What exactly is the revisionist view of the Cold War?

Question

Just to make sure, the revisionist view claims that the United States is mainly at fault for the Cold War? Why? Also, if you happen to know, what makes a scholar like William Appleman Williams different from the other revisionist scholars?

Answer 1

Okay, here's what I know, and what I have read.

The traditional, or orthodox, view of the Cold War is that it started because of Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe after WWII. The orthodox view places blame for the Cold War firmly on the Soviets, and claims that the mutual build up of arms, the espionage, and all the other stuff was just the West responding to the Soviets enlarging their area of influence and exercising influence on the goverments behind the Iron Curtain.

The revisionist view, as you noted above, shifts blame to the United States and her allies in the west, and came about after the war in Vietnam. Before Vietnam, the US was able to claim that all their actions during the Cold War were aimed at containment, or keeping the communist countries from infringing on their sphere of influence, basically meaning trying to keep communism "over there", and not allowing it to move closer to American interests, or take over the world. However, the fact that the US became involved in Vietnam makes that look suspect, as they were fighting communism not in their area of the world, but on the other side of the planet. It's one thing to fight the communists in Cuba, and say you are doing it to keep them out of your back yard, and quite another to fight them on an entirely different continent. The revisionist scholars have mainly argued that the US wanted not only to contain Soviet influence, but also, at the same time, expand US influence in all areas of the world. Part of that has to do with the idea that for capitalism to flourish, you need to have open markets and easy access to raw resources. Scholars, for the first time, started saying that the US was every bit as eager to extend their sphere of influence as far as possible as anyone else. Where before the US had claimed to be responding to Soviet efforts to spread communism, scholars pointed out that it looked like the US was actually aggressively pursuing an agenda of expanding their influence and trying to become a world power. Some scholars also argued that the Soviet Union, rather than trying to spread communism all over the world, was actually trying to set up a buffer zone of communist states to protect themselves from the US. They emerged from WWII fairly beaten down, and they began right away to build their sphere of influence in the east, but the revisionist view states that was because they were afraid that since they were totally weakened by WWII, they were afraid the US would take that opportunity to turn on them and kill communism for good. Does that make sense?

The only thing I know about Williams is that he wrote a famous book about the Cold War. In college, when we studied this, I learned that revisionist scholars all have their own theories and interpretations, but most of them frame their arguments as a response to him, rather than as an original idea. So basically, they are playing off of his original ideas, refining them, or expanding on them as they see fit. But he was, I think, the first, mainly because he wrote his book before the whole Vietnam thing, and other people didn't start looking at his ideas seriously, and considering the ramifications, until after Vietnam. That's really all I know about him.

I hope this makes sense and is of some use to you.

(And if it makes any difference to you, I am with the scholars called post-revisionists, who basically assign blame to both parties. I think it was a mutual buildup, with no one being completely blameless.)

Answer 2

Revisionist Theory

Answer 3

I'm not a big fan of revisionists. Communism was seen as a real threat after WW2, and had been a threat before the war. Countries like Germany and Italy had defeated the communists in the 1930's, although that gave rise to facsism in those countries and to Hitler and Mussolini.
Don't forget that America was not the only country fighting the "Cold War", she had plenty af allies.

Answer 4

Arthur Schlesinger gives a fairly thorough treatment of the revisionist school in his "Cycles of American History", part 2 "Why the Cold War. Being of the orthodox school he comes down pretty hard on the revisionists. However, he dismantles and examines their theories in such a way so as to appreciate the complexity of a period too often oversimplified as merely a standoff between the US and the USSR.

Answer 5

Haha. Yeah - Stalin was actually a nice guy. Gfaw!!

Answer 6

even modern day scholars ...have no idea what is in store !!!!!!!!