Who Caused the Cold War

Cold War Analyzing Different Perspectives The term "cold war" refers to a type of conflict that does not utilize any direct military action, in the modern lexicon another way to refer to this would be no military interventions and "no boots" on the ground. However, though the military does not engage the enemy directly, they are often engaged in many indirect pursuits against their target including tasks such as gathering intelligence, building capabilities, using espionage, and sometimes even fighting a proxy war.

Yet not just the military is involved in fighting a cold war, the economies of the two countries can be used against each other as well as various political strategies. There are also propaganda campaigns instituted in the countries to attempt to align the populations to the aims of its leaders. "The Cold War" was the most extreme example of such a form of conflict in history.

The United States and Russia, two great world super powers at the time, battled over international influence, economic activity, the development of many sciences and technologies, as well as ideological positions. The differences in the ideological positions of the parties involved also generated significantly different historical accounts of the events that unfolded in the Cold War. For example, those sympathetic to the Soviet Union might look at the circumstances through a lens that the U.S. was the aggressor while someone from a U.S.

perspective might see the opposite situation. This analysis will compare the positions of a Left revisionist such as Walter La Feber's work, with a traditionalist account such those by Arthur Schlesinger's. Left Revisionist The left revisionists are a group of historians that took a fairly radical dissent from the orthodox historical approach and instead broadened the perspective. Many of the mainstream argues have proposed that the U.S.

acted in response to Soviet expansion efforts to further their influence in the region and condense the U.S.'s efforts into phrases such as "acting to preserve freedom and democracy." However, there are always two sides to every story and some historians have chosen to attempt to step outside their own biases and broaden their objectivity.

For example, As Barton Bernstein writes in "American Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Cold War," Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (New American Nation, N.d.): American policy was neither so innocent nor so nonideological .. American leaders sought to promote their conceptions of national interest and their values even at the conscious risk of provoking Russia's fears about her security .. By overextending policy and power and refusing to accept Soviet interests, American policy-makers contributed to the Cold War ..

There is evidence that Russian policies were reasonably cautious and conservative, and that there was at least a basis for accommodation. LaFeber takes a similar approach to the attributing responsibility for the Cold War. He does not seem to favor either party and tries to interpret the factors at play with a level of objectivity.

The rise of the cold war, argues LaFeber, was neither surprising nor remarkable; rather, the rapid decay of U.S.-Soviet relations in 1945, visible in the uneasy wartime relationship, was rooted in preceding decades of American hostility to the Bolshevik state (Bernstein, 1968). The United States, after dominant international position following World War II, was determined to establish a global economic system in which it administered. Therefore, having an alternative to the economic system in which the U.S. was the biggest proponent of was a significant threat to the country.

LaFeber argues and provides a large amount of evidence for, including Department of State Bulletins, that the U.S. planners had a strategy of developing an "open door" policy for other countries in which they could accept U.S. capitalist economic systems and become part of the U.S. sphere of influence. As the dominant economic power in the world after WWII, the United States could largely dictate the terms of its expansion of the sphere of influence. However, at the same time, the U.S.

capitalist economic system could potentially lose its breadth of its sphere of influence if alternatives arose. Ironically, while the U.S. economic system was founded upon the concept of competition, it was actively seeking to rid itself of any of its own competition. LaFeber argues that the "open door" stance that the U.S. was one of the factors that helped the U.S. policy makers to depart from multilateralism which create a significant source of tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The Traditionalist Account The traditionalist or orthodox accounts focuses heavily on the Soviet Union expansion into Eastern Europe as one of the pivotal moments that led to the Cold War. This was the official justification that was given by the U.S. government and others and it was this narrative that largely dominated in many circles. This was largely the dominating opinion or perspective that others tried to broaden through including more holistic understanding.

Arthur Schlesinger himself recognized the movement against the traditionalist approach to a historical understand of the Cold War and was quoted as saying" ..." but others, especially in the United States. represent what American historians call revisionism -- that is a readiness to challenge official explanations. No one should be surprised by this phenomenon. Every war in American history has been followed, in due course, by skeptical reassessments of supposedly sacred assumptions.

for [historical] revisionism is an essential part of the process, by which history, through the posing of new problems and the investigation of new possibilities, enlarges its perspectives and enriches its insights (Schlesinger, 1986)." Schlesinger seems to use the fact that there are revisionists in the U.S. academic community (as opposed to the Soviet Union) as a justification for why the U.S. position was superior. He states "every war in American history has been followed in due course by skeptical reassessment of supposed sacred assumptions" (Schlesinger, 1967).

Thus the self-correcting nature of internal skepticism helps to only strengthen the U.S. academic community. Conclusion Whatever the case may be in regards to the culprit of the Cold War, it is important to note that it is critical to.