Several thoughts have come together as I read our various readings. I will begin with J.L. Gaddis. Like many of our group, I too read the "We Now Know" and went on to read his latest installment on the Cold War. I certainly agree that his knowledge of history is encyclopedic. Eminent historian he is, I see his historical interpretations fall squarely in the triumphalist camp. Further, it appears he is too enamored with Reagan to be critical of him. He may teach his classes at Yale differently, perhaps more even handed, but I am reminded of a professor I had at UC Berkeley that stated, "to get to Yale from here, you go east, and then when you get to the East Coast, turn sharply to the RIGHT."

From what I gather through Gaddis' texts, the blame for the development of the Cold War lies solely at Stalin's feet. I am not wholly satisfied with this conclusion. This chain of events and conditions that ultimately created the Cold War reaches quite far back - predating Stalin.

I must share with our cohort that my background involves both history and religious studies as majors. In my studies I have come across a situation that I feel has relevance here: The Free Tibet pop culture lobby in the US and other parts of Western civilization has a strange hold on people... its supporters include both movie stars and other regular folk. Yet it is fraught with contradictions. Over all, their premise is that the People’s Republic of China is brutal, and bad, etc. Though I do not deny the disruptive force the People’s Liberation Army has had on the Tibet and its oligarchy, and Tibetan society in general, there is a tendency to assign blame to the PRC's involvement in Tibet for the diminishing of that society’s Buddhist traditions in that region.

However, there is a province in Nepal (Mustang) that also practices the same Tibetan form of Buddhism as in Tibet. Even so, the area itself has no monks, only the old monasteries. Yet that area completely lacks any external forces shattering the local religion, there was no one to force monks out of monasteries, etc. Thus, if one only knew of the situation in Tibet from the perspective of the Hollywood pop culture lobby, one might conclude that the PRC is solely responsible for the decline in boys entering the Tibetan monasteries, not recognizing that other forces (like the modern world itself) is part of the causation of change.

The reason I point out this situation, is because I believe it is too easy to jump on the triumphalist band wagon, and accept that explanation on the origins, continuation and conclusion of the Cold War to be thus resolved. Most things in this world have a much more complicated history. Thus we must consider other input.

To paraphrase a comment Professor Gaddis makes in The Cold War: A New History, 'people who live in the events are often not the best judge for understanding the event itself.' I can only agree with this to a certain extent. As I mentioned above, as Gaddis looks back 60 years, he attributes the Cold War largely to Stalin and Stalin’s Pygmalion project of making of the Soviet State an extension of Stalin himself. Gaddis lived during this history, and thus would have to also excuse himself. But it is unnecessary. Those present in the history of events leave important data and commentary for us to consider in the post-mortem autopsy.

I believe that individuals like Kolko and Horowitz have salient points to make, although their critiques come from an age that dates to about the dead center of the Cold War. Horowitz said that the US was counter revolutionary and had the aim to crush any movement that promoted radical change. He said this in 1965. Maintaining the status quo for markets has unfortunately been a big part of US Foreign Policy, perhaps more significantly than that of 'making the world safe for democracy' – as any Iranian can tell you. It does appear that by supporting non-democratic regimes the US lost much good will in various areas of the world, in which we would now benefit at the passing of the Cold War.

The US had a wonderful warning from the authors of "The Ugly American" (First published in 1958…) Here, in that book, which was widely read in the US, American Foreign Policy received a disdainful indictment of how Foreign Policy played out overseas. The US has regularly left its ideals at home, only to export a rapacious mercantilism, rather than exporting what is right with America. Even after the Cold War we continued to allow atrocities such as those seen in East Timor…. Was it worth playing to such spurious allies through out the Cold War?

Further, Kolko’s 1968 assertion in "The Politics of War", also concludes that US support of conservatives in Eastern Europe was to thwart Soviet objectives. As such, Kolko seems to suggest it was the aggression on the part of the US that made the Cold War inevitable.

As I mentioned on someone else's thread, the crass nature of the Non-Agression Pact between Stalin and Hitler has cynical echoes in Churchill's own admission of a similar episode Churchill himself initiated between Churchill and Stalin known as the Percentage Deal of 1944. But let me stop for a minute and solicit your comments. Feel free!

Works referenced include:

Gaddis, We Now Know (1996) & The Cold War: A New History (2005)

Horowitz, The Free World Colossus; A critique of American foreign policy in the cold war (1965) pp. 413-414

Kolko, Politics of War : The World and United States Foreign Policy 1943-1945 (1968)

Lederer and Burdick, The Ugly American (1958)

Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy Vol. VI of The Second World War (1953)