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The Rise of Neoconservatism, by John Ehrman; Cold War Illusions, by Dana H. Allin
- Abstract
Not so long ago, revisionist historians of the cold war were busy building a case for holding the United States principally responsible for igniting that conflict. The thesis never had any firm facts to undergird it, and it has now collapsed under the accumulating weight of revelations emanating from the archives of the Communist world. Cold-war revisionism, however, is not yet dead and buried—it is merely being revised.
With the origins of the Soviet-American confrontation no longer in serious dispute, revisionists have turned their focus to its end game. In brief, they accuse the Reagan administration of having needlessly fanned the embers of the conflict just as it was about to die out on its own. According to today’s revisionists, the main culprits behind the allegedly anachronistic anti-Communism of the Reagan years were the neoconservatives.
About the Author
Arch Puddington is director of research at Freedom House and the author, most recently, of Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor.
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