Origins of the Cold War
Ashley Shakya
Discuss the origins of the Cold War.
The Cold War had its roots in World War II, when the repeated delays in opening a second front in Europe made the Russians suspicious of the Western Allies' motives. Those concerns were heightened when the United States discontinued lend‐lease aid to the Soviet Union soon after the war ended. Stalin's commitment at Yalta to allow free elections in Eastern Europe was quickly broken. To ensure “friendly states” on its western borders, the USSR supported and helped install Communist‐dominated governments in Poland, Bulgaria, and Rumania (Romania) in the spring and summer of 1945. Within a year, as Winston Churchill told an American audience, an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, separating the “free” democratic nations of the West from the “captive” Communist nations of the East.
What were the fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union was not simply a matter of ill will, misunderstandings, and the competition for power, although it was all these things, too. It resulted from deep-seated animosities. This commitment to wage the cold war, whose costs were high on both sides, hinged on the belief that the conflict was ultimately a battle between rival and compatible social, political, and economic systems.
What role did ideology play in the Cold War?
The geopolitical and ideological rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States listed almost five decades and affected every corner of the world. The cold war was responsible for the formation of military and political alliances, the creation of client states, and an arms race of unprecedented scope. It engendered diplomatic crises, spawned military conflicts, and at times brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. It was a contest in which neither side gave away, yet in the end the United States and Soviet Union always avoided a direct clash of arms, hence end the term cold war.
Examine the contrasting ideologies of the superpowers.
At the heart of the cold war lay an ideological conflict between capitalism and communism. Ideology mattered profoundly, explaining why political crosses occurred so frequently and international tensions remained at a high pitch and why the Soviet Union and the United States are unable to live in peaceful coexistence. U.S. ideology was committed to liberalism and severe criticism of communism as practiced by the Soviet Union and other regimes. The Soviet response to containment evolved into two counterstrategies: support for wars of national liberation or colonial revolution, and attainment of military parity with the United States and its allies.