Name: Daniel Yergin
Lived: 1947-
Nationality: American
Profession(s): Historian, economist, energy expert
Books: Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (1977), Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal (1982), The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (1991), Russia 2010 and What it Means for the Rest of the World (co-authored, 1993).
Perspective: Revisionist
Yergin’s doctoral thesis focused on the origins of the Cold War and formed the basis of his 1977 book Shattered Peace. Between 1978 and 1985, he taught politics and economics at Harvard.
In the 1970s, Yergin began to specialise in and focus on energy. In 1983, he formed the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy firm that advises governments and companies on energy strategy. Yergin’s 1991 book The Prize, a history of oil and its impact on global affairs since 1854, won him the Pulitzer Prize.
Yergin sees America’s post-war policymakers and advisors divided into two camps: the “Riga Axiom”, who fear the Soviet Union as an aggressive imperial power bent on world revolution; and the “Yalta Axiom”, a group looking to maintain and cultivate the US-Soviet wartime alliance. The wildcard is Harry Truman, who becomes president unexpectedly after the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
A skilful domestic politician but one inexperienced on the world stage, Truman came to rely heavily on policymakers and advisors like George Kennan and James F. Byrnes. Truman’s policies are increasingly shaped by the “Riga Axiom” and “worst assumptions” about Soviet motives and behaviour. This led to the creation of what Yergin calls the “national security state”, a network of bureaucratic, intelligence and military agencies focused almost entirely on perceived threats to the United States.
Quotations
“Two interpretations… competed for hegemony in the American policy elite in the middle 1940s. At the heart of the first set [the Riga Axiom] was an image of the Soviet Union as a world revolutionary state, denying the possibilities of coexistence, committed to unrelenting ideological warfare, powered by a messianic drive for world mastery.”
“The USA maintained an observation post in the American mission in the Baltic port city of Riga, which was, through the interwar years, the capital of the independent republic of Latvia. It was in this mission during the 1920s that much of the research on the Soviet Union was conducted, personnel trained, and fundamental attitudes formed and nurtured; and it was from the mission that there issued constant warnings against the international menace.”
“The [Yalta Axiom] downplayed the role of ideology and the foreign policy consequences of authoritarian domestic practices, and instead saw the Soviet Union behaving like a traditional Great Power within the international system, rather than trying to overthrow it.”
“Neither set of axioms had a monopoly on the truth. Both emphasised some aspects of reality and obscured others. No decent human being, whatever his political values, can be anything but appalled by the monstrous horrors of the Stalinist regime… As many as 20 million people may have died because of Stalin’s tyranny… For my part, I do not want to suggest that Stalin’s character, intentions or methods were, by any means, benign or kindly. But in the international arena, Stalin’s politics were not those of a single-minded world revolutionist. The truth is that the Soviet Union’s foreign policy was often clumsy and brutal, sometimes confused, but usually cautious and pragmatic.”
“[Collaboration with conservative Russians] left the Americans with an attitude toward the Soviet Union compounded of fascination and distaste, which continued through the decades.”
“American leaders who accepted the Riga axioms misinterpreted both the range and degree of the Soviet challenge and the character of Soviet objectives and so downplayed the possibilities for diplomacy and accommodation. It was the new doctrine of ‘national security’ that led them to believe that the USSR presented an immediate military threat to the United States. That doctrine… represented a major redefinition of America’s relation to the rest of the world.”
“With the Korean conflict, a new phase had opened in the Cold War. With the expanded funding, the architecture of the national security state was complete.”
“The national security state grew as an awesome collage of money, institutions, ideology, interests, commitments, capabilities and firepower. The 1977 peacetime defence budget of the United States was over $104 billion. The national security state has long since acquired a life of its own. It has helped to create a powerful presidency and has turned legions of ‘private’ companies into permanent clients of the Defence Department.”
“A reduction in tension does not mean that the worthy Wilsonian vision of a harmonious international order is at hand… The Cold War is still very much with us, as are the ever-perplexing questions about the Soviet Union’s role in international politics and about the means, meaning and measure of American security. There are no final answers, only the spectacle of men and women moved by ambitions and opportunities, beset by fears and dangers, struggling to find transient certainties midst the onrush of events.”
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