Richard Saull, Rethinking Theory and History in the Cold War: The State, Military Power and Social Revolution. London: Frank Cass, 2001. xvii 1 238 pp. $59.50.
Reviewing a book involves judging it not merely on the standard grounds (research, writing, organization, originality, importance, and so forth) but also asking oneself more informal questions: Does this teach me much? Is it changing my thinking? Would it be worth finishing were I not reviewing it? The answers, often difficult and nuanced, are clear in this case: No.
This is not because the book attempts too little. It promises nothing less than "an alternative understanding of the Cold War based on a reconceptualization of existing theoretical categories through an engagement with history and sociology" (p.209)—more concretely, a revitalized Marxist, historical-materialist interpretation of the Cold War. This interpretation purports to show that the Cold War resulted from the transformation of international politics wrought by the Bolshevik Revolution and the totally new kind of state founded by it, as well as the ensuing clash between two fundamentally different brands of internationalist politics pursued by it and by capitalist states.
More than half the book pursues this reconceptualization theoretically. After attempting to redefine the Cold War, Saull reviews existing schools of international relations theory, loosely categorized as realist, pluralist and ideas based, and historical- materialist in approach, all being found more or less inadequate (or, as he likes to say, "problematic"). Three long theoretical chapters reconceptualize the politics of the state, military power and strategic conflict, and social revolution in the Cold War. A briefer historical section analyzes the international relations of the Soviet Union andthe United States in the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions, respectively—events that the author contends both defined the Cold War and demonstrated its true dynamics. A concluding chapter sums up how this Marxist analysis illuminates both the Cold War and the nature of modern international politics under the capitalist world order.
Unfortunately, the book fulfills none of its claims, for various reasons. The research is a contributing factor. The book is based on fairly wide reading, but all in English-language secondary literature, mainly political science and international relations works of the English school, above all the left. This provides no basis for serious engagement with realist theory or its alternatives (liberal institutionalism, social constructivism, etc.) and makes for major distortions and omissions. The situation in regard to history is far worse. Most of the major works on the history of the Cold War are simply missing from Saull's bibliography.
Style is another problem. Unlike many British works on international relations notable for incisive aperçus, clear exposition, and readable style, this one is verbose, tedious, repetitive, given to relentless abstractions and generalization devoid of concrete example and illustration, and riddled with obfuscating, irritating jargon, whether Marxist or otherwise. [End Page 82]
The suspicion that the emphasis on theorizing and generalization means inadequate treatment of various elements of the Cold War is fully justified. No one of course expects the book to be a compendium of facts or a narrative history. But if the Cold War is to be reconceptualized, this surely requires the reinterpretation of elements universally seen as central to it. What can one make of a theoretical and historical "rethinking" of the Cold War that (despite disclaimers to the contrary) reduces it to a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, treating everything else as a function of this standoff? Although the book purports to "globalize" the conflict, it in fact almost totally ignores Europe and the North Atlantic and discusses China mainly and France solely in relation to Vietnam. Japan and Korea play no role at all in the book, which also barely mentions Germany and never examines the German question. Nor does Great Britain (which British historians have shown to be an important independent actor throughout the Cold War) ever get mentioned.
The main problem with the book, however, is that it is badly argued. It has a central thesis, constantly restated. Put more simply than the author does, it is essentially this: States are not fixed cookie-cutter entities or units in international politics; instead, they are widely varying products of socioeconomic relations, especially relations of production, which constitute them. Because states formed by capitalism separate economic activity largely from their direct political control, such states do not depend for the expansion of their power and influence solely on direct political and military action, but can expand indirectly through participation in the international economic order. Because states formed by social revolution such as the USSR and the East European countries that followed its example (voluntarily or otherwise) brought all political, military, and economic activity under the control of central political authorities, they could not defend or expand their power and influence indirectly within the international capitalist world order and instead had to rely on military power and the spread of social revolution. The Cold War, Saull contends, resulted from the clash between these two different styles of international politics largely dictated by the differing relations of social production on the two sides.
The trouble with this thesis is not that it is obviously wrong. Much about it is correct—and also familiar. (Much is also dubious—for example, that sovereign states are constituted by their socioeconomic relations, in particular by capitalism, when most states in Europe became sovereign while still "feudal" in Marxist terms.) The trouble is that the author asserts his thesis rather than substantiates it, and he does not seem to understand what substantiating it would require. To characterize or define the Cold War as fundamentally a clash between two modes of international politics produced by two different kinds of states is not to say what caused it, any more than one could say that the Anglo-Russian Great Game in Asia in the nineteenth century or the conflicts between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish and French monarchies in the seventeenth were caused, as opposed to characterized, by profound differences between these states derived from their differing relations of production. (Incidentally, despite Saull's claims to emphasize historical process, his view and use of history are restricted essentially to 1917 and after.)
Realists and others could accept much of Saull's analysis as presenting underlying [End Page 83] conditions and predisposing factors behind the Cold War; many do. They might also readily grant that these elements help explain the persistence of the Cold War as well as its final outcome—they help show, for example, why the Soviet Union could not gain and keep reliable friends and allies while the United States could. (Though a Marxist, Saull actually presents a strong argument for the greater flexibility, adaptability, and stability of a capitalist international order.) But to show that this fundamental clash caused the Cold War, one would have to demonstrate with convincing evidence that it drove and/or rendered unavoidable the particular actions and decisions on both sides that actually produced the conflict. For example, one would have to show that fear of social revolution on the part of the United States and its allies or the necessity of preserving market opportunities trumped other considerations in confronting the Soviet Union in Europe, or that the desire and need to expand by military and revolutionary means was decisive for the Soviet Union, and that both types of policies flowed necessarily from their essential nature as capitalist and social-revolutionary states. Obviously, such a case could be attempted—and repeatedly has been (a point that makes Saull's neglect of the European center of the conflict seem even more peculiar). But the case cannot simply be asserted.
This review is not an endorsement of the realist position on the Cold War and international politics generally or another triumphalist consigning of Marxism to the trash can of historiography. There are, I think, more satisfactory alternatives to realism in international relations theory, as well as important uses for Marxist analysis in international politics, including aspects of the Cold War. But the analysis must be developed differently and must be presented better than it is here.
PaulW.Schroeder
University of Illinois