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The Different Perspectives Of The Cold War

Decent Essays

“The way we choose to see the world we see”(Barry Neil Kaufman). Different perspective lead humans to make decisions that lead to conflicts, such as the Cold War. The Cold War was a rivalry between the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and the USA(United States of America).Cold War had no direct military actions between the countries. Competing perspectives and human decisions led to violent conflicts throughout the 20th century. By analyzing different perspectives for the countries that are blamed for starting Cold War and the ideologies that were imposed in the other countries.

Two different political systems led to further conflicts of the Cold War. The Soviet Union during the Cold War was a communist country. Stalin wanted to …show more content…

This mixture of ideological fear and aggression meant that in both United States and Russia that their beliefs invaded and affected their foreign policies.(Johndclare.net)

Different perspectives lead to different conclusions regarding the conflicts of Cold War. There are three perspectives of the Cold War. There is the traditionalist perspective that blames USSR for staring Cold War. The revisionist perspective that blames the United States starting the Cold War and the post-revisionist perspective that believes that neither the United States or the Soviet Union are to …show more content…

William Appleman Williams published the “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy” where the revisionist suggested that America the one to blame. When WWII ended Russia was weak, it had a great amount of material and human losses, while the US had experienced economic growth due to high levels of production of goods for the War.("Origins Of The Cold War – Revisionist And Post-Revisionist Stances").The US used their power to expand their trade industries and to gain more power by enforcing their ideology to the other countries, especially in Europe. A passage from the book states “Not the making of the atomic bomb; that we were forced to do out of sheer national preservation, for the enemy was working on atomic weapons as well.”(William 950) William implies that the United States wants to be the first and only dominant country in the world. Another passage from the book implicit the stand of the US against Russia and that President Truman didn’t support Russia’s ideology. “President Truman quickly made it clear, moreover, that he was a member, and considered himself the leader, of the anti-Soviet bloc.”(William 946). Another author Gar Alperovitz, in the book Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, blamed the United State for the Cold War on the use of the atomic bombs Gar Alperovitz just like William imply

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