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Cold War Dynamics: Historiography, Policy, and Perspectives on Vietnam and Connecticut (Summer 2006)

This analysis explores the complexities of Cold War historiography, focusing on significant works by historians like John Lewis Gaddis and the ideological battles surrounding foreign policy in the U.S., particularly in Connecticut. It examines the impact of NSC-68, the Vietnam War narratives, and the tension between traditional and revisionist interpretations. By analyzing competing views of the Vietnam War's origins, outcomes, and lessons, it reveals how these perspectives shape our understanding of the Cold War's legacy and the ways various groups leveraged the conflict for internal agendas.

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Cold War Dynamics: Historiography, Policy, and Perspectives on Vietnam and Connecticut (Summer 2006)

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Presentation Transcript

  1. HISTORY is CENTRAL Summer 2006 The Cold War ( and the Cold War in Connecticut)

  2. Duck and Cover (1951)

  3. Roadmap • Foreign Relations & Cold War & Historians • Leffler’s book • NSC-68 • Connecticut • Vietnam

  4. Foreign Relations • Orthodox • Revisionist • “Cultural Turn”

  5. Cold War Historiography • Traditionalists • New Left (Revisionists) • Post-Revisionists • John Lewis Gaddis

  6. Reagan as ultimate hero • Argument of John Lewis Gaddis and in “memory” of conservatives • Strong rhetoric, but practical • R. saw opportunity and seized it • R. pursued policy of strength

  7. Flaws in the Gaddis argument and much popular perception • Fails to see full picture of 1980s U.S., USSR, Eastern Europe, and World • Fails to see power of containment over the long haul

  8. Leffler Ideological competition and geostrategic threat made American officials aware of vulnerability of domestic political and economic institutions. Anti-Communism provided a simple framework to view the world (78, 119-20) Many groups used the Cold War to fight internal battles (25, 59-60, 79-80) Many policymakers feared that if the USSR took advantage of power vacuums, it could only be defeated by making the US a garrison state. (30, 47-48, 57, 61-62, 96, 126)

  9. NSC-68

  10. Connecticut

  11. Vietnam and the Cold War

  12. Vietnam Historiography • Extraordinary passions and influence of war • Several key issues: • Origins: necessary or a terrible mistake? • Outcome: why unable to preserve South Vietnam? Unwinnable? • Meaning and lessons: what are they?

  13. Two main camps • Critical - Vietnam a bad war - the “Standard Interpretation” • Legitimate endeavor that could have been won

  14. The “Standard Interpretation” • Critics dominated the early literature • Reversal of other war histories • Journalists and former officials start • The Bitter Heritage 1967 - Arthur Schlesinger Jr. - “quagmire” • “Quagmire” challenged by Pentagon Papers revelations • Presidents knew their actions might fail

  15. Radical interpretation • Anatomy of a War Gabriel Kolko 1985 • Structurally determined economic reasons

  16. Revisionist Challenge • (Argue vehemently against anyone who says “trying to rewrite history”) • Started to appear at end of 1970s • Part of growing conservative rise and fueled by postwar conditions in Vietnam

  17. Revisionists seek to justify war on either or both of these grounds: • Vietnamese Communists a part of a larger threat of Communism that was a real threat to U.S. • Moral reasons: to save the South from the ravages of Communism

  18. Revisionists also seek to argue that war was winnable • U.S. Grant Sharp Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect 1978 • But, two opposing views of how it could have been won • More conventional • More counter-insurgency • (each position claims the actual war was fought in the opposite manner)

  19. Recent Scholarship • Standard interpretation still holds for most historians • Herring’s book • What is being written now: • Broader in scope: Congress, other nations’ views • Archives from China and former USSR • Vietnamese side

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