ORIGINS OF COLD WAR.   Term Paper ID:17443 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: History & development, belief systems, balance of power, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, persistence of conflict between Soviets & U.S., Cuban Missle Crisis, Vietnam, political rhetoric.... More...

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Paper Abstract: History & development, belief systems, balance of power, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, persistence of conflict between Soviets & U.S., Cuban Missle Crisis, Vietnam, political rhetoric. Paper Introduction: ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR One's interpretation of how and why the Cold War began will depend, in large part, on which of two views of the meaning of the Cold War is given greater credence: was it fundamentally an ideological conflict, or a balance-of-power struggle? Was it a unique dialectic event in history - a collision of belief systems that can never recur in the same way again? Or was it one instance of a recurrent pattern in the history of states? Halle places himself firmly on the side of the balance-of-power viewpoint: It is essentially true, them, to say that since the end of the eighteenth century four great wars have been fought to maintain or restore the European balance of power. The fourth was the Cold War, which began almost immediately Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Butcertainly the American war in Vietnam (still heating up when Halle wrote)can only be comprehended in the overall context of the Cold War; the"front" had merely been changed, from nuclear-forces confrontation to ThirdWorld confrontation. 171). Indeed. The Washington Naval Conference successfully defused the navalarms race between them (Keegan, 1988, p. The Cold War did not have to begin the momentWorld War II was over. From that time forward,Cold War rhetoric in the United States became increasingly empty, a call toarms which no one was seriously expected to answer. But again, it is possible that the questions involved mayunleash . To the apocalyptic moralist, nosubsequent Soviet leader could stand in the same league of tyranny withStalin. The benchmark we may choose is Lyndon Johnson's March, 1968 speechin which he withdrew from the American presidential race. To George F. Halle identifies the Cuba Missile Crisis as marking the end of theCold War (Halle, 1967, p. His methods were immensely harsh, and his victims can reasonably benumbered in the millions. and the Soviets were the onlybig boys left on the block after World War II. Indeed, a naval armsrace quickly heated up between these powers. A contrast could be drawn, for example, to the navalcompetition between the U.S. The Soviets felt weak and resorted to secrecy and deception todisguise their weaknesses. Americans could have somewhat reluctantly acceptedChurchill's lead in acknowledging a tacit Soviet "sphere of influence" inturn for Soviet acceptance of a Western "sphere of influence" (Halle, 1967,p. A. . It certainly marked the end of one phaseof confrontation; the possibility of nuclear war never again seemed soimminent (in spite of some revival in the Reaganite early 198 s). The personal role of Stalin should not be underestimated in all this. Halle tellsus that the phrase "Iron Curtain" drew sharp criticism at the time, butonly briefly; soon it became the symbolic catch-phrase of the Cold Waritself. Bycontrast, the ideology-driven conflict has Biblical overtones of theclimactic conflict of good and evil (it is significant that evangelicalProtestants, taking a more explicitly religious world-view than mostAmericans, are among the most supportive of "Cold War politics"). Heath. References Graebner, N. In this view, ideology was more a system of internal justificationfor governments than a driving force in the conflict. . and Great Britain after World War I. The warleft the two navys roughly equal, and a conflict over dominance at seacould have been a natural balance-of-power outcome. As late as the 198 s, Cold War rhetoric worked effectivelyfor President Ronald Reagan, in domestic politics if not in foreignaffairs. He clearly had reached the conclusion, by that point,that only a forceful stance towards Stalin would serve to retrieve thesituation. 78). and the Soviet Union inevitable, ideological enmity greatlyexacerbated this tension, turning what might have been an uneasy peace intothe Cold War. . But the Americans and theBritish were willing to talk to one another, and to believe one another'spromises. American anxieties also led to the U-2 spy planeprogram, and to the flight that accidentally sabotaged the 196 summit plan(Halle, 1967, pp. The underlying reason for this state of confrontation wasideological: on the one side, Stalin and his ideologists held that theSoviets and the West could not exist in balance, but that one prevail andthe other decline; on the other, Western leaders and Western (particularlyAmerican) public opinion concluded that their way of life was threatenedunless Stalinism was eradicated or at least decisively checked. . Balance-of-power considerations, visible from the latter stages ofWorld War II, made Soviet-American tensions inevitable. Thisideology, to Brzezenski, drives Soviet policy to an . A balance-of-power analyst would note thatpost-1953 Soviet policies were almost invariably cautious and conservativein character. . . . However, the atmosphere of the middle 195 s - and forlong after - was also deeply complicated by the presence of Senator JosephMcCarthy, and the political movement which he represented. . Thus, on one occasion the Soviets flew newjet bombers on repeated passes over foreign observers, who were deceivedinto overestimating Soviet bomber strength; this led to U.S. Had Soviet Russiabeen, say, social-democratic, the Cold War would still have happened moreor less as it did, simply because the U.S. PERSISTENCE OF THE COLD WAR It has been suggested above that a symbolic or benchmark date for thebeginning of the Cold War can be fixed at Winston Churchill's "IronCurtain" speech in March, 1946. 77). In particular theKennedy Administration, "less blatantly anti-Communist than itspredecessor" (Halle, 1967, p. . Thus, the evolution of British-American relations after World War Iwas from wartime allies to potential rivals, and then to somewhat waryquasi-partner. The balance-of-power doctrine is consistent with what Carl Gustavson (1955, p. But the Iron Curtain speech marks the turning point in thedeterioration of relations; hopes of a peaceful balance-of-powerarrangement in Europe began to fade as of that time. The price of admiralty. With the timescale of a potentialhostile mobilization and attack reduced from months or weeks to hours orminutes, both sides were forced into hair-trigger postures by militarysecurity considerations. ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR One's interpretation of how and why the Cold War began will depend,in large part, on which of two views of the meaning of the Cold War isgiven greater credence: was it fundamentally an ideological conflict, or abalance-of-power struggle? (1988). Most broadly, perhaps, the two views can be seen as corresponding tothe "Hellenic" and "Hebraic" strands in Western thought. Orwas it one instance of a recurrent pattern in the history of states? New York: Viking.----------------------- 1 C. Lexington, MA: D. 394) had constantly to guard its politicalright flank. is outstandingly the problem of the personal position of Stalin. Kennan [The uncertainty of the transfer of power] . 2). . Similar technical considerations pushed the two sides intoprovocations when they were exacerbated by deep-seated preconceptions onboth sides. 7 ).To a contemporary observer, then, even the end of Stalin might herald aturn for the worse. 66). No Soviet commitment in any area not contiguous with theSoviet Union itself can begin to compare with the American overseascommitments in Korea and Vietnam. 4 8). Anti-Communismand anti-Sovietism reached hysterical levels in the early to middle 195 s,and McCarthy was only the most notorious of the politicians who worked toboth generate and exploit this hysteria (Halle, 1967, pp. 125-38). The alternative argument is that ideology is indeed a driving force -that, as Zbigniew Brzezinski argues, ideology plays a "persisting andimportant role" in shaping Soviet policy (Graebner, 1976, p. 5) calls ahistorical-minded mode of thought. New York: Harper. The significance of McCarthyism is that it served to limit themaneuvering room of American politicians; to push them consistently towardsmore confrontational approaches to the Soviet Union. To an American growing up in the postwar decades, the existence ofan Iron Curtain across Europe was motivation for the national Cold Warmobilization, and proof that it was necessary. A preface to history. 221-22). It is always possible that another transfer of preeminentpower may take place quietly and inconspicuously, with no repercussionsanywhere. Certainly a number of purelytechnical factors intervened to complicate the search for normalization ofrelations. . (1976). The cold war as history. G. (1967). We must remember that his succession to Lenin's pinnacle of preeminence in the Communist movement was the only such transfer of individual authority which the Soviet Union [had then] experienced. That transfer took twelve years to consolidate. The stress is on continuity ofhistorical experience, and on a "value-free" judgement of the conflictingideologies; it is a way of thinking that comes down from Thucydides. Gustavson, C. At this point, a Western leadertraditionally associated with a cool balance-of-power outlook declared thatthe West could not do business as usual with the Soviets; that relationswere entering a state of confrontation rather than of manageable tension. It cost the lives of millions of people and shook the state to its foundations . Halle, L. In retrospect, we know that the actual case was very much thereverse. The fourth was the Cold War, which began almost immediately after World War II (Halle, 1967, p. American commitment to a fully independent Poland was not, byitself, enough to counter the even stronger American commitment toreturning to some kind of normalcy." But by his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in March, 1946, Churchillhimself was speaking of the Soviet Union in terms that had at least a hintof the apocalyptic. The American public continued to fear Communism,meaning mainly Moscow (in spite of the widening Sino-Soviet fissure),enough to make extraordinary commitments of blood and treasure to a remoteand obscure part of the world. apocalyptic image of the future and the belief in theinevitable triumph for their form of social organization . It was the West's and Stalinism's (or Stalin's) mutualabhorrence that caused this tension to erupt almost uncontrollably into theCold War. It is possible to argue that,while balance-of-power considerations made a state of tension between theU.S. After three years of collective leadership in the SovietUnion, Krushchev - in retrospect, something of a proto-Gorbachev reformer -rose to ascendancy. Underneath his considerable bluster, he appears tohave been genuinely committed to "peaceful coexistence" as he understood it- an understanding not inconsistent with a peaceful, managed, great-powerrivalry (Graebner, 1976, pp. .(Graebner, 1976, p. Keegan, J. J. In this respect, we may make the benchmark for the end of the ColdWar a speech, as we marked its beginning with Churchill's "Iron Curtain"speech. He was an autocrat in the grand manner and itwas to be expected that his demise and replacement, when it occurred, wouldlead to profound changes in Western-Soviet relations - not necessarily tothe better. Given the intensity of Cold War passions in the middle 195 s, itmight have taken a better statesman than Krushchev to ease tensions andpromote an early end to the Cold War. New York: McGrawHill. Thus, we may well ask why the Cold War did not begin to peter outafter 1953? Before Stalin's death, both sides had set in motion strategicbomber and missile programs that would greatly increase the mutualvulnerability of the superpowers. Halle places himself firmly on the side of the balance-of-powerviewpoint: It is essentially true, them, to say that since the end of the eighteenth century four great wars have been fought to maintain or restore the European balance of power. fears of a"bomber gap" and ultimately to enlarged American bomber production, furtherraising Soviet fears. It should be noted that these two views of the Cold War arecomplementary rather than contradictory. The Iron Curtain speech did not mark an instant descentinto the Cold War in full force; that came only with a gradual series ofevents - the coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade and airlift, thestationing of American B-29 "atomic bombers" in England, the first Sovietnuclear test, and so on. After World War II, in contrast, the evolution of Soviet-American relations was from wartime allies to potential rivals, and then todeeply committed opponents. one of those "incredibly swift transitions" from "delicatedeceit" to "wild violence" which characterize Russian history . He withdrewbecause the Vietnam war, of which he was regarded as author, had become tothe American electorate a burden to escape as gracefully as possible, not aCold War commitment that must be carried through. . . In these quasi-technical respects, the problem of ending the Cold Warafter Stalin's death resembled that of getting off a tiger's back withoutending up inside it. 371-74). Post-Stalin Soviet leaders all proved to be much easier to livewith than was Stalin himself. (Graebner, 1976, p. Was it a unique dialectic event in history - acollision of belief systems that can never recur in the same way again? The cold war: A conflict of ideology andpower, second edition. (1955). . Under differentideological circumstances (or perhaps simply without the personality ofStalin, who embodied all that was most frightening about Soviet ideology),the tensions could have been managed without producing a long-term crisisatmosphere. The Americans, fearing a "bolt from the blue,"a nuclear super-Pearl Harbor, interpreted Soviet secrecy as intended toconceal aggressive strength. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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