Coldwar

The Origins of the Cold War




Wayne C. McWilliams & Harry Piotrowsky. The World since 1945: A History of International Relations.( 3rd ed. fully revised.( London: Lynne Riener Publishers / Adamantine Press Limmited.




In the light of the enormous impact of the Cold War on human life since World War II –the immeasurable human energies it hasexhausted, the gargantuan amounts of wealth it consumed, the shifting of national priorities it demanded, the attention it diverted from other global concerns, the civil liberties it has impinged on and the intellectual freedom it strained, the anguish and fears it caused so many people, and the threat it posed to the earth’s inhabitants– it becomes necessary to inquire into its origins and to questionwhether it was avoidable.

By its very nature the Cold War was for many years so divisive a subject that it was all but impossible to study it with detachment and objectivity. So strong were the feelings and so total the commitment of each side to its cause, and so contemptuous and mistrusting was each of the other side, that each had its own self-serving version of the history of the Cold Warand of each and every confrontation between East and West.

The United States and the Soviet Union each perpetuated a series of Cold War myths that sustained them over the years. On the one hand, the people of the United States generally felt or still feel 1) that the Soviet Union broke its postwar promises regarding Eastern Europe and was therefore responsible for starting the Cold War; 2)that its aggressive action in Eastern Europe was a manifestation of the determination of the Soviet Union to capture the entire world for Communism; 3) that so-called “international Communism” was a monolithic (that is, singular) movement centered in and controlled by the Soviet Union; 4) that Communism was enslavement, and was never accepted by any people without coercion; and 5) that the greatvictory of the United States in World War II, as well as its immense prosperity and strength, attested to the superiority of its values and its system –that, in short, the United States represented humanity’s best hope.

On the other hand, the Soviets seem to have felt 1) that the United States and Western allies purposely let the Soviet Union bleed in World War II, and furthermore lackedgratitude for the role that it played in the defeat of Hitler, as well as for the losses it suffered in that cause; 2) that the United States was committed to the annihilation of Communism in general and to the overthrow of the Communist government of the Soviet Union in particular; 3) that the laws of history were on its side, meaning that capitalism was in decline and Communism was the wave of thefuture; 4) that the U.S. political system was not really democratic but was completely controlled by Wall Street, or at any rate by a small clique of the leading corporate interests; and 5) that capitalist nations were necessary imperialistic and thus responsible for the colonization of the Third World, and that the leading capitalist nation, the United States, was the most imperialistic of all them.As unquestioned assumptions these myths became a mental straitjacket. They provided only a narrow channel for foreign policy initiatives by either country. When notions such as these were imbedded in the thinking of the two adversaries, it was almost impossible for the two countries to break out of the Cold War and equally impossible to analyze objectively the history of the conflict.The myths came into play throughout the Cold War, and especially in its earliest phase even before the defeat of Nazi Germany –when the Allied leaders met at Yalta in February 1945.

The Cold War quickly became global, and in fact it was in Asia that it became most inflamed in the first decade after the war. The Allied Occupation of defeated Japan was thoroughly dominated by the United States...