On the Origins of the Cold War

When examining the causes behind the onset of the Cold War, several themes become evident in terms of the considerations of the two major parties of the conflict, the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States was increasingly enamored with anti-Communist sentiments, a fact particularly evident when looking at the campaigns of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his counterparts on the House Un-American Activities Committee. However, such sentiments were not new for the United States. Fear of Communism and socialism in general dated back decades to the early 20th century. These fears initially peaked with the response to the Bolshevik takeover in Russia following the First World War. The United States, along with other Western powers, attempted to intervene militarily in the conflict by supporting the anti-Bolshevik “White Russians”. This foreign intervention was accompanied by a campaign on the homefront orchestrated by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The McCarthy of his day, Palmer launched his infamous “Palmer Raids”, targeting actual and suspected Communists and anarchists. Anti-Communist crusades of this time were epitomized by the imprisonment of noted American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs during the First World War, as well as the ideologically charged Sacco & Vanzetti trial.

American and in general Western foreign policy towards the Soviet Union was largely one of cognitive dissonance, understanding that there was little to be done about the country but deciding not to officially recognize the Bolshevik government. The United States did not formally establish relations with the USSR until 1933, and admission to the League of Nations did not come until the following year. These events spurred increased distrust of the West by Soviet leadership, only to escalate in the years leading up to the Second World War. Even though the Western powers were certainly opposed to the Nazi state in Germany, they were almost as fearful of the Soviet Union and Communism in general. This was part of their calculation in pursuing non-intervention during the Spanish Civil War. Although it is certainly true that Britain and France were fearful of confrontation with Hitler, they were also wary of the prospect of a Soviet ally so close to their borders.

This episode reveals another key point regarding West-Soviet relations: the Soviet Union actively sought good relations with the West. Before and during the War, they desired to encircle Hitler and face him with the potential of a two-fronted conflict if war were to break out, thus discouraging him from further aggression. However, Stalin saw the Western non-intervention in Spain and the appeasement policies employed at Munich in 1938 as signs that he would not be able to rely on Britain and France in combating Hitler’s march. It is largely for this reason that Stalin saw himself with no other option but to enter into the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in August 1939.

Operation Barbarossa changed the equation drastically. Now Stalin was indeed forced to turn to Britain (and the increasingly entangled Americans) for assistance. Once the United States entered the war, Stalin pushed hard for the opening of the “Second Front” in Europe. However, such a campaign would not materialize until June 1944, some two and a half years after Hitler declared war on the United States. The reasons for this delay should be examined, as they serve as an important background for understanding the dynamics of the early stages of the Cold War. First, Churchill was afraid of engaging Hitler in Europe directly. He instead preferred to approach “Fortress Europe” from its “soft underbelly”, the south. American forces did land in North Africa in 1942, posing Mussolini with a two front conflict in the region. The Allies then pushed forward and up through Italy itself. This emphasis on the Mediterranean reflected the desire of Britain to regain and maintain control of the sea lanes connecting the British Isles to its Empire in East Africa and South Asia. As a result, control of Egypt (with its Suez Canal), Greece and other areas of the region took on a particularly vital nature for the British. This shows that Churchill was intent on maintaining Britain’s Empire, regardless of the expense the delay would have for other nations, particularly the Soviet Union.

The other major factor again connects back to the omnipresent American anti-Communism. Many in the United States were not necessarily sad to see the destruction being wrought on the Soviet Union. Before U.S. entry into the war, then-Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman stated that, “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.” Such sentiments, along with the British concern with the Mediterranean, increasingly convinced Stalin that Britain and the United States were willing to fight Nazi Germany “to the last drop of Russian blood.”

With the war in Europe having ended in May and the war against Japan nearing its conclusion, the United States in July 1945 perceived itself possessing an unparalleled position in history: the ability to dictate peace terms not just to the defeated nations but also to the victors. The catalyst for such a startling position was the atomic bomb, a weapon the U.S. viewed as giving them the power to unquestioningly dominate the postwar world. Upon learning of its successful test while attending the Potsdam Conference, Truman suddenly took a much more hard-line stance against the Soviet Union. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were done not so much to force Japanese surrender as it was to illustrate the weapon’s power to the USSR and the rest of the world. In fact, a growing school of thought today among historians is that the Japanese surrender was due more to the Soviet invasion of Japanese territory than to the atomic attacks. For the Japanese, these blasts represented just another escalation of the indiscriminate aerial bombing campaign that the United States had been undertaking for months; the Soviet invasion, on the other hand, presented a far larger threat to the viability of the Japanese Empire.

The perception of an “atomic monopoly” would dominate American foreign policy for the next four years, and maintain strong influence even after the Soviets announced their own weapon. Interestingly, Stalin appears to have been relatively unphased by this sequence of events; in fact, its only immediate effect was to cause acceleration of the Soviet research program. Part of the explanation is that Stalin was already well aware of the American program even before Potsdam; learning of the successful test did little to move his calculations and negotiating positions beyond where they already stood. In addition, Stalin had his own cards to play, namely the fact that he controlled the world’s largest army, one that occupied almost all of Eastern Europe. Even with the atomic bomb, Truman and the United States could do little without risking an all-out land war in Europe. This fact would remain a key component of Cold War geopolitics for the next 45 years.

The succeeding few years represent the most crucial in the development of the conflict. The policies of the United States then and through the rest of the Cold War were plagued by two falsehoods. The first was the view that Communism was ‘monolithic’ in its structure, that Moscow was a ‘nerve center’ from which all Communist movements worldwide were directed. In Greece, the most significant early example, the United States believed that the left-wing guerrilla movement opposed to the right-wing monarchy was directly aided by the Soviet Union. In fact, they received most of their support from neighboring Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, the latter of whom’s policies toward Greece would produce a split between its leader Tito and Stalin. Churchill himself stated that the Soviets adhered to the agreement he drew up with Stalin as to influence in Greece and Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, the United States decided to take up the torch passed along to her by the British Empire and become the dominant Western power in the world. The President declared what would be dubbed the “Truman Doctrine” and pushed for aid to Greece and Turkey. This policy of “containment” of the spread of Communism would serve as the the major force of American policy throughout the Cold War.

The Greek situation also demonstrates the other fallacy of American postwar thinking: what has been described as “a faith in their own goodness, deep-seated in American culture” which allowed the United States “to be largely undisturbed” by its own “contradictions”. The meaning of this statement must be explored. The United States was obviously quite upset by the so-called “salami tactics” used by the Soviet Union to establish “satellite states” in Eastern Europe. It viewed such tactics as undemocratic and contrary to the will of the people. However, at the same time the United States was also seeking to secure its grip over the states in its sphere of influence by employing eerily similar tactics. These include the ruthless brutality against Communists displayed in Greece, the tampering with elections in France and Italy to ensure a favorable result, and the support of an authoritarian state led by the right-wing Syngman Rhee in South Korea. Such actions hardly paint the United States as a promoter of freedom, democracy, and human rights. The American justification came from the idea that the United States was solely a force for good in the world, a viewpoint espoused by Time magazine editor Henry Luce early in the War. As a result, it was believed, any action taken by the United States was what was best for the world.

The truth is much more appalling. In reality, the policies of the United States were designed almost entirely to promote the interest of the country’s business and military establishments. Even before the war, business leaders had sought to increase trade with the rest of the world in order to increase export profits. Communism and other left-wing ideologies, however, posed a threat to this idea. It was believed, perhaps rightly so, that nations pursuing such economic plans would be closed to American goods and investment capital. It was thus the responsibility of the United States government to ensure that these regions remained “open to business”. The agreements and organizations drawn up at Bretton Woods, including the World Bank, the IMF, and GATT became part of this plan. Although ostensibly designed to rebuild war-torn countries and encourage growth in developing regions, the fact of the matter is that they became tools for securing American economic hegemony in the postwar world. The Marshall Plan served this purpose even more explicitly, as it guaranteed Western European financial dependency on the United States, at least in the short-term. In addition, this ERP was specifically designed to ensure Soviet rejection, as Western leaders had little interest in propping up a Communist state.

One should also not underestimate the importance of the lucrative nature of military production on American foreign policy. “Perpetual warfare”, as George Orwell would call it in his seminal work 1984, was good for business. Wartime production and the shortage of labor instigated by mobilization finally pulled the American economy out of the Great Depression. The potential for profit here was evident for wartime contractors, and as the Truman Commission showed war profiteering was certainly not uncommon. Ensuring that the American war machine kept humming became a top priority for those seeking to bolster their companies’ bottom lines. Such principles gained a foothold in official policy in NSC-68, which encouraged a tripling of the defense budget. Such a policy seemed to benefit everyone: politicians who desired to see continued production promote the booming economy, business leaders who would see opening of trade and investment in the targeted countries, the military contractors who would profit from the government contracts, and the military who would secure sustained importance and worldwide influence. Never mind the millions killed, countries destroyed, and billions paid by American taxpayers as a result. NSC-68 would officially go into effect with the onset of the war in Korea. The military-industrial complex warned of by Eisenhower existed years before his farewell address.

The pattern here is clear. The United States anti-Communist crusade, driven by American business and military interests, plunged the world into perhaps its most dangerous bilateral confrontation in history. The nation attempted to use the threat of nuclear annihilation to intimidate any nation that stood in its way. The myth of American exceptionalism blinded it to its pathological contradiction of its own founding principles. Misguided perceptions of the nature of Communism produced severe military overreactions, culminating in the dual quagmires of Korea and Vietnam.  All of these truths strongly suggest that the United States was the primary aggressor in the Cold War.

It is worthwhile to contrast the American views with that of the Soviet Union. The Soviets, including Stalin, did not desire nor anticipate an escalation of tensions and direct confrontation with the West. The USSR was actually depending on strong relations with the West after the war, much the same as its pursuits to contain Hitler before the war, in order to rebuild its economy. The Soviets saw the reparations received from Germany as absolutely vital, in addition to the aid promised to them during the War by President Roosevelt. When the flow of reparations payments from West Germany were stopped, the Soviets reacted with the blockade of Berlin. Presented with the unstomachable stipulations of the ERP, the Soviets balked and sought to ensure that its satellites in Eastern Europe did the same, culminating in the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. All in all, the Soviets were far more concerned with their own economic recovery and defense than they were with an aggressive policy of Communist expansion. In fact, they were still actively demobilizing troops throughout Eastern Europe throughout the late 1940s, despite increased possibilities of war with the West.

It should be noted that part of the reason the USSR viewed a breakdown of relations with the West as unlikely was due to the fact that they envisioned a rift that would develop between the United States and the British Empire. Such a split would result from dispute over the dismantling of the Empire, something desired by Roosevelt and especially Vice President Henry Wallace, while vehemently opposed by Churchill. However, leadership changes prevented such a schism from developing. Roosevelt’s death brought Truman (not Wallace, who had been replaced on the ticket in 1944) into office, while Clement Attlee succeeded Churchill as British prime minister. Truman and his administration did not have the same qualms about imperialism, as evidenced by their support of France’s attempted recolonization of Indochina. Attlee, on the other hand, was more prepared to let the Empire fall away, as he oversaw the Indian transition to independence in 1947.