The Soviets, of course, are not going to abandon Eastern Germany, the Communist regime there, or to allow free political options there. In other words, though there might have been such possibilities prior to 1953 or 1954, I don't think they exist in the immediate future. This is as much as one can say on the subject.

Mr. ROSENTHAL. Thank you all very much. We are enormously indebted to you. I think you have made a very meaningful contribution to the dialog which we hope will begin in earnest in these next weeks and months.

We expect to spend a great deal of time and effort in analyzing United States-U.S.S.R. relations and everything that develops from it in Europe.

Again, thank you.

The subcommittee will convene again at 2:15.

(Whereupon, at 1 p.m. the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 2:15 p.m.)

THE COLD WAR: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENTS

The Cold War and Current Policies

MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1971

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE,
Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 2:15 p.m. in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin S. Rosenthal (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. ROSENTHAL. The subcommittee will be in order.

This afternoon we will hear from the Defense Department and the State Department on the subject we began this morning.

We are pleased to have with us this afternoon David E. Mark, Deputy Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, and John H. Morse, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Department of Defense.

Mr. Mark, you have a prepared statement. We would be pleased to hear it.

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. MARK, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Born New York, N.Y., November 15, 1923. Graduated Columbia College with B.A. 1943, Columbia Law School, LLB, 1946. Member New York Bar. U.S. Army 1943-46. Entered the U.S. Foreign Service 1946. Served in Korea, Germany, Romania, and the U.S.S.R. in addition to Washington. Also served on disarmament delegations in Geneva from 1959-63. Presently, Deputy Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State.

Mr. MARK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

If you don't mind, I would prefer entering the text of the full statement into the record and perhaps there are a few remarks I can make about some of the points in it.

Mr. ROSENTHAL. That is a very fine idea. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(Mr. Mark's prepared statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. MARK, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, the Department of State is grateful for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the subject which you have designated, namely, Historical Perspectives on the Cold War. Generally speaking, the interpretation of the past is a field which we leave to free academic enterprise. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the conduct of this nation's foreign policy at any given time cannot be carried out without reference to much that has gone before. We are all amateur historiographers and even prisoners of the

past in countless ways, and you are very correct in assuming that the way in which responsible officials of the government recall the years gone by has a considerable bearing on their prescription for what ought to be done in the here and now.

In this sense, it may be useful for you to be aware of some of the perceptions of yesteryear in the area of East-West relations, especially in Europe, which are in the minds of officers in the Department of State and the Foreign Service as they go about the day-to-day business of working out policies and relationships between the United States and the countries of Western and Eastern Europe. I cannot pretend, of course, that we in the Department share any monolithic view of recent decades, because there are undoubtedly numerous divergencies of interpretation and emphasis among us, just as there are in the academic community. Such a lack of unanimity has its own virtues inasmuch as the interplay of ideas and judgments within the government can be an important safeguard against mistakes and a major stimulus to keeping officials alert and self-critical in their actions. It is a sort of analogue within the Department to the review from without by the Congress and the public of the programs and policies of the Executive Branch.

I should also stress that even when differences of interpretation about the past remain unresolved, this need not, in my opinion, carry over into discord about the appropriateness of current policies. Once nations move in specific directions in international affairs, their citizens, and indeed the world, must live with the consequences of such behavior whether or not, in the abstract sense, the original policy can be retrospectively justified. The activities of great powers, in particular, inevitably have important repercussions for global society. Institutions, traditions, and habits of thought all evolve and become bureaucratically established on the basis of the major decisions of previous years. The present generation, or at least parts of it, may regret that matters followed a particular historical course, say, for example that Britain and France did not nip Hitler's expansionist plans in the bud in 1935 or 1936. However, such lamentation will not permit those currently responsible for foreign policy decisions to make believe that the sad story of Europe in the 1930's never occurred and that they can proceed in disregard of what has come to exist because of those desolate times. Similarly, our generation cannot ignore all that has occurred in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union since 1945; nor can we forget the disruption which would arise in international relations from any sudden sharp shifts of position and policy, instead of gradual evolution, on the part of Washington toward Moscow, and perhaps vice versa as well.

Having said this, I should hasten to note that I am not attempting to lay the groundwork for any revisionist view, either on my own part, or on behalf of the Department about the origins of the Cold War. On the contrary, I am only trying to point out that even those who may have doubts about the conventional American interpretation of the history of the last 30 years should recognize that neither East nor West can approach their present relationship with a clean slate, starting from afresh. The events which have taken place over the last generation and which, in turn, produced reactions and counter-events are all now part of the foreign policy environment to which we must address ourselves. Whether EastWest misunderstanding and hostility could have been avoided in 1945 is less important than that such enmity did in fact build up to very major proportions, and that, from this starting point, we must somehow now cope with this condition and with its pervasive psychology, political, and military consequences for us and all other nations.

The inevitability of great strain in Soviet-American relations after 1945

It is an interesting but probably fruitless effort to attempt to prove the rights and wrongs of the Soviet-American relationship during and immediately after the Second World War. It is certainly intriguing to attempt from the vantage point of the 1970's to second guess leading Soviet and American figures on the decisions which they made in their dealings with each other in the hectic and heated atmosphere of 1944, 1945, and 1946. This can lead to endless arguments about whether a different American policy toward the Soviet Union on, for example, post-war lend-lease or reparations from Germany or participation in the military government of Japan might not have changed the course of history after the Second World War. It is extremely doubtful, in my view, that opposite American decisions on any of those matters or on many similar ones could have changed the tide of East-West relations.

The fundamental fact of international life in the 1940-1945 period in Europe was that a venerable order of international relations was totally breaking down.

The old state of affairs, represented by the global pre-eminence of Great Britain and France, along with the important roles gained by Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, and later Japan, had not only dominated European politics for over a century, but had provided the framework for the international relations of most of the rest of the world. This is not to deny the important place in global politics of the two great continental powers, the United States and Russia, but both of them, for various reasons, did not participate too significantly in world diplomacy for most of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. It was the main European states which, through their colonial empires, had in effect carved up Africa and the bulk of Asia.

Although the first World War, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end for the pre-existing international system, its total collapse became inevitable in the second World War when the countries which were its mainstay battered each other into virtual collapse. Not only did a power vacuum suddenly emerge in Europe, but this same phenomenon also caused an irreparable blow to the power structure in the colonial areas of Africa and Asia and opened up these vast areas to the same play of the new forces that had become dominant in Europe itself. These new forces came-and could only come from the two nations which emerged from World War II with great military, and hence political power, the United States and the Soviet Union.

The effective shrinkage of distances in the world, or rather, the ever closer integration of every corner of the globe through the technological advances of the industrial-scientific age that has been with us since the 18th century, has, objectively speaking, imposed the requirement for constantly greater degrees of general understanding, international order, and carefully devised international arrangements in every field. Each country has become more and more alert to developments not only at its own frontiers but at ever greater distances from its boundaries; and the larger the country and the more powerful its position, the greater is its international concern. It is unavoidable under such conditions that, at some point, the interests and concerns of major actors on the world scene will run into each other, overlap, interact, and conflict. Since there is no global arbiter of world political problems, no supranational authority with decision making processes and powers to regulate disputes, the only question that remains is how conflicts between and among states will be resolved: by war, by cold war, by moderate levels of tensions, by live and let live arrangements and understandings, or by full cooperation toward achieving agreed common purposes.

In the history of the last 200 years, some cooperation has come about in international dealings in the economic and commercial spheres, especially at a nongovernmental level; unfortunately, relatively few examples of long-term cooperation and joint endeavor on an equal basis among countries can be found in the sphere of political and political-military relations. On the contrary, the history of modern Europe records a number of cases in which the rivalry of major powers intruded into power vacuums to produce tension and wars.

For example, in the 18th century, there were dynastic upheavals in Spain and Austria which led to wars over the issue of how those countries would be incorporated into the general structure of European nation-states. The non-emergence of power centers in the form of unified national states in Italy and Germany until 1870 caused tensions and frequent conflicts among their neighbors who were anxious to aggrandize their own positions. The disintegration of the Turkish empire in Europe from the 18th century on produced the rivalries of Russia and AustriaHungary both for territory lost by Turkey and for the allegiance of the small and weak successor states:-indeed this rivalry in the Turkish power vacuum also drew in Germany, France, and Britain. The disappearance of Turkish power in the Middle East and North Africa brought strong French, German, British, and Italian competition into play, while the decay of imperial authority in China after the early 19th century induced an acute race among the leading European powers, and later Japan, for participation in the restructuring of Chinese territory and politics.

On the basis of such experiences-and there are many more which could be cited-it would have been amazing under the best of circumstances if the political and military collapse of virtually all of Europe in 1945 had led to friendly and cooperative efforts by the newly emergent superpowers to restore order in the vacuum. Such an outcome would have been unprecedented, in view of the normally and traditionally competitive conduct of strong nation states confronted with a situation of great disorder and international breakdown on their figurative doorsteps. Of course, in the case of Europe in 1945, the circumstances were not of the best in any case.