I'm not sure people have forgotten exactly. It is that the premise of contact in the Cold War is fading as a basic concept of interstate relations overall. What I'd argue is that one of the fundamental ideas of post-1945 interstate relations was a reaction to the received wisdom about the causes of World War I (with World War II being understood in turn as a consequence of how World War I was ended), namely, to avoid creating treaties or agreements which were kept secret and would oblige partners to act in concert in ways that were not predictable beforehand, to try and communicate clearly in advance that if X action were taken, Y consequence would follow. Obviously this was performative during the Cold War: states were still trying to act in undisclosed or covert ways that contradicted their public statements and there were still unpredictable actions by various governments throughout the Cold War. But it was still a strong theory about how things ought to be and it was suffused throughout international organizations, multistate alliances and most bilateral relationships: make formal obligations clear, rely on protocol to symbolically underlie your intentions, use open lines of communication to explain what you are doing or are going to do (and keep the lines of communication open), and be very careful about saying anything that could be misunderstood. (Remember all the flap about whether April Glaspie had inadvertently suggested to Saddam Hussein that he could go ahead and invade Kuwait.)
Diplomatic historians might protest that this is just a description of diplomacy in general, but I don't think that's true: the comprehensive desire to create an international system premised on predictable action and clarity of declared intent seems to me a characteristic attribute of the Cold War. (And obviously provided much of its urgency by nuclear weapons in particular.)
Trump wasn't the first crack in that system by any means--I think the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq was a big blow to it, the increasing weaponization of information and social media was another, the massive growth of a shadow economy of hidden assets used by governments and private individuals another. The neoliberal increase in the political power of private and unaccountable financial institutions that had no commitment to being transparent or predictable about their intentions or activities yet another. But Trump might have been the death-knell of this particular aspect of the Cold War ethos despite the survival of its characteristic alliances, etc.: most of the ways that states tried to communicate their intentions and their likely responses to the actions of others are used in increasingly erratic (e.g., ironically unpredictable) ways or are increasingly obviously disconnected from what states actually intend or plan to do.
Professor - I agree with most of what you write here, but have some doubts about the claim that more US-Russian or EU-Russian interaction will help prevent both sides from developing malevolent myths about the other.
As you well know, these myths have persisted during years - decades - during which high-level interaction and interaction at lower-levels occurred - and what was the result? Wide swathes of Russia's commentariat either wholly believe or are feigning belief in all manner of outlandish claims against the US and EU - how would additional rounds of you meeting your Russian counterparts serve to address this situation?
I think it's true that more than half of Americans have no real memory of the Cold War--that's Millennials and later versus Silents, Boomers, and X.
I'm not sure people have forgotten exactly. It is that the premise of contact in the Cold War is fading as a basic concept of interstate relations overall. What I'd argue is that one of the fundamental ideas of post-1945 interstate relations was a reaction to the received wisdom about the causes of World War I (with World War II being understood in turn as a consequence of how World War I was ended), namely, to avoid creating treaties or agreements which were kept secret and would oblige partners to act in concert in ways that were not predictable beforehand, to try and communicate clearly in advance that if X action were taken, Y consequence would follow. Obviously this was performative during the Cold War: states were still trying to act in undisclosed or covert ways that contradicted their public statements and there were still unpredictable actions by various governments throughout the Cold War. But it was still a strong theory about how things ought to be and it was suffused throughout international organizations, multistate alliances and most bilateral relationships: make formal obligations clear, rely on protocol to symbolically underlie your intentions, use open lines of communication to explain what you are doing or are going to do (and keep the lines of communication open), and be very careful about saying anything that could be misunderstood. (Remember all the flap about whether April Glaspie had inadvertently suggested to Saddam Hussein that he could go ahead and invade Kuwait.)
Diplomatic historians might protest that this is just a description of diplomacy in general, but I don't think that's true: the comprehensive desire to create an international system premised on predictable action and clarity of declared intent seems to me a characteristic attribute of the Cold War. (And obviously provided much of its urgency by nuclear weapons in particular.)
Trump wasn't the first crack in that system by any means--I think the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq was a big blow to it, the increasing weaponization of information and social media was another, the massive growth of a shadow economy of hidden assets used by governments and private individuals another. The neoliberal increase in the political power of private and unaccountable financial institutions that had no commitment to being transparent or predictable about their intentions or activities yet another. But Trump might have been the death-knell of this particular aspect of the Cold War ethos despite the survival of its characteristic alliances, etc.: most of the ways that states tried to communicate their intentions and their likely responses to the actions of others are used in increasingly erratic (e.g., ironically unpredictable) ways or are increasingly obviously disconnected from what states actually intend or plan to do.
Professor - I agree with most of what you write here, but have some doubts about the claim that more US-Russian or EU-Russian interaction will help prevent both sides from developing malevolent myths about the other.
As you well know, these myths have persisted during years - decades - during which high-level interaction and interaction at lower-levels occurred - and what was the result? Wide swathes of Russia's commentariat either wholly believe or are feigning belief in all manner of outlandish claims against the US and EU - how would additional rounds of you meeting your Russian counterparts serve to address this situation?