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Beyond the Cold War
Essays promote the arguments for nuclear disarmament, examine the ethics of arms sales, and assess the current state of political relations between East and West
198 pages, Paperback
Published August 12, 1982
21 people want to read
About the author
E.P. Thompson
84 books227 followersEdward Palmer Thompson was an English historian, writer, marxist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class (1963). He also published influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He also published the novel The Sykaos Papers and a collection of poetry.
Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition," calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and during the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.
Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition," calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and during the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.
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March 25, 2022
The best of the three Thompson pamphlets read in an attempt to form a new on the role of NATO in the contemporary politics of Europe - particularly in the light of the war in Ukraine. This was an argument taking place back in the early 1980s when the NATO doctrine of deterrence on the grounds of mutually assured destruction was being eroded by the introduction of tactical battlefield nukes that were supposed to make a nuclear war thinkable and winnable.
Thompson asks us to mark the significance of this development and want it meant in instigating a new arms race. The US at the time had clear superiority in terms of nuclear warheads and was proposing to add to this with the placement of cruise missiles in Europe. He quotes his Russian collaborator in the peace movement, the historian, Roy Medvedev on what this meant for Soviet psychology, with the USSR being obliged, “to catch up from a point of inferiority. This permanent dynamic has structured Russian responses deeply, creating a pervasive inferiority complex that has probably prevailed over rational calculations in the 70s."
Thompson claimed the US had “rattled its nuclear weapons in their scabbard, as a matter of state policy, on at least 19 occasions.” By the end of the 1940s the SU was surrounded by forward strategic bases. By comparison the SU had attempted this only once, in Cuba. Because of this it became possible to proclaim the West as the camp of democracy and the East as the camp of peace.
The possibility of united disarmament action across Europe led by civil society was disrupted by a dual movement whereby social movements supporting democracy in the East were seen as agents of the imperialist West and peace protesters in the West as dupes of Moscow. Any transcontinental movement for peace and democracy became impossible.
Thompson recalls Pasternak’s view on indirect results of great events, like the October Revolution, which are experienced as the “fruit of fruits, the consequences of consequences.” Read into the history of NATO, the Cold War at the time of the alliance founding in 1947 was the product of “particular contingencies” at the end of WW2 “which struck the flowing rivers of political culture into glaciated stasis, and struck intellectual culture in into glaciated permafrost. The Cold War frontiers were fixed, in some part, precisely by ‘deterrence’ – by the unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weaponry which, by coincidence, was invented at this historical moment.”
By the 1980s it was necessary to ask again what the Cold War was about. Thompson’s answer – it was about itself; continuing with the momentum established when the alliance consolidated into the bureaucracy of the military and political establishment. “It is in the very nature of the Cold War now that there must be two adversaries: and each move by one must be matched by the other.”
He discusses the construction of the ‘Other’ as a necessary component in enabling bonding within the ranks of the 'Us'. In the Cold War the opposed others have a ideological function as well as expressing geographical space – Communism v Capitalism overwritten onto Eurasian and American.
Interestingly, and contrary to the conventional view of Thompson's politics, he did not cast himself or the movement he was trying to bring into existence as either neutralist or pacifist, but rather ‘third way’. In a poignant passage he reviews the evidence of a 'self-liberation' which was underway at that time with the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland being its epicentre. This pointed to the possibility of a détente of the people rather than a détente of states. A significant moment of history in which a turn for the better was missed, and NATO was allowed to continue rumbling on for no other reason than continuing to be itself, whatever changes were taking place in the world around it.
Thompson asks us to mark the significance of this development and want it meant in instigating a new arms race. The US at the time had clear superiority in terms of nuclear warheads and was proposing to add to this with the placement of cruise missiles in Europe. He quotes his Russian collaborator in the peace movement, the historian, Roy Medvedev on what this meant for Soviet psychology, with the USSR being obliged, “to catch up from a point of inferiority. This permanent dynamic has structured Russian responses deeply, creating a pervasive inferiority complex that has probably prevailed over rational calculations in the 70s."
Thompson claimed the US had “rattled its nuclear weapons in their scabbard, as a matter of state policy, on at least 19 occasions.” By the end of the 1940s the SU was surrounded by forward strategic bases. By comparison the SU had attempted this only once, in Cuba. Because of this it became possible to proclaim the West as the camp of democracy and the East as the camp of peace.
The possibility of united disarmament action across Europe led by civil society was disrupted by a dual movement whereby social movements supporting democracy in the East were seen as agents of the imperialist West and peace protesters in the West as dupes of Moscow. Any transcontinental movement for peace and democracy became impossible.
Thompson recalls Pasternak’s view on indirect results of great events, like the October Revolution, which are experienced as the “fruit of fruits, the consequences of consequences.” Read into the history of NATO, the Cold War at the time of the alliance founding in 1947 was the product of “particular contingencies” at the end of WW2 “which struck the flowing rivers of political culture into glaciated stasis, and struck intellectual culture in into glaciated permafrost. The Cold War frontiers were fixed, in some part, precisely by ‘deterrence’ – by the unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weaponry which, by coincidence, was invented at this historical moment.”
By the 1980s it was necessary to ask again what the Cold War was about. Thompson’s answer – it was about itself; continuing with the momentum established when the alliance consolidated into the bureaucracy of the military and political establishment. “It is in the very nature of the Cold War now that there must be two adversaries: and each move by one must be matched by the other.”
He discusses the construction of the ‘Other’ as a necessary component in enabling bonding within the ranks of the 'Us'. In the Cold War the opposed others have a ideological function as well as expressing geographical space – Communism v Capitalism overwritten onto Eurasian and American.
Interestingly, and contrary to the conventional view of Thompson's politics, he did not cast himself or the movement he was trying to bring into existence as either neutralist or pacifist, but rather ‘third way’. In a poignant passage he reviews the evidence of a 'self-liberation' which was underway at that time with the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland being its epicentre. This pointed to the possibility of a détente of the people rather than a détente of states. A significant moment of history in which a turn for the better was missed, and NATO was allowed to continue rumbling on for no other reason than continuing to be itself, whatever changes were taking place in the world around it.
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