overview of the historiography at the beginning of the series in the first Cold War article. Please feel free to expound. This will be more helpful to you than the Wiki article on "revisionism."

Now let me address a common confusion. Going to the Wiki article on revisionism does not suffice when we are dealing with the "revisionist" school of though on any subject. "Revisionism" is a relative term in historiography, especially American historical writing. Old interpretations have been challenged in every era, and not just the not just at the peak of the "New Left's" influence. Every school of thought (e.g., the progressive school of the '20s, '30s, and '40s; the "consensus" school of the postwar era; the "New Left" of the '60s; the "new social history" of the '70s; the 'post-modern' school to emerge afterwards; and the current period's preoccupation with synthesis and reviving the grand narratives of the past) has produced "revisionists" in various subjects. "Revisionism" does have a bad connotation, but it's a values-neutral term, as it is when I bring up the "revisionist" school of Randall and Craven (and the post-revisionist "consensus school" of David Herbert Donald) on the coming of the Civil War. "Revisionism" is not synonymous with "Marxist" or leftist criticism on normative grounds. For the sake of brevity, let me fly through a pattern (over-simplified) in American historical discourse. We often start of with the "primitive" histories, written by actors intimately involved in the major events of the period. Memoirs, articles in periodicals, and speeches are good examples. Then, a major school of thought emerges in scholarly history, usually in sync with the ethos of the time. Most of the time this is known as the so-called "traditionalist" school. A revisionist school usually emerges turning the standard interpretation upside down. Then, a synthesis emerges reconciling the "traditionalist" interpretations with the issues raised by the revisionists. The Cold War revisionists, for example, were imbued with the emphases of the "New Left" and were heralded by William Appleman Williams a decade earlier. The Civil War revisionists, on the other hand, were profoundly affected by the cynicism, non-interventionism, and pessimism of the period following the Great War. They were quite hostile to the thesis of the "Second American Revolution" promulgated by the progressive historians influenced by Marxist scholarship.

Perhaps I should have expected barrages of normative criticisms after writing articles on the Cold War and Civil War. These are subjects bristling with controversies and fields laden with biases. On the popular level, the Civil War and Cold War are matters of myth and memory. The Cold War in particular is also politically contentious because we are all bombarded with the historical "lessons" by politicians and activists, especially those who warn of another "Munich" or another "Vietnam." Non-academic readers tend to judge these things according to whether they found them "pro-" or "anti-American" enough for them, rather than on the merits of the data and analysis. Non-academic readers often expect that everyone has to have a "moral" attitude toward these topics. But the NPOV polices firmly back up my insistence to allow these subjects to recede into history, addressing the Cold War from the vantage point of the United States and the Soviet Union's situation and condition at the temporality in question.

I went as for as possible to short-circuit most of the controversies, actually, in both of my recent articles. Notice how I carefully circumvent traversing minefields in both subjects. For instance, notice how I skirt the extremely contentious on-going debate on the character of plantation slavery in the article on the coming of the Civil War. I only referenced the opinions of a couple of major historians on the subject (with which I happen to have major reservations). BTW, since you like to pigeonhole me, let me state that here I happen to adamantly avoid the approach of the leading Marxist historian in the field in my work outside Wiki, and instead emphasize the socio-cultural and psychological impact of slavery rather than objective indicators of material comfort. Now, concerning Eisenhower and Dulles reformulation of the Truman-Acheson strategy/tactics of containment, I avoid the normative trap of questioning the possible ramifications of 'going to the brink.' I also do not personalize "brinkmanship" and covert action in the Third World, as you claim, but also point to domestic concerns, new challenges arising in new arenas, historical precedents, economic and political constraints, Kremlin designs on exploiting the floodgate of social, political, and economic change in the emerging nations and less-developed countries (hence, I do not really present them as the toothless adversaries that you accuse me of sketching), problems within the Western alliance, and the constraints of previous commitments in foreign policy). This is not the undiluted "revisionism" of "the tragedy of American diplomacy" accounts.

Finally, I never said that the article doesn't require more work, including proofreading. But the concerns that you raise aren't really the problems. Some sections are missing simply because I'm not finished. We also need sections on the German problem, the French and the EDC, Sino-Soviet relations, problems in the Soviet bloc, institutions and bureaucracies for crisis-management and diplomacy, growing executive powers, bureaucratic infighting (e.g., Dulles vs. Rockefeller), the Rio Pact (yes, more on pro-American "pacts" in the Third World!), and the Eisenhower Doctrine. We also need more on Guatemala as a turning point in US foreign policy (i.e. Guatemala was not headed by a Communist movement, its impact on future Latin American revolutionaries, and the failures to install a liberal pro-American reformer), more on Franco-American diplomacy after Dien Bien Phu, more on theoretical developments and reformulations of international relations, more on the growing influence of the "Domino Theory", more on the Geneva Accords (desperately needed), more on Mendes-France and the French atomic bomb, more on McCarthyism and the atomic scientists, more on the Austrian peace treaty, more on changes in Soviet foreign policy after Stalin's death, more backgrounding on the Aswan Dam, and more on dissenting figures in American foreign policy circles (e.g. Kennan's growing concerns with the directions taken after NSC-68). Although unfinished, the article at least gives presents the limits of American military and political power and the problems reaching the surface in the Soviet bloc, and a broad view of the trajectories and shifts of the period. You already get a feel of where the Cold War is going in the '50s and why, but since this is a general encyclopedic article, I will get to a more comprehensive chronological overview shortly. In the time that I responded to your baseless character assassination, I would have been able to do so tonight. Instead, I'm done with Wiki for today and going on to some other projects. 172 08:34, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

BTW, my offer still stands. I can recommend a list of good sources running parallel to the discussion in this article whenever I'm online. 172 08:34, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
In addition, if you're interested, I can also give you a list with the 7numbers of the most influential works on the coming of the Civil War. There are others who are very important not mentioned by name, such as Genovese and McPherson. 172 08:47, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You could have saved yourself the long screed if you just addressed my points directly - as a hint, I've included the short answers that would have been sufficient.

  • Need a list of references in the article. How can you expect anything you write to be taken seriously if you don't provide a list of references? A subject like this should have 20-30 of the most important book-length syntheses. (Answer: Yes, of course.)
  • Your language is biased. You invariably use pejoratives for the US figures, and invariably use neutral or adulatory words for the Soviet figures. It's a good thing I'm the only person reading these articles, you'd be in edit war with dozens of other people if they saw the non-neutral language being used. (Answer: Good point - please feel free to edit out the pejoratives.)
  • If revisionism is inaccurate, it needs to be fixed (and a list of references added there too). I'm going to rely on it for the definition of the term, not a pseudonymous editor's comments on a talk page. (Answer: Good idea, it will make Wikipedia a more credible source on history.)

Additional points:

  • Please put additional details in separate articles linked from here - this one is getting long enough that no one will ever get to the end. This is a reference work, not a textbook. The Iran episode should be its own article for instance. (Answer: Good idea.) Stan 15:18, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

First, if you cannot raise reasoned counter-arguments based on factual evidence, please accept my offer of posting a list of sources with the ISBN numbers running parallel to the discussion in the article here on this talk page.

Second, if you were unable to follow my very general overview of the historiography on the Cold War, then do a google or yahoo search and check up on me yourself. You are a big boy and I'm not going to spoon-feed you. Don't disregard my arguments because you have little understanding and knowledge of the period and aren't acquainted with the scholarly literature. Type in on a search engine "Cold War revisionism" or "Cold War post-revisionism." Many of the top hits for these searchers are sites that would give you almost exactly the same overview that I gave you on this page. 172 16:30, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't know what you think Wikipedia is, but I think it's an encyclopedia, and that means adding what you're calling "spoon-feeding". If I go to Encyclopedia Britannica, at the end of an article it doesn't say "go to Google and look at the top hits" - it supplies the references that are the basis for the content in the article. Supplying references is a basic part of scholarship; it's totally unprofessional not to do it, and it's Wikipedia policy too, see Wikipedia:Cite your sources. You can cast aspersions on my competence all day long, but I'm the one adding the citations that support my material, and you're the one who's not. Stan 21:26, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was mistaken. You aren't a big boy after all. You do need spoon-feeding. On top of that, you need some reading lessons. Perhaps try one of those phonics programs advertised on television. Once you learn how to read, you'd be able to reread my posting and see that I was asking you to verify my claims on the talk page, not my contents in the article.

I also offered you a list of sources running parallel to my additions to the article, but you haven't responded to the offer. I simply don't know how use the endnotes function on Wiki, although I could provide the source and page number for every statistic or citation I post. I admit to being a computer illiterate. BTW, I wish that you'd do the same whenever your background weak in a subject.

So far, the lack of endnotes is the only thing that you can hold against me. However, I don't know why you're arbitrarily focusing on me in particular for neglecting a practice that's rarely adhered to on Wiki. Perhaps you're preoccupied with cutting me down to your own level since you resent the fact that you're unable to raise any counter-arguments empirically, rather than by means of some smartass quips and opinionated pronouncements on human nature according to Stan.

Please note that Wiki is not traditional scholarship (fascinating to me, but scary ). The growing availability of information and the growth of the Internet have made Wiki's egalitarianism possible. Wiki is an extremely radical innovation threatening the Platonic ideal of liberal arts education. Wiki is anarchic whereas traditional scholarly institutions are hierarchical. Wiki is egalitarian whereas academia is elitist. Quality in academia is encouraged by customs and institutional mechanisms, whereas Wiki rests on faith in infighting and/or collaboration among an inchoate plethora of anonymous users. In that sense, a lay reader has every right to do some research on his/her own and challenge the facts and analyses of a PhD writing in his/her own field (sources or no sources). Thus, I'm perfectly able to lambaste your work on any articles related to software engineering that you've touched. The least that you could do to be considered a worthy collaborator would be to check up on my overview of the various schools of thought on the Cold War. 172 06:18, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Huh? There is no special machinery for references - just type away. People have challenged me on computing-related bits from time to time, but in the areas where I'm an expert, I can whip out a list of references as long as your arm - from memory. Even for as small a topic as Mount McKinley there is all kinds of good reference work to connect to - I had to limit myself to the seven most-interesting. There are indeed topics where I don't bug people about references, but I expect better from someone who a) purports to be an expert in the subject, and b) adds content radically different from my personal understanding of the subject. The idea that Wikipedia is not traditional scholarship is not a valid excuse for not providing the basis for your assertions - if you were a world-renowned authority adding material under your real name, perhaps no need (although I note that the real authorities are always generous in giving credit to others), but since you are a pseudonymous user I have no way of knowing the basis for your claims. Telling me to do my own research is not such a good idea, because I'll likely not pick the authorities that you expect. I'll be able to delete any of your material that disagrees with my authorities, and will have the citations that back me up. So the references are as much for the protection of your content as anything else. (In practice, I just work on all the connected articles, and their content is contradictory to the ones you're writing - so at least readers will get more than the one POV that you present.) Stan 07:08, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Like I said, I'll extend my offer once again. You can ask for my sources on any claim and I too can "whip out a list of references as long as your arm - from memory."

Honestly, now that I've gone to the page detailing how to cite sources on Wiki (thanks for the link), I see that it's quite tedious. Just as I feared, it's not simple as the footnotes/endnotes function on MS Word, which has spoiled me. I get the shivers thinking about having to use a typewriter in the past. But I'll cite references and page numbers from now on. After all, I do so for everything else. Anyway, I'll litter this article and the recent one on the coming of the Civil War with citations in the next couple of days. I'd go mad, however, redoing every article on which I've worked for the past year.

Instead, we should focus on changing the habits of all Wikipedians to improve work done in the future. After all, this is a bad habit common even among PhDs on Wiki. We should start a campaign emphasizing citation of sources on the mailing list, the village pump, and talk pages. We could use the coming of the Civil War article (which is finished in terms of content) as a model, once I'm done with the citations. 172 08:04, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

BTW, sorry for my vitriolic defensiveness over the past several days. As a word of caution, however, it comes across as very insulting when you use condescending quips to refute someone's claims rather than a reasoned counter-argument backed up by evidence. It would have been far better to state your skepticism politely and request sources. If you're unfamiliar with the field, it's also good to keep in mind that it's fairly easy to misconstrue some arguments. 172 08:04, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've had a chance to visit the library and do some poking around the net, and it's been quite interesting to get more familiar with the historiography; more than a few of the historians seem to be less concerned with research and more concerned about picking departments that will align comfortably with their political advocacy (happens in CS too, one of the reasons I decided against an academic career). Anyway, the main thing I've come away with is that despite the mentions of postrevisionism, this is really an old-school revisionist account. But it seems no one else is interested in discussing this material, and there are a hundred things I'd rather be doing than fighting over every word here, so until the situation changes, I won't be spending any more time on this article. Stan 06:34, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not really. This article is way too short and too much of a broad outline to firmly fall into either category of revisionism or post-revisionism. Superficially, it may come across as "old school revisionism" since the timeframe draws attention to the emergence of the Third World as an arena of Cold War competition (and covert action). Anyhow, I'll get to listing the sources and adding the footnotes soon (I had been busy the past several days).

BTW, thanks for researching the subject. I hope that you change your mind and start helping to complete this series. In case you or anyone else is interested, here is the list of topics (that I posted on this talk page earlier) that still need to be addressed or expounded upon in this article:

The French and the idea of the EDC, Sino-Soviet relations, problems in the Soviet bloc, institutions and bureaucracies for crisis-management and diplomacy, growing executive powers, bureaucratic infighting (e.g., Dulles vs. Rockefeller), the Rio Pact (yes, more on pro-American "pacts" in the Third World!), and the Eisenhower Doctrine. We also need more on Guatemala as a turning point in US foreign policy (i.e. Guatemala was not headed by a Communist movement, its impact on future Latin American revolutionaries, and the failures to install a liberal pro-American reformer), more on Franco-American diplomacy after Dien Bien Phu, more on theoretical developments and reformulations of international relations, more on the growing influence of the "Domino Theory", more on the Geneva Accords (desperately needed), more on Mendes-France and the French atomic bomb, more on McCarthyism and the atomic scientists, more on the Austrian peace treaty, more on changes in Soviet foreign policy after Stalin's death, more backgrounding on the Aswan Dam, and more on dissenting figures in American foreign policy circles (e.g. Kennan's growing concerns with the directions taken after NSC-68). 172 15:21, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)