The Cold War as History [antikvár]

Preface ' I ^HE title of this book represents the common distinction be-X tween current events and history. In the close-up view of human society the role of accident seems to predominate. An airplane carrying the future ruler of Algeria falls into the hands of the French, who are trying to subdue the revolt of which he is a leader; or the Prime Minister of Great Britain has to undergo a prostatectomy at a moment critical for the British Government; or the Secretary General of the United Nations is killed in an airplane crash. When we read about such accidents in the newspapers, hours after they have occurred, they seem decisive. As we are able to detach ourselves and broaden our perspective, however, they come to seem inconsequential. Finally, when we achieve the large historical view we see Algeria, for example, emerging with a logical inevitabiUty from its colonial history, and the capture of Ben Bella by the French, if not forgotten, is seen to be an accident of no ultimate significance for the secular movement that is its context. In the larger view a pattern, an order of some sort, becomes apparent. Roman history from day to day must have seemed a succession of accidents to the men on the spot. We ourselves, however, can see how Rome was rising, over a period of centuries, to dominate the Mediterranean world and half Europe; we can see how, by this very process, it was becoming overextended and in various ways corrupt; and we can see how at last it crumbled away. There is something more here than a meaningless succession of events. There is a movement, a progression, a development. The events fall into patterns that are logical. The same element of logic appears in the great militant ideological movements of history. A Jesus or a Mohammed or a Karl Marx inspires a vast movement associated with doctrinal belief— which initially possesses its votaries with ideological zeal; which leads to crusades and wars of conquest; and which at last settles down to a peaceful coexistence with the rival ideologies that, in the hour of its zeal, it had committed itself to overcome and eliminate.