Fred Halliday: The Making of the Second Cold War, Verso, 1983, £4.95.
The Making of the Second Cold War is an invaluable weapon in the hands of socialists, internationalists and fighters for peace everywhere. The richness of its sources and the wealth of information contained in it qualify it as a classic example of the 'present as history'. Unfortunately it is not possible to give unqualified approval to the analysis contained within it.
Halliday rejects 'monocausal' explanations of the origins of the new Cold War. He examines a series of putative explanations and theories of Cold War, from crude 'Russian threat' analyses to revolutionary Marxist positions, before dismissing them all as one-sided. Instead, we should seek to integrate these different viewpoints in some sort of explanatory hierarchy. This Halliday proceeds to do, during 'Oscillatory Antagonism' and Detente.
In his opinion: 'The ebb and flow of revolution and counter-revolution, of class conflict and social upheaval, has been overshadowed and shaped by the far greater risks for both sides which the availability of nuclear [weaponry] has introduced' (p35). For him the pre-eminent level of Cold War Two is the 'Great Contest', the conflict between two vast and antagonistic social systems; a conflict mediated by the risks implicit in the possession of nuclear arsenals.
So where does this leave the class struggle? The author himself seems unsure about this. Sometimes he describes his view as being 'an extension of the class conflict theory' (p31), but this seems to be contradicted when he speaks of the class struggle as shaped and overshadowed by the Great Contest' and the potential for 'megadeath'. For all that the Contest may be above class struggle, it does seem that world revolution taps the Reagans and Andropovs on the shoulder from time to time. Thus 'Brezhnev's pursuit of Detente in the early 1970s was undermined by the revolutions that swept the third world from 1974 onwards' (p41).
Halliday's periodisation of the postwar period is also less than satisfactory. The First Cold War, dating from 1946-1953, is replaced by a period of 'Oscillatory Antagonism' from 1983 to 1969. Detente dates from 1969 to 1979, the year when the Second Cold War came into being. 'Oscillatory Antagonism' was a period in which attempts were made to lessen confrontation between the super powers, although these attempts were not successful.
Now is this true? The period is, after all, the one during which Kennedy campaigned on the basis of an alleged Soviet preponderance in ICBMs. It is also the period of the Cuban Missile crisis. And today, might we not be in a renewed period of 'Oscillatory Antagonism' rather than in the midst of a new Cold War? I have no doubt that Halliday is right in his characterisation of the period we are now living through, but in no way does he prove the case. Furthermore, it is not clear whether he believes the attempts to lessen antagonism represented the temporary abandonment of a strategy to 'rollback' the social gains made where capitalism had been overthrown, or a tactical adjustment within just such a strategy.
The bulk of the book is taken up with a detailed account of the factors that have gone into the making of the new Cold War, and of the arenas in which the struggle has been fought out. It is to these parts of the book that many socialists will look for facts and arguments to defeat the Cold War. Halliday shows beyond doubt that if the USA and USSR have both contributed to the Cold War, it is the USA which has taken the initiative and holds most of the responsibility. The book catalogues the revolutions that have swept the 'Third World' in the postwar years. Disappointingly taxonomy sometimes replaces analysis. One of the most fascinating chapters is the one which deals with the rise of the New Right in the USA. Halliday identifies the growing importance of the 'sunbelt', the recession and the response of Middle America to the assertiveness of ethnic and sexual groups as major causes of the rise of reaction. He records the susceptibility of Congress to the Right, and the crossover between military, political and economic interests. It will be interesting to see how far the freeze movement can worry members of Congress with small majorities!
Many readers of International will have sharp disagreements with the chapter entitled The involution of the Post-Revolutionary States'. It is not that the author is an apologist for the ruling bureaucracies of Eastern Europe and China, indeed his criticisms are sometimes as sharp as those of any Trotskyist. But the book [illegible] that the international policy of the Soviet Union is basically progressive and that it shifted to the left during the Brezhnev years. Far from being at the end of the day, allies of imperialism, the Stalinists turn out to be its opponents. Even Halliday's criticisms of the domestic policies of the [illegible] concerning its role. He indicts the bureaucracy for its failure to democratise and [argues] that this is a contributory factor to Cold War Two. The 'democracies' of the [West] make full use of the suppression of freedoms in the East, but even the most enlightened bu[reaucracy] [would never] jeopardise its own existence by permitting real workers' democracy.
For all the criticisms this is still a superb book. It sits uneasily between a Thompsonite 'exterminism' and revolutionary Marxism, but makes up for this by collecting in one place the information and history we need so badly. But, for all the commitment in the book, I detected a strand of pessimism. For if the class struggle is now determined by, rather than a determinant of, the 'Great Contest' and the arms race, the liberation of the working class will be the task of ...whom?
CHRIS BERTRAM is a member of the International editorial board.