How the Cold War Began, Research Paper Example

When the Second World War ended, most European countries suffered from extensive damages and numerous losses. The authority and influence was mainly divided between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. As one wanted to surpass the other, clashes and conflicts were unavoidable. The battle affected the spheres of international economic relations, scientific and technological development, nuclear weapon production, and the relationships among nations worldwide.

The Cold War was a decades-long fight for international domination. It is believed to be a conflict that governed world politics for most of the lives of those being born in the twentieth century. The conflict that underlay the Cold War was the one between the Communist nations guided by the Soviet Union and the democratic nations headed by the United States. It got its name because the opponents avoided attacking each other directly, and thus resorted to means that were considered legitimate and rational. The battle was fought with the use of words instead of nuclear weapon. The rivals brought propaganda, economic confrontations and diplomatic bargaining into play.  Except for the rare and minor armed conflicts, no military forces were ever involved.

Both nations’ leaders realized that in case any of them engaged the rival into an armed military clash, resulting into an unavoidable involvement of nuclear powers, both sides would face the total destruction. All of a sudden, it became possible to think of a total war that could devastate not only the rival but also the conqueror. “Churchill called it ‘the balance of terror’ – the central characteristic of the Cold War, which became more widely known as Mutually Assured Destruction” (Godwin, 2006).

The competition that served as a basis for the conflict was shaped by the contradictory ideologies, differing domestic politics, leaders’ individual ambitions and the nuclear threat. It is curious that the danger being contained in an atomic bomb prevented the country leaders from using the nuclear weaponry. Therefore, the bomb helped to maintain the peace between USSR and USA, due to the policymakers’ awareness of the cataclysmic consequences one may provoke. Fortunately, the cold war competitors preferred cold logic to brute force, which implied that any sort of military attack was not considered a rational option.

Taking the peculiar nature of the Cold War into account, it is difficult to specify when exactly it began. Most historians, however, suggest that the conflict between Moscow and Washington materialized and was declared in 1947, when President Truman of the United States announced an implementation of an anti-communist policy. Historians also provide differing opinions on how long the Cold War persisted. “A few believe it ended when the United States and the Soviet Union improved relations during the nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies. Others believe it ended when the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, or when the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991” (GlobalSecurity.org).

Interestingly, some scholars argue that the conflict origins can be traced back to the period following the end of World War I. Others suggest that the strained relations between Russia, Western European states and the US date back to as far as the middle of the 19th century. It is, however, safe to say that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution initially launched by Lenin, and subsequently headed by Stalin marked the beginning of an enduring political confrontation having spread globally.

How the two superpowers came to be the enemies, anyway? Attempts to name the primary source of the Cold War have become an issue that has long sparked harsh disputes among specialists. Some historians believe that the blame lies with Stalin and the Soviet Union. Some fully place responsibility for the disagreement on the US. Others suggest that both superpowers should share the blame for the conflict.

“The war had been won by a coalition whose principal members were already at war – ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily – with one another” (Gaddis, 2005). Differing perspectives and dissimilar objectives were at the core of the growing conflict. The United States viewed the Soviet Union as a collaborator of the Western democratic forces in their fight against the fascist invaders, represented by the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Meanwhile, Joseph Stalin heading the USSR considered the Western nations to only supply the Soviets with material support during their Great Patriotic War, Russians’ nationalistic fight aimed at driving the Hitler’s military forces out of the Soviet Union territories.

The Cold War was a result of the tricky manipulations of the nations’ leaders and statesmen, as well as the consequence of the international differences. John Lewis Gaddis, the author of “The Cold War: A New History”, – a thorough report on Soviet-U.S. relationship from World War II to the collapse of the U.S.S.R., – suggests that the two nations, in fact, had a number of apparent similarities:

“Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders assumed, would also do for the rest of the world. Both, as continental states, had advanced across vast frontiers: they were at the time the first and third largest countries in the world” (Gaddis, 2005).

The differences were however much more drastic than the resemblances. The United States and the Soviet Union embodied two diametrically opposed systems of government. Americans celebrated the constrained power, liberty and justice. “Despite the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native American, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, the citizens of the United States could plausibly claim, in 1945, to live in the freest society on the face of the earth” (Gaddis, 2005).

On the other hand, the Soviet Union was praising the centralized power. Stalin accepted no social liberties and viewed a capacity to control USSR citizens’ routine life as an inevitable mean of maintaining own authority. In contrast to the USA, the Soviet Union in 1945, with its citizens possessing no right of assembly, speech and press, represented the most authoritarian society in the world. Naturally, the two super powerful states following the contrasting governmental systems, could reach little compromise between each other.

The US and the USSR also failed to reach a consensus on the economical development tendencies. The United States strived to build up free commercial relations all over the globe. The Soviet Union preferred to shelter its own area from international trade and business, in order to prevent the society from being influenced by Western democratic trends and to protect the totalitarian regime from declining. Naturally, Joseph Stalin did not enjoy the seeds of freedom sowed by the Americans brought to the continent by the war.

Stalin viewed Soviet Russia alienated from other participants of international diplomacy. Being surrounded by primarily capitalist states, the leader of Soviet Union struggled to replace the undesirable surroundings by a socialist encirclement. Stalin also realized that the after World War II reality represented a bipolar political world. As far as the USSR dominated neighboring states and as far as the communism was being spread, the Soviet Russia was relatively safe. However, if the communism declined and the state authority weakened, the world would eventually be attracted toward capitalism, ruining the dreams about a utopian society.

The Western and Eastern perspectives differed dramatically, and the same was true for the wars they fought and for the losses they suffered. The territory of the US experienced no considerable attacks, while less than three hundred thousand American soldiers vanished over the course of the battles. Whereas the US got away with few damages and thriving economy, the Soviet Union took pleasure in no such benefits. The state was lying in ruins. It was estimated that approximately twenty-seven millions of USSR inhabitants died throughout the course of the war. “Victory could hardly have been purchased at greater cost: the U.S.S.R. in 1945 was a shattered state, fortunate to survive” (Gaddis, 2005).

Nevertheless, through the course of the World War II the USSR had considerably extended its authority in Europe. Due to the efforts of the Red Army, Stalin was presented with large territories of liberated and controlled Eastern Europe states. Whe coalition governments mainly subjugated by the communists were formed right away. By the end of the war, the Soviet Union was well-established in Eastern Europe, and aimed at developing the relationship with neighboring governments so to guarantee their loyalty and faithfulness to Kremlin. In fact, Stalin sought to spread out the Soviet Union security zone, reaching as far as Central Asia, North Korea, and the Middle East. The objectives of the US government were quite similar.

It is clear that both countries were competing strongly to protect their borders from the possible future invasions. So the US set up its own security zone which included Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Southeast Asia and, most importantly, Western Europe. While struggling to secure their futures from the menace of a new world war, the shared distrust was being built up by both sides. Both Moscow and Washington recognized the threat they might pose to each other, and consequently, amplified by intense mutual suspicion and confusion, the conflict arose.

Obviously, the Cold War broke out because of the struggle for power of the leading nations. The Western democracies, headed by the United States, were resolutely opposed to the expansion of communism and Soviet authority. However, there was a threatening possibility of communist parties being elected in numerous European states.

By 1948, pro-Soviet regimes were in power in Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia… While not being able to stop the Soviets in Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Britain were determined to prevent communist regimes from achieving power in Western Europe. During the Second World War, communists parties throughout Western Europe, had gained popularity in their resistance to Nazi occupation (GlobalSecurity.org).

Regardless of the growing Russian authority in eastern and central Europe, President Roosevelt of the United States felt positively about the likelihood of collaboration with the Soviet Union after the war and did not encourage struggle against Russian communism spreading out. It was not until 1945 that the state of affairs ultimately altered. The U.S. government started to hold to a policy of strong opposition to the Soviet Union after President Roosevelt died and Harry S. Truman occupied a presidential post. Truman’s view of Soviet expansion was quite unlike that of Roosevelt:

He did not believe the communists. He thought that the communists would not set up democratic governments in Eastern Europe. He also believed that after the Soviet Union had established her control in Eastern Europe, she would continue to extend her influence into Western Europe. Thus President Truman favored a policy of strong resistance against Russian expansion (The Corner of the World).

The worsening relations between the two superpowers were augmented by the conflict of interests and by opposing goals. The two sides failed to compromise on a number of crucial issues. Such were the reparations from Germany, the internationalization of the major waterways, the termination of a Land-Lease programme, etc.

The Cold War started out as a merely political conflict. However, even though the key competitors’ military forces were never officially brought into play, the Soviet Union and the US ended up by joining military coalitions, exploiting the strategic conventional force, providing support and assistance to states considered susceptible and at risk of invasion.

By 1950 certain factors had made the Cold War an increasingly militarized struggle. The communist takeover in China, the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine, the advent of a Soviet nuclear weapon, tensions over occupied Germany, the outbreak of the Korean War, and the formulation of the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as rival alliances had all enhanced the Cold War’s military dimension (Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site).

The Cold War resulted into the world being divided into three major groups. The West was guided by the United States and included most countries which held to the democratic political systems. The East was headed by the Soviet Union and included nations following the communist political regimes. The third group was represented by the countries unwilling to be included into either of the two groups and to be associated with either the West or the East. Generally, the Cold War was waged everywhere: in nonaligned states, in recently autonomous nations in Africa, Asia and even in the cosmos.

The technological competition paralleled the Cold War confrontation, and as a result, the conflict had reached an outer space. The two countries had become involved in a so called Space Race, which implied an intense opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union to extend the pioneering real-world studies of an outer space. It primarily involved ground-breaking endeavors to launch artificial satellites and to send man into space:

The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit in October 1957. This was quickly followed by Sputnik II (famously containing a canine passenger), and was then dramatically surpassed by the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. The USA, in contrast, failed to respond effectively, and it took several attempts and several months before launching its own satellite, Explorer I, in January 1958. (Godwin, 2006)

The nuclear arms race also lay at the core of the confrontation. For almost fifty years the United States and the Soviet Union openly terrorized each other with nuclear weapons. Two superpowers competed to develop and confirm the state’s military supremacy. Each party struggled to generate larger amounts of nuclear weaponry, invested into the advancement of military technologies in a technological intensification.

The ideological conflict between the Western democratic capitalism and the Eastern communism was a prelude to the war. The materialization of nuclear weapons shaped a new political situation. “Prior to 1945, great powers fought great wars so frequently that they seemed to be permanent features of the international landscape,” Gaddis observes. However, the emergence of nuclear weapons implied that “for the first time in history no one could be sure of winning, or even surviving, a great war” (Gaddis, 2005).

When researching the issue of Cold War’s origins and driving forces, it is apt to mention the well-known “Gouzenko Affair”. Igor Gouzenko worked as a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa till in September 1945 he left his office carrying a suitcase full of code books and deciphering materials. The documents he appropriated contained information on Soviet espionage activities in the West.  Gouzenko claimed that his defection was mainly motivated by the unwillingness to come back home to the USSR. Thus, displeased with the low life quality and the specific regime followed at his fatherland, he chose to abscond. Consequently, Gouzenko uncovered Russian leader’s endeavors to find out the secrets of nuclear weaponry development.

When the world community became aware of his daring deed, the alarm was raised. The US, Great Britain and Canada, shocked and suspicious, ultimately changed their view of alliance with the Soviet Union. Their major concern was to maintain the formed balance of postwar powers, and the knowledge of the possibly stolen atomic secrets produced fear, which altered the East-West relations for good. The “Gouzenko Affair” is frequently recognized as an incident which precipitated the beginning of the Cold War.

The Cold War was historically noteworthy not for what happened, but rather for what did not. The cold logic of the cold war implied that attack of one of the superpowers would inevitably provoke a quick and destructive reaction. The conflict kept the entire world in suspense for almost half of a century, and is viewed by many historians, researchers and political activists as the third key war of the twentieth century. Fortunately, The Soviet Union and the United States choose to never run a full-scale war. Limited in scope, yet prolonged and disturbing, the Cold War concluded the confrontational and hostile twentieth century, and ended with a collapse of the Soviet Union and its declining communist regime, giving the raise to the new world.

References

Global Security.org. Cold War. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/cold_war.htm

The Corner of the World. Cold War. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.funfront.net/hist/europe/coldwar.htm

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site. Cold War. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/cold-war.htm

Godwin, M. History in Focus. (2006). The Cold War and the Early Space Race. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/cold/articles/godwin.html

Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The Cold War: A New History. USA: Penguin Press HC.