Realism And The Cold War

The orthodox view regarding the cause of the Cold War, formed the standard interpretation between the 1940s and early-1960s. The breakdown of the wartime alliance and the expansion of Soviet

H.W. Brands' book was a pretty solid read. It provided a different outlook on the Cold War, as it sought to show that it was not merely an American victory over "communism" and the Russians. There was far more to the Cold War than most Americans would care to admit, but Brands puts it out there for the reader to take in.

Daisaku Ikeda, a spiritual leader for Japan once commented, ‘Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.’ The world has experienced the bombings of Japan, of Pearl Harbor and the conflict of the Cold War, but even with these conflicts present in our history, warning us of the effects, these meaning have not carried through into society today. Currently in the Middle East, we are witnessing the elements of a modern day cold war starting to appear. Israel and Iran have been in arguments and disagreements about nuclear weaponry since 2012. Their different religious view and ideologies has flourished into more than a religious tension but that of a modern day cold way.

Like I said the three main causes of the Cold War were the spheres of influence, ideology, and military factors. The spheres of influence is like a challenge, if the United States gains power the Soviet Union would react in fear, and vise versa. Ideology has to do with capitalism and socialism. The same thing is going on with the Soviet Union except they practice socialism. Military factors are when one side of the war makes an adjustment to their military, the other responds in kind. For example if the United States made a new bomb, the Soviet Union would do the same thing.

The novel, The Culture of the Cold War, is the all about the cold war and how that time period effected America in the 1960s. It talks about how the Cold War era haunted America with constant threats, and the talk of communism all across the nation. The author of the book, Stephen J. Whitfield, described that the Cold War gave the nation an identity crisis and that suspicion started to arise. The novel is very descriptive on that topic and elaborates on certain ideologies during that time.

The cold war in the author’s account was both unavoidable and essential at the same time. The Soviet empire and its allies could not be pushed back but they had to be restricted to move any further. The consequential confrontation lasted forty years. A lot of wealth, resources and time were exhausted on nuclear weapons and the watchful new strategic thinking. To a certain extent this was the reason that there were no major wars, although there were a number of intimidating confrontations. Eventually, thanks to greater resources, a better political and economic model, and the initiative of a few good men—the right side was victorious. Since then, new theatres involving a lot of complications have arisen, but we can at least be grateful to have said goodbye to that ever threatening conflict.

In 1961 President John F Kennedy put together a doctrine, which altered from President Eisenhower’s one. It was to “Respond flexibly to communist expansion, especially guerrilla warfare.” (Roskin & Berry, 2010, p. 58) It was a time when the Cold War was at its height and nuclear weapons a mass threat and source of power. This doctrine was aimed at using alternative means before opening into combat. This, in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, it succeeded in doing.

In The Cold War: A New History, John L. Gaddis creates a thorough timeline of the events stretching from the end of World War II through the fall of the USSR which helps newer generations understand the gravity of the situation. As Michael Bechloss said “By 2006, Americans too young to have lived through the era of duck-and-cover drills require a scholar of extraordinary gifts to tell why nine presidents deployed our national treasure against an empire that broke apart so clumsily in the end.” This quote does an excellent job explaining how my generation and the ones following will have a limited understanding of the events surrounding the cold war and their role in shaping the world we know today. As Gaddis himself said in a NPR interview;

After world war one peace looked inevitable. Everyone was wrong about this because a few years later world war two erupted. This great war was supposed to be the war to end all wars. In this war it was crystal clear who was the good side and who was the bad side. Almost everyone figured that if the bad side was defeated then peace couldn’t possibly escape us again. We defeated the evil Axis powers, but of course another serpent would rear its ugly head from behind the curtains. This period of a “cold war” after world war two has become one of the most complex and studied eras since America’s birth. This state of paradoxes, paranoia, and public disorientation has only ended a few years ago, but its

The Cold War: A New History written by John Lewis Gaddis (a professor at Yale University who wrote other books such as The United States and the Origins of the Cold War and Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security) delivers a summarized, yet skewed interpretation of what had happened during the era known as the Cold War. Throughout the book, the author attempts to provide history of the Cold War, while adding in generalizations, incomplete facts, as well as flat out bias.

The orthodox view of the Cold War elucidates its inevitability due to the great ideological differences that existed between the Soviet Union and United States. On the other hand, the revisionists argued that it happened due to the actions that Soviets took and the consequential responses made by the United States as a result of their inflexible, single-sided interpretations of Soviet action. Yet, even with the backdrop of the early Bolshevik conflict in 1918 as well

One of the reasons why the Realists did not predict the end of the cold war could be because they saw it as something that is ongoing and that states will always be deceiving each other and competing to maximize their own power. Realist scholars such as George F Kennan sometimes referred to as

However, the Cold War was not completely inevitable. Both revisionist and orthodox historians agree that the war “resulted from essentially unilateral actions by one or another power and that therefore the cold was an avoidable tragedy” (Crockatt 65).

After World War II, continuing tensions between the United States of America and primarily, the Soviet Union caused the Cold War. The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1991, the Cold War is defined as a bitter, typically non-military conflict between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and America. The Soviet Union and the United States had contrasting views about most things, including political systems, economic systems and societal values. At the end of the Cold War, the U.S was declared victorious but they outcomes were anything but successful. If aspects like the least amount of casualties and who has the most money dictate victory, is it really victory? In fact, millions died due to the cold war and many were harmfully affected on both sides and these outcomes could have easily been avoided if instead of concluding that war was the only option, the two superpowers could promote peace rather than emphasizing on differing values. Lessons that should be learned from the Cold War are that ideological differences are not sufficient enough to declare war and that taking over nations does not make a country stronger or better.

In examining Kenneth Waltz 's “Structural Realism after the Cold War,”1 and Andrew Moravcsik 's “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,”2 it is clear that theories presented in each (Realism and Liberalism) are at odds with one another in many ways. But why did the authors reach the conclusions they did about the way that states behave in the international system? This paper seeks to answer that question.