The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War

             A chronological military history of the Cold War.  Although it covers a good deal of information in a relatively short amount of space, the text still manages to convey many of the particular biases and interests of the author, Norman Friedman.  Friedman’s politics appear to be conservative.  His favor of democracy and a free market over Communism is utterly clear while his dislike of even the moderately “left” is more subtle but features large in the text as a whole.  For instance, his treatment of Kennedy in general is not complementary.  He takes many opportunities to inform his readers that Kennedy is naïve and incompetent (Friedman 253 ).  While on the other hand, Friedman is more or les neutral aboutNixon and enthusiastic about the Reagan administration (Friedman 452 ).

            Friedman’s unique background in physics also gives him the ability to translate many of the technicalities of Cold War hardware into language that the average history student can understand and internalize an overall discussion of the period.   About every other chapter is filled with technical-style data related to the developed and developing weapons systems of the Cold War.  His discussion of technology in this way gives his book a unique style which adds to the overall historiography of the period in its own niche. 

            Also adding to the historiography are the major themes of the book which include his notion that the Cold War was in fact a “real war” fought in slow motion.  In the introduction he compares the Cold War to a previous “hot war,” pointing out that the course of the Cold War followed roughly the same course as WWI (Friedman xi).   Another major theme is that of the predicament of two opposing political ideologies armed with weapons of mass destruction, each suspicious and unsure of each other’s motives.  To Friedman, this led to the fact that many decisions made of both sides were erroneous decisions based on assumptions about capabilities, behaviors, and reactions that were simply false.  A third major theme is the role of leadership in the United States and the Soviet Union. 

            The idea that the Cold War was a “real war” fought in slow motion hinges upon Friedman’s analysis of the fifty year period analogous to World War I.  This analogy is made in the Introduction and serves as a template for the entire book, even though Friedman does not explicitly come back to the analogy after his Introduction.  In this intriguing analysis Friedman points out that the temperament that caused World War I is probably the same that caused the Cold War.  He says that, like the Germans of 1914, the Soviets sought to “stave off imagined threats of growing…” Western power by preemptive strikes (Friedman xiv).  Given Stalin’s paranoia and seemingly inept diplomatic blunders in the aftermath of World War II, this treatment of the beginning of the Cold War is compelling.  Additionally, Friedman notes that the interest of the Allied powers of WWI was to “fend off” the Germans (Friedman xiv).  This policy is reflective of the United States policy of “Containment” which survived until the end of the Cold War.   Consequently, the maneuvering on both sides of the Cold War ended in a stalemate– the condition of Wold War I for most of the conflict.

            “Containment” was more-or-less a foreign and domestic policy and  Friedman points out that in a “war… fought in slow motion, domestic politics [are] enormously important” (Friedman xv).   According to Friedman in order for the Soviet Union to adapt to the threats of the West, domestic crisis was endemic.  In the U.S.S.R. changes in the command economy had huge domestic consequences.  For instance, when Khrushchev came to power he took upon himself the immense task of rebuilding the Soviet nation from a primarily conventional military force to a nuclear one.  Friedman points out that for the Soviet system, this shift of military force structure required a reworking of the entire Communist command economy.   Friedman states: “All of this change would have been unpleasant in any society.  In the Soviet system, it was far worse, because each change in the plan spread chaos throughout it” (Friedman 213).   On the other hand, not mentioned by Friedman inhis discussion of worldwide student movements, is how the  United States’s domestic side of the “Containment” policy led to McCarthyism and the suppression of radical student movements.

            Decisions on both sides of the war were made with the best information available to them at the time.  Given that the time was one of mistrust and deception, it should be no surprise that many decisions made by world leaders in the West and in the U.S.S.R. Were erroneous.  Friedman uses Gaddis’ term “we now know” in several places in the text with reference to those decisions and assumptions that various leaders made  for which we do “now know” were based on false information. For instance, turning again to the era of Khrushchev, Friedman points out that the “space race” was largely run because of the false perception that the Soviets had a superior ICBM production advantage (Friedman 233).   Additionally, because of Soviet rhetoric at the time, most U.S. policy makers (and the public) wrongly assumed that there was a “missile gap” with them on the downside.   

            The “missile gap” problem was handled by the Eisenhower administration–  one of the presidents that Friedman obviously favors in the line of Presidents who led the United States during the Cold War.        For Friedman, Eisenhower’s “New Look” was the prescient response of a President who had the experience of World War II and understood the complexities of the post-war period.  Eisenhower knew that a demobilization was necessary domestically, but that he also needed to deal with the ominous threat of the Soviet Union.  This threat, created by Beria and then institutionalized by Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, features large in Friedman’s discussion ofboth Truman and of Eisenhower.  Friedman gives Truman credit for quick reaction to the Korean crisis, and the Marshall Plan but obviously favors the “strong resolve” of  his  Republican successor. 

            The President that followed Eisenhower, JFK, does not fare as well.  Friedman’s low opinion of Kennedy as a leader is an intriguing decapitation one of the strongest myths of the “Baby Boomer” generation, namely, that President Kennedy was a great leader, perhaps the greatest the United States has ever know.  Friedman does not do this with much pomp, but instead, simply makes statements about JFK’s lack of understanding and incompetence as a matter of fact. For example, Friedman states: “…. On the other hand, far and away the best President of the Cold War was (Republican) Ronald Reagan, according to Friedman.  He wrote an entire chapter, “Counterattack: The West Rearms,” devoted to the policies of the Reagan Administration.  Although, remarkably, Friedman does not explicitly give credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union to Reagan, it will probably be evident to some readers that this is the message that he intends to convey. 

            Although Friedman tends to favor certain U.S. Presidents over others, his opinion of the various Soviet leaders is, by degrees, low.   He deals with Stalin in the typical, traditional way, pointing out that Stalin embodied the Communist-Imperial paradigm.  Furthermore, he insists that  Stalin always planned an early attack on the West, something that other scholars might disagree with (Friedman 186).   He similarly deals with Khrushchev, but points out that the situation in the Soviet Union when Khrushchev came to power was similar to the one that Eisenhower faced, an interesting comparison (Friedman 212).   The most important leader that Friedman takes to task on the Soviet side is Gorbachev. In the end, Friedman sees Mikhail Gorbachev as responsible for its collapse, because he “never understood that his state was built on terror, not on any kind of popular support.”

            A volume of this size encompassing so many different aspects of a period still being investigated by way of new information is bound to have some flaws.  Nevertheless, Friedman seems to be of the opinion that he has unlocked the “real story”– one might not be so sure.  Of particular interest around this idea is Friedman’s use of the expression that various leaders “did not understand” their economies or governmental policy, etc.  With reference to Kennedy, Friedman challenges the notion that Kennedy thought about his Inaugural Address (“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country”) since it was received by the Soviets as a “slap in the face.”  Some might consider this to be an outlandish claim considering thatKennedy’s speech is so famous and the fact the Soviets evidently took everything from the West as a “slap in the face” (Friedman 255). 

            Coming back to the expression “did not understand,” Friedman makes the following observation about Stalin and about Gorbachev.  With reference to Stalin, he states that the Soviet leader did not understand his own economy and with reference to Gorbachev he states that the last Soviet leader did not understand that his government was in power based on terror and not any kind of popular support.   One might find both of these far reaching statements a stretch.  For one, Stalin virtually created the command economy that he was head of.  It is more likely that Stalin simply did not care about the limits of his economy, if there were any.  Instead, Stalin sought to reach his own political goals, even at the expense of his ailing economy.  As for Gorbachev, it is just as likely to imagine a Soviet leader at the end, knowing the writing is on the wall, deliberately opening up to the West.  Nevertheless, to imagine that these important leaders did not understand their countries seems unlikely, if not impossible. 

            A major strength of Friedman’s book is the integration of technology and geopolitics and how they worked together in fighting the Cold War.  Although his background probably the reason for his interest and ability, what is intriguing about his treatment of the technology of the various military services is his subtle castigation of the U.S. Air Force and his favor of Navy technology.  Friedman seems to subtly say that the answer to the high costs of Air Force Bombers (SAC) was nuclear equipped Naval vessels.

            Although Friedman’s books is an important addition to the historiography of the Cold War, it should be read skeptically.  His treatment of the period is somewhat tainted by his own personal, political convictions which most will take to be conservative.  Nevertheless, Friedman has not written a Traditionalist text.  Instead, it is a text that pits both sides of the controversy of the Cold War against one another with a strong bias towards the West, something no student of the Cold War should complain about.  Unlike some of the recent neo-Traditionalist monographs, The Fifty Years War does not have the taint of American triumphalism, which is a good thing.   Instead, Friedman’s book is balanced and yet slightly tainted by his own personal convictions.