Was the Cold War Inevitable?

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that the Cold War was the inevitable consequence of the global shift in power. It outlines the change in the balance of world powers during the Second World War. Then it explains how the American plan for free market trade was irreconcilable with Soviet plans for continued Communism and a buffer zone of Communist states. The paper discusses American idealistic universalism and the closed, suspicious nature of the Soviet government and the Soviet revival of communism. It then outlines the history of tension between Russia and America and shows that the only reason open war did not break out was fear of nuclear weapons.

From the Paper:

"Stalin heightened tensions with the west at the end of the war by promoting a siege mentality in the Soviet Union. "This feeling of fear and insecurity lived and flourished and came to underlie almost all Soviet thought about the outside world." Russian statesmen were insular, apparently without personal contacts or interests in the Western world and concerned with international life only as it relates to Russian security. At the end of the war, Stalin told Churchill he is hoped for the "successful and happy development in the post-war period of the friendly relations which have grown up between our countries in the period of the war." But Stalin had revived communism after the war, which was ideologically anti-western and which was offensive to people in the United States. To Americans, "The institution of private property ranks with those of religion and the family as a bulwark of civilization...To tamper with private enterprise...will precipitate a disintegration of life and liberty as we conceive and treasure them." Therefore, in addition to conflicting economic interests and American ideology, the Russian siege mentality and revival of communism made the Cold War inevitable."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Churchill, Winston. The Second World War, vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy. London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1954. p.463-578.
• Dockrill, Michael. The Cold War 1945-1963. Houndmills: MacMillan Education Ltd. 1988.
• Ellwood, David. Rebuilding Europe:Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman Limited. 1992.
• Grosser, Alfred. The Western Alliance:European-American Relations Since 1945. trans. Stanley Hoffman. London: The MacMillan Press, Ltd.
• Kolko, Joyce; Kolko, Gabriel. The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954. London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972. p.1-58.

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