The Cold War, For Forty-Five Years the World Held its Breath, (2012) Isaacs and Downing
The Cold War is an example of humanity at its worst. It was, on one hand, a breathtakingly expensive exercise in one-upmanship, and on the other, the closest our race has ever come to self-destruction. Growing up with the Russians as the bad guys sparked my interest in international affairs. The prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction terrified millions of ordinary people for decades. However, American and Soviet paranoia also created NASA and the Space Race, putting men on the moon. At the same time it caused the destruction of islands, cities and communities through nuclear weapons testing and ultimately wasted trillions of dollars worth of resources that should have been better spent.
At the peak of the cold war both sides possessed enough of a nuclear arsenal to destroy the whole of humanity several times over. On at least two occasions, during the Cuban missile crisis and again in 1973 in the Arab-Israeli October War Soviet and US leaders played chicken with missiles.
Even today a Cold War story will still make headlines. The Independent newspaper is owned by the Russian Oligarch Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny. You may have heard of Lebedev, he is not without controversy, having punched a fellow Oligarch on live Russian TV last year. He also owns a couple of banks and has fingers in Gazprom, Aeroflot and other large Russian outfits. He also dabbles in politics and is highly critical of the current Kremlin administration, which is risky business these days. He has recently had to announce a withdrawal from some of his Russian interests citing raids on his business premises. I hardly think he has a case for being all that surprised either. He is probably fairly high up on the hit list and, if he isn’t careful, will find himself sat next to Khorkodovsky in Siberia. He also owns London’s Evening Standard.
Not surprisingly The Independent is not scared to thrown the odd Russian story out there. A couple of weeks ago one edition had two stories; one about shady Oligarch dealings in Surrey (a near constant state of affairs) and another about a forty year old US led attempt to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon.
Yes, on the moon. Two US scientists have claimed that they were ordered to do a feasibility study into the viability of launching a rocket armed with nuclear war head, the ultimate intention being to detonate them on the moon. This, it was thought by the US government, would teach the Soviets a lesson. Mercifully someone with common sense called the project off before it got too far down the Yellow Brick Road.
There are a multitude of books on the subject charting the period from the end of the Second World War through to 1991 and the failed coup. Almost every world conflict had a US or Soviet backer, there was no concept of neutral. From Berlin to Korea, Guatemala to Cuba, Vietnam to El Salvador, Star Wars and the eventual collapse of the Eastern European regimes in 1989, most texts in circulation take us through the brinkmanship of communist versus capitalist.
I have worked my way through many of them. The ones I read in school in the 80s and 90s usually stuck to the bad vs good theory, all-weapons-are-bad-but-it-is-better-to-have-them theory. Chernobyl, Solidarnosc in Poland, Glasnost, Perestroika and the will of the people across Eastern Europe all combined to bring about the end. Etc, etc.
It is however, a very human drama, not just for the ordinary beings living under both regimes, but also for those with the power to destroy. Somehow this fallibility of leadership was glossed over in every earlier text book.
In 1998 Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing published a book Cold War with the snappy strap line, ‘For Forty-Five Years the World Held its Breath’. It was originally commissioned to go with a 24 part series for the American broadcaster CNN. No less than four revised editions have been issued since and the book appears to have made it onto a couple of syllabuses in education centres across the US and UK. I recently worked my way through the 2012 edition.
There are no new facts, it has to be said. There is certainly nothing about the potential for nuclear eradication of the moon, take note Independent. The book does however have one unique standout quality, it provides detailed insight and profiles of all the key personalities. There are some wonderfully detailed glimpses into the psyches of all the big players that you would only normally glean from full length biographies and memoirs, if at all.
There are traditionally careful accounts of Lenin, Stalin and Churchill and Eisenhower as well as J Edgar Hoover and Laverti Beria. But it is in the later figures that most surprises are dealt. President Harry S. Truman’s more controversial decisions are described in detail. War time president Roosevelt, despite his failing health, had kept his vice President Truman largely in the dark as to his private discussions with Stalin and Churchill. When Roosevelt died on April 12 1945 Truman found himself President. Three months later he sanctioned the single biggest act of aggression on foreign soil and still to this day, the only nuclear detonations in the act of war. It killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians. Truman is described critically as being largely ignorant of foreign affairs, only capable of black and white thinking and not good with details. His dialogue with the Soviets was a sharp contrast to Roosevelt’s more conciliatory approach. On being informed of successful testing of an atomic bomb in July 1945 Winston Churchill noted that President Truman seemed a changed man delighting in the power he had now under his command. The decision he took to deploy the bomb was undoubtedly off set against the prospect of thousands of US casualties during a land invasion, but we will never know if Roosevelt would have made the same call. Truman’s relentlessly anti-soviet approach arguably deepened the entrenchment of the post war Soviet position. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, was a significant step towards 45 years of ‘them and us’. The Marshall Plan saved the lives of millions of ‘us’ and that will probably be his lasting legacy.
After the death of Stalin in 1953 Beria, Molotov and Malenkov were too busy trying to out manoeuvre each other to notice Nikita Khrushchev sneak himself into power. According to Isaacs and Downing, he was by all accounts something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. Stalin’s former protégé could be as ruthless as Stalin himself, brutally sending thousands to their deaths in camps earlier in his career. Contradictorily, he often seemed overawed by the potential devastation under his control. His programme of de-stalinisiation and role in the Cuban missile crisis make him a crucial figure in Soviet history yet he was forced out, mostly drunk, aged and tired, he was pensioned off and lived out his days in isolation and anonymity in his country dasha. His relationship with JFK is fascinating, their initial stand offs are a simple case of two men trying to out do each other. Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B Johnson never manages to establish any relationship with his Soviet counterparts, his Vietnam War and other conflicts broke him personally and he stated he would not seek a second term.
The Krelim preferred American republicans by and large and things ebbed and flowed throughout the Nixon and Ford era punctuated by occasional spats over the Middle East. It is Isaacs and Downings portrayal of Jimmy Carter’s term in office that is most interesting. Carter is portrayed as an unfortunate innocent, a peanut farmer catapulted into politics on the back of an all-American desire to do the right thing. Nuclear disarmament is an issue that even today Carter still campaigns on through his foundation. But back in the late 70s his key advisors and a hostile Brezhnez resulted in a lack of clear cut strategy. Despite being elected on a disarmament ticket he found himself raising defence spending, further dangerously freezing relations and leading the Olympic boycott of Moscow 1980, almost without realising it.
Ronald Regan is rather cruelly described as viewing the Presidency of the US as another acting role, requiring key issues be summarised one sheet of paper only, double spaced at that. Regan as an actor had been fervently anti-communist and he had worked hard to eradicate the evil, as he described it, from within the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild. Isaac and Downing paint a picture of an aging actor firm in the belief that the US was in every way superior, and this superiority would win through. Without expressly stating it, it is perhaps the authors intention that the reader be left with the impression that the Gorbachev led events of the time would have happened without him. We will never know what way events would have turned without Gorbachev, his thinking was so fervently different.
The book makes it clear that history very much hinged on the personality traits of the individual leaders of the time. Some of them whilst in control of the power to destroy the world were perhaps badly advised, unsure, even terrified of the decisions they made. Some, even more worryingly, were more trigger happy than we will ever know. The cold war may be long over, but its icy armaments remain, spread around the world, in Israel, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, China and India as well as Russia and the US. The future still depends on the personality of those in charge, whoever they are and wherever they are.
At the peak of the cold war both sides possessed enough of a nuclear arsenal to destroy the whole of humanity several times over. On at least two occasions, during the Cuban missile crisis and again in 1973 in the Arab-Israeli October War Soviet and US leaders played chicken with missiles.
Even today a Cold War story will still make headlines. The Independent newspaper is owned by the Russian Oligarch Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny. You may have heard of Lebedev, he is not without controversy, having punched a fellow Oligarch on live Russian TV last year. He also owns a couple of banks and has fingers in Gazprom, Aeroflot and other large Russian outfits. He also dabbles in politics and is highly critical of the current Kremlin administration, which is risky business these days. He has recently had to announce a withdrawal from some of his Russian interests citing raids on his business premises. I hardly think he has a case for being all that surprised either. He is probably fairly high up on the hit list and, if he isn’t careful, will find himself sat next to Khorkodovsky in Siberia. He also owns London’s Evening Standard.
Not surprisingly The Independent is not scared to thrown the odd Russian story out there. A couple of weeks ago one edition had two stories; one about shady Oligarch dealings in Surrey (a near constant state of affairs) and another about a forty year old US led attempt to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon.
Yes, on the moon. Two US scientists have claimed that they were ordered to do a feasibility study into the viability of launching a rocket armed with nuclear war head, the ultimate intention being to detonate them on the moon. This, it was thought by the US government, would teach the Soviets a lesson. Mercifully someone with common sense called the project off before it got too far down the Yellow Brick Road.
There are a multitude of books on the subject charting the period from the end of the Second World War through to 1991 and the failed coup. Almost every world conflict had a US or Soviet backer, there was no concept of neutral. From Berlin to Korea, Guatemala to Cuba, Vietnam to El Salvador, Star Wars and the eventual collapse of the Eastern European regimes in 1989, most texts in circulation take us through the brinkmanship of communist versus capitalist.
I have worked my way through many of them. The ones I read in school in the 80s and 90s usually stuck to the bad vs good theory, all-weapons-are-bad-but-it-is-better-to-have-them theory. Chernobyl, Solidarnosc in Poland, Glasnost, Perestroika and the will of the people across Eastern Europe all combined to bring about the end. Etc, etc.
It is however, a very human drama, not just for the ordinary beings living under both regimes, but also for those with the power to destroy. Somehow this fallibility of leadership was glossed over in every earlier text book.
In 1998 Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing published a book Cold War with the snappy strap line, ‘For Forty-Five Years the World Held its Breath’. It was originally commissioned to go with a 24 part series for the American broadcaster CNN. No less than four revised editions have been issued since and the book appears to have made it onto a couple of syllabuses in education centres across the US and UK. I recently worked my way through the 2012 edition.
There are no new facts, it has to be said. There is certainly nothing about the potential for nuclear eradication of the moon, take note Independent. The book does however have one unique standout quality, it provides detailed insight and profiles of all the key personalities. There are some wonderfully detailed glimpses into the psyches of all the big players that you would only normally glean from full length biographies and memoirs, if at all.
There are traditionally careful accounts of Lenin, Stalin and Churchill and Eisenhower as well as J Edgar Hoover and Laverti Beria. But it is in the later figures that most surprises are dealt. President Harry S. Truman’s more controversial decisions are described in detail. War time president Roosevelt, despite his failing health, had kept his vice President Truman largely in the dark as to his private discussions with Stalin and Churchill. When Roosevelt died on April 12 1945 Truman found himself President. Three months later he sanctioned the single biggest act of aggression on foreign soil and still to this day, the only nuclear detonations in the act of war. It killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians. Truman is described critically as being largely ignorant of foreign affairs, only capable of black and white thinking and not good with details. His dialogue with the Soviets was a sharp contrast to Roosevelt’s more conciliatory approach. On being informed of successful testing of an atomic bomb in July 1945 Winston Churchill noted that President Truman seemed a changed man delighting in the power he had now under his command. The decision he took to deploy the bomb was undoubtedly off set against the prospect of thousands of US casualties during a land invasion, but we will never know if Roosevelt would have made the same call. Truman’s relentlessly anti-soviet approach arguably deepened the entrenchment of the post war Soviet position. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, was a significant step towards 45 years of ‘them and us’. The Marshall Plan saved the lives of millions of ‘us’ and that will probably be his lasting legacy.
After the death of Stalin in 1953 Beria, Molotov and Malenkov were too busy trying to out manoeuvre each other to notice Nikita Khrushchev sneak himself into power. According to Isaacs and Downing, he was by all accounts something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. Stalin’s former protégé could be as ruthless as Stalin himself, brutally sending thousands to their deaths in camps earlier in his career. Contradictorily, he often seemed overawed by the potential devastation under his control. His programme of de-stalinisiation and role in the Cuban missile crisis make him a crucial figure in Soviet history yet he was forced out, mostly drunk, aged and tired, he was pensioned off and lived out his days in isolation and anonymity in his country dasha. His relationship with JFK is fascinating, their initial stand offs are a simple case of two men trying to out do each other. Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B Johnson never manages to establish any relationship with his Soviet counterparts, his Vietnam War and other conflicts broke him personally and he stated he would not seek a second term.
The Krelim preferred American republicans by and large and things ebbed and flowed throughout the Nixon and Ford era punctuated by occasional spats over the Middle East. It is Isaacs and Downings portrayal of Jimmy Carter’s term in office that is most interesting. Carter is portrayed as an unfortunate innocent, a peanut farmer catapulted into politics on the back of an all-American desire to do the right thing. Nuclear disarmament is an issue that even today Carter still campaigns on through his foundation. But back in the late 70s his key advisors and a hostile Brezhnez resulted in a lack of clear cut strategy. Despite being elected on a disarmament ticket he found himself raising defence spending, further dangerously freezing relations and leading the Olympic boycott of Moscow 1980, almost without realising it.
Ronald Regan is rather cruelly described as viewing the Presidency of the US as another acting role, requiring key issues be summarised one sheet of paper only, double spaced at that. Regan as an actor had been fervently anti-communist and he had worked hard to eradicate the evil, as he described it, from within the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild. Isaac and Downing paint a picture of an aging actor firm in the belief that the US was in every way superior, and this superiority would win through. Without expressly stating it, it is perhaps the authors intention that the reader be left with the impression that the Gorbachev led events of the time would have happened without him. We will never know what way events would have turned without Gorbachev, his thinking was so fervently different.
The book makes it clear that history very much hinged on the personality traits of the individual leaders of the time. Some of them whilst in control of the power to destroy the world were perhaps badly advised, unsure, even terrified of the decisions they made. Some, even more worryingly, were more trigger happy than we will ever know. The cold war may be long over, but its icy armaments remain, spread around the world, in Israel, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, China and India as well as Russia and the US. The future still depends on the personality of those in charge, whoever they are and wherever they are.
