The Origins of the Cold War: Viewed from the Three Schools of Thought

The Soviet’s growing power was finally addressed in 1946 by former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. His “Iron Curtain” speech warned Americans about the danger of Soviet expansion, causing all citizens to truly realize that Russia was a major threat. It was now clear that America had to assist any country that was threatened by Soviet Communism. In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was established to do just this. Substantial funds were used for the soul purpose of preventing the expansion of communism, which was further utilized in 1948 to assist Turkey and Greece in this fight. This has been said to be the beginning of the Cold War.

“Following World War II (1939-45), the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a series of largely political and economic clashes known as the Cold War” (“Red Scare”). During this so called Cold War, the correlation between the United States’ global objectives and its foreign policy was very clear. The intentions of the United States during the Cold War were to combat the spread of communism to the best of their ability on all fronts, to be militarily superior to the Soviet Union, and to allow their country to grow without impediment. These ideals were developed both as a result of and in the midst of their political opposition to the Soviet Union. These intentions developed by the United States during the

Lectures, libraries, classes and museums, are the four primary forms of Institute pedagogy. However, there was no such standardized program. From an Institute to another, the

Neither the orthodox historian nor the revisionist historian would necessarily disagree that, as Federico Romero put it, the Cold War should be imagined “as an East-West conflict of increasingly global reach that burst out in the aftermath of the Second World War to die away around 1989.” That is to say that neither would disagree that the primary antagonists of the war were the Soviet Union and the United States and that the conflict continued to escalate into an increasingly global competition for influence. However, they choose one side of the conflict to define as the primary contributor to the escalation of tensions between the nations with orthodox fixating their blame on the Soviet Union while revisionists choose the United States.

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.

Without factoring in the uncooperative nature of communism, the totalitarian government, and Joseph Stalin’s paranoia, the story of the Cold War is incomplete. Cultural practices of the Soviet Union and the United States made the two incompatible and motivated the decision of leaders during the conflict in Schlesinger’s eyes. Only when the Soviet Union establishes a new way of thinking would they no longer be a threat to the United States and the world. While he is careful to point out that the events of the Cold War were determined by material factors, he says that ideology, purpose, and condition were key in shaping the world as well.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the origins of the Cold War. To accomplish this exploration, the works of W.A. Williams, Robert Jervis, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. serves as the foundation. Before a closer examination of these works, a short explanation of the three common viewpoints regarding the study of the Cold War is warranted. These viewpoints are Attribution, Structural, and Misperception. With these viewpoints to guide the way, the above authors look at the origins of the Cold War. I will make my own points about the origins later.

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

In Hugh Higgin’s The Cold War, Kenneth W. Thompson’s Cold War Theories, and Gardner, Schlesinger Jr. & Morgenthau’s The Origins of the Cold War, the authors argue that the Cold War occurred due to America’s pressure to enforce capitalism and democracy (over Communism) on the Soviet Union. These sources were of great value, as they each provided a considerable amount of useful information in accordance with this essay topic.

The Cold War is named “cold” because there was little to none actual armed battles. It was shortly after World War II and was started between the United States and the Soviet Union. There were many differences including the perspectives from both sides of the War, however, there were also positive outcomes as a result of the Cold War. The war lasted approximately forty years and was a true test of power between the two enemies. The cold war lasted so long that is considered an era. The two parties believed that one another were out to get each other. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the political and military relations between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. John Lewis Gaddis, the author of The

The Cold War was about a 45 year standoff between the two biggest superpowers in the world, the USSR or Soviet Union and the United States. The time of events is subsequent to the end of World War ll. It was stalemate standoff on who will rise hold superior dominancy in nuclear weaponry, political campaigns, and technological innovations and not a nuclear armageddon. The Cold War upbringing is due the rivalry against 2 distinct political panoramas where the USSR seeked dominance over capitalism with communism. After the relinquishment of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union established left wing regimes in eastern Europe countries ultimately to renew the world to strive in Communism. The Americans and British feared

Firstly, by the Potsdam conference beginning July 1945 – near the end of WWII, the USSR arrested non-communist leaders and spread communism to Eastern Europe despite formerly agreeing to free elections in the region, angering US President Truman (BBC, 2014). A highly reliable, government-funded educational source, this suggested that the incompatibility of communism and democracy created the US-USSR political tension and disputes. It corroborated with President Truman (1947), an extremely credible representative of the US, who, in his Truman Doctrine, outlaid support for “free people who are resisting attempted subjugation” (as cited in Pieper, 2012). This comparison of Soviet communism to a “subjugation” demonstrated the outright US hostility towards USSR’s expansion, signifying that a war originating from this political tension – the Cold War – was already solidified. During 1949 – the first years of the Cold War, the USSR built its first atomic bomb, prompting the US to develop a thermo-nuclear bomb (Condon, 1987). This suggested that the competitive

(Freire, 250). The school’s educative system includes the type of education as the practice for

No event in history has caused more debate among academics than that of the origins of the Cold War. The Cold War was a result of the United States and the Soviets unable to accept the others ideological vision for their country and how it would benefit the world. This war was security based and ideology fixated on proving why each side was right. What came from this was a clash of competing historiographical views of an orthodox and revisionist approach. Orthodox views, including that of John Gaddis, hold the Soviet Union responsible due Stalin’s want to expand communism/ Soviet influence. By violating the Yalta agreement, the United States had no choice but to take this violation as an attack that threaten the West and would do anything necessary to contain Stalin. Disagreeing with Orthodox views has led to Revisionists including Walter LaFeber, to contend that it was actually the United States through their policies and want of economic hegemony that led to the breakdown of the USSR/USA alliance and therefore contributed to the start of the Cold War. What Orthodox and Revisionist interpretations highlight is that there are two sides to every story and it is impossible to discredit one without discrediting the other. Evidence proves that while both the United States and the Soviet Union are to blame for the start of the Cold War and therefore the theory that best fits the available evidence comes from the Revisionist interpretation.

The Second World War saw an unlikely alliance between the Western Democracies of Britain and the United States and the Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union. The war against Nazi Germany, and its massive military and technological might, necessitated this alliance; but the vast social, government, and political differences between the two side eventually led to decades of hostility and "Cold War." For much of this time there has been division among historians over what, and who, was responsible for the rise of the Cold War, and in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse in the 1990's, this argument has intensified. On one side are the "traditionalists," who view the Soviet Union, and particularly their tyrannical leader Josef Stalin, as being primarily responsible for the onset of more than 50 years of Cold War. The other side is made up of "revisionists," who claim they have taken a more objective look at the facts and come to the conclusion that it was the United States, and particularly its actions concerning the development and use of the atomic bomb, that alarmed the Soviet Union and brought about the Cold War. The question at hand is whether Josef Stalin was responsible for the Cold War, and while many feel that little compromise can be reached on this issue, there is an argument to be made that the Cold War was the responsibility of both Josef Stalin and the Western Democracies.