Cold War and American Culture

When we think of the defining figures of the Cold War we are likely to think about those Americans who were directly involved in the political and military machinations that led to the nation's being involved in conflicts large and small across the world in the years between the building and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. But the Cold War was not a linear, contained phenomenon: It influence and the militaristic philosophies that drove people like Robert McNamara trickled out into the rest of society and the parameters of the debate over the containment of Communism - whether in Trieste or Danang - colored much of what happened in the nation outside of the strict parameters of Cold War debate and politics.

There is, however, another way of looking at the extent to which the Cold War permeated all aspects of American culture in the middle decades of the last century, a perspective that develops from reading about the Cold War in the context of other aspects of contemporaneous American history. We can either argue that Cold War politics influenced all other aspects of American society during the middle decades of the 20th century or - as this paper proposes - we can argue that the same basic cultural themes that manifested themselves perhaps most obviously in the Cold War also manifested themselves in the other great important social movements of the time.

When we read a book about the Cold War in its narrowest sense such as May's American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting

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was that it threatened to split the "us-ness" of the American people. In a time in which many Americans felt that the nation was under the constant threat of a potential attack (in the same way that many Americans now feel the country is threatened by the shadow of terrorism). Many white Americans - as well as some minorities - argued that all Americans had to pull together against the external threat of Communism. In many ways the Cold War can be seen as a time during which the definition of American democracy was being renegotiated in a more fundamentally radical way than had been the case since Reconstruction. Those who crafted NSC 68 argued that democracy must be defined in opposition to Communism, as policy makers like George F. Kennan, director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff from 1947-1950 makes his case (May 94). But others - including many advocates of the Civil Rights Movement along with black nationalists like Malcolm X and a number of other groups in American society, including civil libertarians - argued that a truly democratic nation can never be defined or maintained in opposition to external threats. A nation that defines itself in terms of how well it is prepared to fight external enemies is by n

Category: History - C