Three Paradigms of Cold War
BERNATH LECTURE The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms*
The Cold War is not what it once was. Not only has the conflict itself been written about in the past tense for more than a decade, but historians’ certainties about the character of the conflict have also begun to blur. The concerns brought on by trends of the past decade – such trifles as globalization, weapons proliferation, and ethnic warfare – have made even old strategy buffs question the degree to which the Cold War ought to be put at the center of the history of the late twentieth century. In this article I will try to show how some people within our field are attempting to meet such queries by reconceptualizing the Cold War as part of contemporary international history. My emphasis will be on issues connecting the Cold War – defined as a political conflict between two power blocs – and some areas of investigation that in my opinion hold much promise for reformulating our views of that conflict, blithely summed up as ideology, technology, and the Third World. I have called this lecture “Three (Possible) Paradigms” not just to avoid making too presumptuous an impression on the audience but also to indicate that my use of the term “paradigm” is slightly different from the one most people have taken over from Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions. In the history of science, a paradigm has come to mean a comprehensive explanation, a kind of scientific “level” that sustains existing theory until overtaken by a new and different paradigm. In the history of human societies, I would venture, the term paradigm must take on a slightly different meaning, closer, in fact, to how the term was generally used before Kuhn’s work in the early s. For our purpose, I want to look at paradigms as patterns of interpretation, which may possibly exist side by side, but which each signify a particular
* Stuart L. Bernath Memorial Lecture delivered at St. Louis,
BERNATH LECTURE The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms*
The Cold War is not what it once was. Not only has the conflict itself been written about in the past tense for more than a decade, but historians’ certainties about the character of the conflict have also begun to blur. The concerns brought on by trends of the past decade – such trifles as globalization, weapons proliferation, and ethnic warfare – have made even old strategy buffs question the degree to which the Cold War ought to be put at the center of the history of the late twentieth century. In this article I will try to show how some people within our field are attempting to meet such queries by reconceptualizing the Cold War as part of contemporary international history. My emphasis will be on issues connecting the Cold War – defined as a political conflict between two power blocs – and some areas of investigation that in my opinion hold much promise for reformulating our views of that conflict, blithely summed up as ideology, technology, and the Third World. I have called this lecture “Three (Possible) Paradigms” not just to avoid making too presumptuous an impression on the audience but also to indicate that my use of the term “paradigm” is slightly different from the one most people have taken over from Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions. In the history of science, a paradigm has come to mean a comprehensive explanation, a kind of scientific “level” that sustains existing theory until overtaken by a new and different paradigm. In the history of human societies, I would venture, the term paradigm must take on a slightly different meaning, closer, in fact, to how the term was generally used before Kuhn’s work in the early s. For our purpose, I want to look at paradigms as patterns of interpretation, which may possibly exist side by side, but which each signify a particular
* Stuart L. Bernath Memorial Lecture delivered at St. Louis,