diplomacy Archives - Not Even Past

Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali

Nikita Khrushchev is one of the most important men of the last century. Moreover, he was the main protagonist of Soviet foreign policy during the most perilous period of the Cold War which climaxed with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. How dangerous was the Soviet Union to the West during Khrushchev’s term? Which factors contributed to sow distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union, and to what extent the Soviet menace was more bluff than real capabilities? Fursenko and Naftali answer these questions successfully by presenting an extensive and well-researched study that uncovers Soviet foreign policy during the Khrushchev’s Era.

In Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, the authors explore the complicated balance between cooperation with the West and competition for Third World support that undergirded the Soviet diplomatic strategy from 1955 to 1963.To understand these diplomatic maneuvers, Fursenko and Naftali focus on Khrushchev’s complex policies of building détente with his penchant for risky brinkmanship and coercive diplomacy which, he hoped, would yield substantive geopolitical gains. From the two Germanys question to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the final outcome of this dual diplomatic approach proved contradictory. The competition for Third World allies diverted scarce economic resources from domestic problems, and exacerbated tensions between the superpowers effectively undermining any sustainable opportunity for détente.

Fursenko and Naftali underline two elements that contributed to heightened tensions during the Cold War. The first one, perception in international politics, led to the frequent misreading of the adversary’s intentions, fostering a strong and lingering feeling of mistrust and deception. This atmosphere of misunderstanding transformed the years between 1958 and 1962 into the most dangerous period of the Cold War concluding with the perilous Cuban Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

1960s poster with Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev: “Long live the eternal, indestructible friendship and cooperation between the Soviet and Cuban peoples” (via Wikipedia)

The second element draws on the first, and involves the crucial role played by Third World leaders in aggravating the perceived threat that each superpower felt from the other. The authors do an excellent job in dispelling one of the greatest myths of the Cold War, the erroneous impression that the United States and the Soviet Union orchestrated and fully controlled events in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To the contrary, leaders like Fidel Castro and Gamal Nasser skillfully courted and played off the superpowers for their own gains. This perspective restores a great deal of agency to social and political actors that in other Cold War narratives have been relegated to the roles of mere pawns.

The authors conclude that Khrushchev’s foreign policy did much to preserve the boundaries of the Soviet empire but less in extracting considerable geopolitical concessions from the West. The inherent military weaknesses of the Soviet Union, coupled with limited economic resources, led Khrushchev to rely more on the appearance rather than the reality of Soviet power. However, his brinkmanship at least succeeded in deterring the United States from invading Cuba and in securing recognition for East Germany in the long run.

The book’s writing style is fluid with a clear prose, making it accessible to any audience. This is quite an achievement in a co-authored work. Fursenko and Naftali also succeed in providing an informative and compelling account of Soviet foreign policy under Khrushchev by relying mostly on declassified material from the Soviet Presidium. It is certainly a pertinent starting point for anyone interested in the intricacies of world affairs and foreign relations from the Soviet perspective.

Precarious Paths to Freedom: The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War (2016)

By Marcus Oliver Golding

The role of the United States during the Cold War is one often marked by tragedy, repression and the support for authoritarian regimes throughout the western hemisphere. That perception is shared throughout Latin America, which makes one wonder if there are cases in which U.S. foreign policy actually helped Latin Americans in their quest for socio-economic development and democratization during this turbulent period. Aragorn Storm Miller invites us to rethink US-Latin American relations by exploring the unusual case of Venezuela during the 1960s. In Precarious Paths to Freedom, he examines the economic and military partnership between these two countries that proved to be essential to achieving the twin goals of economic development and democratization while fending off political extremism. As many other places in Latin America at the end of the 1950s, Venezuela emerged from ten years (1948-1958) of military dictatorship looking to democratize and modernize. Soon, however, the Cuban revolution offered an alternative path to socio-economic development in the region. The rivalry between the United States and Cuba would threaten the stability of the hemisphere. To navigate these turbulent waters, politicians in Venezuela had to strike the right balance between appeasing popular demands and suppressing political extremism to preserve democracy and achieve economic prosperity.

Miller shows how the administrations of Rómulo Betancourt (1959-1964) and Raúl Leoni (1964-1969) deftly courted American policymakers for economic resources while severing diplomatic ties with Latin American autocracies regardless of their ideology. The Betancourt Doctrine, as it became known, stood as a norm of Venezuelan diplomacy during the 1960s despite the constant support that the United States provided for military dictatorships elsewhere in the hemisphere. By studying these diplomatic episodes, Miller also underlines the fact that U.S. power was not absolute, and that Latin American agency weighed heavily in shaping the histories of the region.

Throughout the book the author analyzes how this joint effort in democratization and modernization connected local developments to the broader ideological clashes between Cuba and the United States, and between these two and China and the Soviet Union globally. In the struggle for political peace, Venezuela became the target of internal and external extremism testing the resolve of moderate politicians and the centrist government coalition. Likewise, the American-Venezuelan partnership went through several trials from radicals on both sides of the political spectrum that threatened to derail the prospects for democratic governance. First came right-wing reactionaries who carried out several failed attempts to unseat Rómulo Betancourt between 1958 and 1960. The most shocking of these plans was spearheaded by a traditional ally of the U.S., the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1930-1961) of the Dominican Republic. who financed a mission to kill Betancourt. The plan consisted in detonating a bomb near the passing presidential motorcade that killed the driver but only wounded the Venezuelan president. After this episode, the demise of the extreme right was succeeded by leftist insurgencies from 1962 to 1969.

The Venezuelan Communist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left first tried to achieve power in alliance with disaffected leftist officers in the army with whom they engineered two failed military uprisings (El Carupanazo and el Porteñazo both in 1962). The next phase of the insurgency involved guerrilla warfare with significant support from external communist allies. The discovery of crates full of Cuban weapons at the Paraguaná Peninsula in 1963, and the successive landings of Venezuelan guerrillas with some Cuban troops and instructors in Tucacas (1966) and Machurucuto (1967), are only some of the episodes that the author addresses in order to show how Venezuela became the prime target for Cuba’s hemispheric plans during this decade.

Miller devotes approximately two thirds of the book exploring the genesis of the guerrilla movement, the divisions that plagued it early on, its financial connections with Cuba and the Italian Communist Party, its lack of popularity among ordinary people, and its failure to achieve power through violent means. However, the Venezuelan government perpetually struggled to eliminate this threat from the urban and rural areas of the country. Through a two-prong strategy that involved beefing up the Venezuelan military in counterinsurgency methods and national civic actions, coupled with the issuing of presidential pardons of imprisoned insurgents to reintegrate them to mainstream politics, the administration of Raúl Leoni dealt the final blow to the guerrillas. In this shared effort to preserve democracy the United States’ contribution in military aid became crucial. Its funding is what allowed the Venezuelan government to create multiple ranger battalions that were decisive in the final offensives against the guerrilla in 1967 and 1968.

By 1969, the second peaceful transfer of power from one civilian government to another (and the first in the country’s history from a governing party to the opposition ) seemed to mark the triumph of moderate forces over extremism and the consolidation of democracy in Venezuela. Miller concludes by pointing to three factors that made possible this extraordinary political outcome. The special rapport that existed between the American and Venezuelan presidents during this period assured a sound footing for diplomatic cooperation and economic and military aid. On the other hand, The Puntofijo Pact, a formal arrangement signed in 1958 between the mainstream political parties in Venezuela (AD, COPEI and URD), enshrined the commitment of the political elite to preserve democracy at all costs. Finally, the deep-seated popular beliefs in a democratic regime led the Venezuelan people to constantly support the system through massive participation in electoral politics.

Using a concise and enjoyable writing style, Miller reminds us that despite the appalling record of authoritarian violence in the hemisphere, American foreign policy also showed some bright spots through the successful democratization of a Latin American country during the Cold War.

Ideological Origins of a Cold Warrior: John Foster Dulles and his Grandfather

by Paula O’Donnell

Dulles with President Eisenhower in 1956 (via Wikipedia)

To experts on the history of U.S. foreign policy, the Dulles brothers’ service during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency marks an important watershed in the evolution of American interventionism. In the context of brewing conflict with the Soviet Union, Eisenhower’s administration aimed to protect developing countries of the “Third World” from being converted to Communism. However, as recovery efforts following World War II mobilized international diplomatic efforts to broker world peace, U.S. officials were reluctant to deploy troops abroad. John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s secretary of state during this time. His brother, Allen Dulles, served as director of the recently founded Central Intelligence Agency. Together, the Dulles brothers used this agency to eliminate perceived communist threats in the Third World through covert operations, establishing a powerful precedent for “regime change” as foreign policy strategy.

What fewer scholars and policy enthusiasts know is that the Dulles brothers were products of an elite political family with a strong internationalist tradition. John Foster Dulles’ personal papers, stored at his alma mater Princeton University, exhibit how the eldest brother’s upbringing and family network, consisting of diplomats, missionaries, and international lawyers, influenced his developing world view. This is particularly the case with his maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, a prominent patriarchal presence during Dulles’ childhood. Ideological continuity between Foster and his oldest grandson is evident in their comparable career paths, their methods of preparing subsequent male generations, and their published texts and speeches which analyze the role of U.S. foreign policy in international affairs.

John W. Foster, Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison (via Wikipedia)

Dulles’ personal papers suggest that he modeled his career after that of his grandfather. Foster had also served as secretary of state, at the end of President Benjamin Harrison’s administration. He inhabited this role during the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy in January 1893, an event that led to U.S. annexation of the archipelago. Foster then left political office to pioneer U.S. corporate legal practices and distinguish himself as an international diplomat. Notably, he mediated negotiations at the close of the First Sino-Japanese War and drafted the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895. Dulles’ career subsequently followed a similar path. He also became an international corporate lawyer, partially through his grandfather’s connections, at the elite law firm Sullivan and Cromwell LLC. As partner at this firm, Dulles represented powerful U.S. corporations with vested interests abroad, such as the United Fruit Company. Dulles simultaneously cultivated a long-term career in international diplomacy, serving as secretary to the Economic Reparations Committee at the Treaty of Versailles and later as delegate to the San Francisco Conference which established the United Nations.

Continuity is also evident in the two figures’ strategies for patriarchal mentorship. While Dulles was still a child, he spent his summers at his grandfather’s house on Henderson Harbor in upstate New York. Very early most mornings, Foster took his grandsons fishing. On these excursions, the Dulles brothers learned how to catch their own lunch and cook over an open fire. They ate as they listened to their grandfather’s stories of his experiences abroad, often in the company of distinguished guests such as William Howard Taft, Andrew Carnegie, or Bernard Baruch. These trips taught the boys that self-reliance was a masculine virtue while, at the same time, integrating them into a network of white male elites. Dulles later applied similar methods to raising his sons, taking them on month-long sailing voyages up the Canadian coastline, where they learned to navigate by starlight and catch their own food. For both Foster and Dulles, traveling by water was a fruitful exercise in battling uncontrollable elements, which they believed benefitted male members of subsequent generations.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, and John Foster Dulles at the United Nations in New York City (via National Archives and Records Administration)

Dulles’ and Foster’s published texts and speeches exhibit their shared value of an activist, and interventionist, American foreign policy. Foster had written two books on U.S. diplomacy, both treasured by his progeny. The first of these, A Century of American Diplomacy: Being a Brief Review of the Foreign Relations of the United States 1776-1876, published in 1900, recounted a diplomatic history of the United States, with emphasis on the functions of the state department. Foster exhibited profound enthusiasm for the foresighted genius of the founding fathers and for the “honorable position” characteristic of U.S. diplomacy. The closing chapter examined the importance of the Monroe Doctrine to U.S. foreign policy. President James Monroe first articulated the Doctrine in an address to Congress in 1823. It established U.S. rights to exclusive influence over the whole Western Hemisphere in response to colonial ambitions of the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) following the decline of the Spanish Empire. Like his grandfather, Dulles viewed the Monroe Doctrine, as the “most essential expression” of American foreign policy. During the Cold War, Dulles drew parallels between the threat of the Holy Alliance and the one posed by the Soviet Union. Despite writing at dramatically different times in U.S. history, both Dulles and his grandfather interpreted the Monroe Doctrine to sanction American use of force in the interest of preventing the spread of European political influence.

Dulles’ history goes to show how an analysis of his service as secretary of state, or the C.I.A. operations he sanctioned, are not sufficient for understanding how U.S. policymakers justified intervention during the Cold War. The secretary’s relationship with his grandfather and his understanding of U.S. history shaped his worldview in significant ways. It is important to pay attention to the durability of intellectual and ideological influences that inform the most prominent individuals who execute foreign policy in the United States. This is especially so since American society still grapples with ideological convictions regarding gender, class, religion and nationality that echo sentiments advanced by Dulles and his contemporaries. Such intellectual and ideological understandings will continue to have a dramatic impact on the U.S. foreign and domestic policies. Scholars would do well to recognize and wrestle with the durability of these beliefs, if they believe history might help Americans understand the many ramifications sure to emerge as a result.

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