Introduction

By the spring of 1945, American, Russian, and European armies had defeated Germany in World War II.    Although these powers were known as the Grand Alliance during the war, post-war political tensions, a product of the division of Europe into spheres of influence, strained relations between the East and the West.  The Cold War settled across the planet, as communist Russia, and a democratic West split along the line of their respective political ideologies.  

Thesis

What was the cause of the Cold War?  A common narrative revolves around the notion that America was forced into détente as the Russian war machine threatened the globe.  But today, a more nuanced examination of history shows that America had a bigger hand to play in the fomenting and evolution of the Cold War than can be explained by this traditional narrative.  According to Thomas G. Paterson in an article titled “The Origins of the Cold War” from the journal Organization of American Historians Magazine of History the “generally accepted view of the origins of the Cold War, then, depicted a United States forced into an activist international role by external forces, especially by the Soviet threat.".  By the 1960’s scholars began to offer a broader explanation of the Cold War that shows America had just as much responsibility for its causes and carry-on effects than had traditionally been offered.  “The decline of McCarthyism, changing views on the Cold War brought about by the Vietnam War, and the declassification and opening to scholars of early Cold War documents…these generated new interpretations – revisions."

 Argument

One of the most exciting and revealing aspects of this changing explanation was the output from government documentation on the subject.  As Paterson notes, “the [declassified] papers permitted the scholar to follow policymaking on a day-to-day basis at the highest levels. All the questioning permitted by the decline of McCarthyism and induced by the Vietnam War would not have had a significant impact on scholarship had it not been possible to test the questions in the rich historical sources themselves.”  We know from this declassification that the Russian army, for example, was understaffed compared to reports from the 1950’s. “Evidence from recent scholarship suggests that the Soviet military threat was more myth than reality. The Soviet Union demobilized its forces after the war, dropping to about 2.9 million personnel in 1948. Many of its 175 divisions were under-strength and large numbers of them were engaged in occupation duties in Eastern Europe."

For generations, Americans had been loath to send U.S. forces to combat international foes.  By the early 1950’s, President Truman found himself leading a country that now expected to leave its imprimatur on the world stage.  Dr. Eric Tolman n his guest lecture series titled “America and the Cold War,” explains that the concept of mutually assured destruction tempered reality for most Americans and by the end of the Cold War Americans feared more generally a “fanaticism of sufficient intensity [it would] overrule all logic."  And Paterson, too, agrees with this assessment, outlining some key reasons for this shift.  “First, Americans drew lessons from their experience in the 1930s, when they supposedly indulged their ‘isolationism,’…Second, by letting economic depression spawn political extremism and war…[and] a third explanation is found in [detailing how] Americans felt compelled to project their power [out of] economic need and fear of depression.”  Having developed the world’s foremost military-industrial complex and taking a more strident role in international affairs, America quickly became a dominant leader.  In many ways this grasp at power was inevitable. “These several explanations for American globalism suggest that the United States would have been an expansionist power whether or not the obstructionist Soviets were lurking about." Paterson goes on to emphasize the particular and important nature of American military power and its incredible strength over the course of the war.  He suggests negotiations between the USSR and the United States might have been instrumental in avoiding the conflict altogether.

Conclusion

Today, scholarship on the causes and evolution of the Cold War reflects a convergence of these two dominant positions, the traditional and the revisionist.  “We think more about shared responsibility…more about the competitive building of spheres of influence…more about Chinese Communist overtures to the United States in 1949 that might have led to an accommodation…more about the early formation of a concept of national security that was global in scope…more about the strains within the Communist world, evident in Soviet relations with Yugoslavia and China in the late 1940s, [and]…more about the exact nature of the Soviet threat."  In this way, the imperial nature of Americas burst onto the world stage can no longer be ignored by historians.

References

Paterson, Thomas G. “The Origins of the Cold War.” OAH Magazine of History. Vol. 2, No. 1. 1986.

Tolman, Eric. "America and the Cold War". YouTube. 2011.