Policy Indictment

...Richard Morrock argues in a similar vein regarding Vietnam, contending that Communist-led national liberation movements had substantial popular support in the crucial postwar period, and that the Americans (and the French) preferred at that time to support an essentially unpopular and backward regime...

...Nevertheless, the volume does present some pertinent themes in American foreign relations and is convincing for the most part...

...The second half of the volume deals with American policies in the developing areas...

...He quotes George Kennan, the architect of America's "containment" policy which led to the founding of NATO, as stating that this policy was based on erroneous Western concepts of Soviet expansionism...

...Gittings also maintains that Communist strategy in China during the crucial period between 1940 and 1950 was contrary to the wishes of Stalin, and that while Mao's post-1947 alliance with Stalin was a natural development, it was helped by American ignorance of the nature of the situation on the Chinese mainland...

...The theme is clear: The United States has played a negative and reactionary role throughout the present century...

...they deal with the origins of China's foreign policy and with the historical development of Vietnam's revolution...

...Reviewed by Philip G. Altbach This volume, the first in a series of "Studies in Imperialism and the Cold War" issued by the Bertrand Russell Center for Social Research in London, is a multi-faceted analysis of America's role in the world in the Twentieth Century...

...In a perceptive essay on the "World War and the Cold War," John Bag-guley argues that British and French policies in the period immediately before the outbreak of World War II favored a German thrust into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and that the latter bore the brunt of the conflict...

...It is a well-documented indictment of U.S...

...He adds that Hitler did not really wish to destroy England or the British Empire and felt Germany's natural target was Russia...

...Gitlin argues that the Greek experience, which "proved" that containment could work, was a key turning point in the development of Cold War strategies, and marked the expansion of American power in what had previously been a British sphere of influence...

...The last two essays are of particular relevance to current international problems...

...Todd Gitlin, in an essay on the civil war in Greece, compares the 1947 Greek civil war to the present conflict in Vietnam, with the United States supporting a reactionary, urban-based and essentially unpopular regime against rural revolutionary elements which had only peripheral outside support from the Soviet Union...

...John Gittings, in his essay on China, contends that Mao Tse-tung attempted, during the struggle against the Japanese in the early 1940's, to make contact with the Americans, and that these efforts proved abortive because of American loyalty to the Chiang Kai-shek regime...

...In other words, Deutscher argues, the Soviet Union was provoked into "self-defensive expansion by the policies of the NATO powers...

...The essays here by Isaac Deutscher, William Appleman Williams, and Henry Berger emphasize that American policies, both before and after World War II, contributed substantially to the development of the Cold War...

...Later Allied strategy, including postwar policies, Bagguley argues, were predicated on the need to "contain" the Soviet Union, and these policies led Stalin to intervene in Eastern Europe following the war...

...In recent years "revisionist historians" have attempted to explode the usual interpretation of the development of the Cold War which has placed the major blame on Stalin for forcing the United States into rearmament following World War II...

...If Deutscher is proved correct, the current division of Europe may well be based on one of the greatest strategic and political misunderstandings in history...

...With this political view in mind, there is naturally some one-sidedness in the analysis...

...foreign policy in such diverse areas as post-revolutionary Russia, the Greek civil war, China in the 1940's, and Vietnam...

...From these basic misunderstandings of the nature of the developing areas in a period of anti-colonial struggle grew many of America's policies in the Third World today •—and perhaps the roots of the Vietnam war...

...The thesis that postwar American foreign policies toward Europe and Asia have been based on misunderstandings, and on a basically reactionary view of the world, underlies all of the essays...

...Yet the volume makes a valuable contribution to rethinking the bases of many long-held notions concerning world affairs, and could hopefully lead to a reassessment of America's role in the world, and perhaps to changes in orientation and policy...

...While several of the essays in Containment and Revolution do not provide much that is new, they are generally well written and convincing...

...Williams documents the active, although ultimately unsuccessful, American intervention in Russia following the revolution of 1917, while Deutsch-er argues that in fact American policies in Eastern Europe forced the Russians to protect their interests by intervening-there immediately following the war...

...While the essayists in Containment and Revolution are basically interested in analyzing the negative aspects of United States policy, they often fail to deal with the roles of other powers which had an impact on the shaping of American policies, and the authors are not much concerned with internal American politics...