John Lewis Gaddis and Knowing Now: The Origins of the Cold War and the New History
Author(s)
Kampmark, Binoy
Abstract
A critique of John L. Gaddis’s post-revisionist history, “We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History” (1997), argues that the book emphasizes value-based principles that justify notions of American empire; glosses over the contributions of the American empire to the Cold War; and “promotes the myth of ‘peaceful’ democracy against the ‘evil’ tyranny.” The historical causes of the Cold War are traced to challenge Gaddis’s assertion that Stalin was a primary cause. It is contended that Gaddis not only commits a conceptual error when he makes value judgments about democracies and autocracies, but the range of his “new” history is extremely limited. He treats the Cold War as if nothing came before or after that particular period of history. It is concluded that Gaddis distorts the context of the ideas he uses as his exclusive criterion and neglects the structure that produced them. In addition, he misreads the original sources of American empire; makes value-based/unilateral assumptions; offers selective background material; and promotes numerous myths.
