In a recent (11 June 2009) New York Times article “Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?” author Patricia Cohen reports on the lamentable state of diplomatic history in current academia. In Cohen's article, Thomas W. Zeiler, editor of the journal Diplomatic History, notes that many diplomatic historians are “on the defensive” and that the broader problem is “the shrinking importance not only of diplomatic history but also of traditional specialties like economic, military, and constitutional history.” For historians who work in these specialties, what Cohen reports is nothing new. The postmodernist assault on such traditional fields in academe began back in the 1970s and 1980s, and although certainly lamentable, it is in no way surprising. However, the irony is that as history departments—especially in America—have downsized the field of diplomatic history to the point of extinction, the need for student engagement with the issues of state diplomacy and the international system has risen exponentially. Today's students are entering a world of heightened tension over global terrorism, religious extremism, and weapons proliferation. Therefore, students must understand not only contemporary attempts at diplomatic engagement but also the past history of diplomacy. The recent unrest over the Iranian election presents a case in point: Should the Obama Administration, for example, remain cautious or speak up? What are the precedents? Thankfully, President Obama's cautious and balanced response to domestic Iranian unrest bears witness to lessons learned from history. Do today's students fully understand the reasons for such caution? In a political environment influenced by the propaganda and oversimplifications of such media outlets as the Fox News Channel, it is essential for students to understand nuanced diplomatic responses by understanding nuanced diplomatic history. This is to say that those who ignore diplomatic history do so at their peril, and its relevance in the current global climate is readily apparent.
Although Britain seems more resistant to the academic trends and fads of North America, I still find it heartening to discover that engaging new scholarship in traditional fields of history is still emerging from the United Kingdom. Scholars on both sides of the Atlantic should welcome Geraint Hughes's thoughtful and engaging new contribution to diplomatic history, Harold Wilson's Cold War. It is strong evidence that the death of this field has been greatly exaggerated and demonstrates that while cultural history may be dominant in today's academic climate, there is still an important role for diplomatic history. It is compact, dynamic, and thought provoking: a perfect example of the kind of historical synthesis that could help today's students contextualize their complicated and sometimes frightening world by thoroughly understanding the past terrors of a cold war environment in which nuclear armageddon (but also détente) was possible. It is also an important contribution to the reassessment of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964–70, 1974–76) that has taken place since the publication of Ben Pimlott's landmark biography, Harold Wilson, in 1992.
Hughes's research draws extensively from government archives in both the United States and the United Kingdom, including recently declassified documents from the Lyndon Johnson Library at the University of Texas, the National Archives in Kew, and the British Library. These are supplemented by thorough use of memoirs, diaries, and secondary literature. His monograph begins with a succinct, tightly written overview chapter of British cold war policy from 1945 to 1964. This chapter establishes the evolution of this policy in three areas: security, diplomacy, and “transnational” contacts with the Eastern Bloc (31). Cold war scholars looking to introduce cold war themes to an undergraduate course will find this chapter an especially helpful and accessible starting point. Hughes's introduction deftly covers a number of topics: Attlee's Atlanticism, Churchill's policy of “easement” with the Soviet Union and its satellites, Macmillan's trip to Moscow in 1959, faulty British intelligence on the Cuban missile crisis, and the tension within different governments between advocating “restraint and negotiation” and charges of appeasement.
The central theme of Hughes's book is that Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been unfairly caricatured as rigidly subservient to the United States, when in fact Wilson sought to foster his own relationship with the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc outside the shadows of America. Although Hughes points out that Wilson loathed Communism as an ideology, he believed that “Left understands Left, and that it was possible to achieve an amicable relationship with the Soviets without compromising Britain's security or independence” (48). As the writing of this book was done in the context of the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq War, it seems that Hughes has been influenced by the accusations that Tony Blair acted as “Bush's poodle.” Since Blair's support of American policy on Iraq is often compared with Wilson's support of U.S. policy on Vietnam, I think Hughes is arguing that Wilson was not similarly “LBJ's poodle.” Hughes engages us in an interesting dialogue about Britain's world role in the cold war 1960s, and such a discussion should inform debates about the choices facing Britain in a post-9/11 world.
While Hughes convincingly points out that Wilson was no poodle, he nevertheless argues that he did make mistakes. He overestimated his personal charms with Soviets like Brezhnev and Kosygin, failed to understand that Soviet attempts to define its external affairs were a product of the dynamics of consensus within the politburo, and failed to question the assumption that the United Kingdom could act both as a loyal ally to the United States and NATO and “as an independent power capable of fostering greater goodwill between the West and the Eastern blocs” (56). Again, these points could inform an interesting discussion about contemporary events. Does Obama suffer from the same hubris as Wilson in relying too much on personal charms to win over “hearts and minds” and overcome venomous relations in the Middle East?
It is the Vietnam War that proved Wilson's Labour governments could not maintain his intended, cohesive relationships with both the East and the West. Hughes's most interesting chapter focuses on Vietnam, and it explains that it “had a damaging effect on East-West relations, stalling superpower détente and inflaming Sino-American tensions” and ultimately poisoned the Anglo-American relationship itself (58). The costs of faulty judgments and diplomatic hubris are analyzed and clarified in this excellent study. I would compare it to Errol Morris's brilliant Oscar-winning film Fog of War. In the same way that Morris's film hauntingly uses the Vietnam War to force viewers to reexamine their assumptions about Iraq, Hughes's book uses Wilson's diplomatic failures to force us to think again about complex international relations in the post-Bush world.
