Cold War: An Analysis of Root Causes and Overall Levels of Responsibility - Essay Example

Section/# Cold War: An Analysis of Root Causes and Overall Levels of Responsibility Although many in the West havebeen conditioned to believe that many, if not all, determinant factors for what contributed to the Cold War can be blamed on the Soviet Union, a careful analysis of the facts and the history, as well as the personalities involved, shows quite a different story. However, rather than stating that the United States and its policies, military actions, intentions, and security concerns were the main reasons for the Cold War, this brief analysis will attempt to show that both actors contributed nearly equally to precipitate many of the escalations that occurred during the Cold War years. As a function of examining the theory of containment, the effects of the United State’s use of the atom bomb, and a nuanced and established policy of quid-pro-quo security maneuvers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, the reader can come to a more full and complete understanding of what causal factors helped to shape the conflict as well the level to which both actors contributed to the furtherance of hostilities.1 With respect to the very start of the Cold War, the confrontation between East and West was almost nearly inevitable as a function of the fact that the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan served to differentiate the world into a bipolar power structure. This power structure was the first of its kind in the world. Whereas similar regional powers had dominated global affairs for distinct periods of time, this was the first situation in which the world was practically and literally divided by ideology and economic systems.2 As such, the distrust and level of suspicion between these two superpowers was heightened even prior the end of the Second World War. Furthermore, even if the two superpowers had shared an economic system and a general belief and understanding of a unique world view, such a conflict would still have been likely due to the unique power dynamic that hegemonies exhibit in their quest to prove their power absolutely within their respective spheres of influence. Due to the fact that spheres of influence for these two superpowers were amorphous and undefined, the conflict between the two was accentuated. Likewise, the addition of new territories as a result of the land acquisition that occurred as a function of the Second World War, served to further increase feelings of distress and worries within the United States. From the American perspective, the Soviet Union was rapidly increasing its territorial holdings with no regard for the self-determination of the people groups that it was absorbing. Similarly, from the Soviet Union’s perspective, the United States and its allies were now practically and literally surrounding the nation. This fact may seem odd to a Western perspective as it is understood that the Soviet Union was so vast and so incomprehensibly large that “surrounding” such an entity would be impossible. However, from the Soviet Union’s perspective, there were now hundreds of thousands of Allied troops in surrounding occupied European countries.3 Similarly, nations on the southern border of the Soviet Union were becoming host to a series of pro-Western regimes; Iran at that time was but one example of this. Additionally, although the United States decried the Soviet occupation of Poland, the United States had tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan. This type of action only served to further increase the level of suspicion and hostility that existed at the time. Although perhaps unintentional in many ways, these types of actions only served to exacerbate fears within the military power structure of both nations that a confrontation was imminent. As such, the conflict itself proceeded into a new stage of development. As each and every stage of the Cold War can be understood as a function of a zero-sum game, the United States and its allies attempted at every turn to deprive the Soviet Union of any type of advantage.4 One of the most effective and aggravating causal factors of the escalation of the Cold War can be traced back to the Doctrine of Containment. Although both powers were full on the path to conflict long before the Doctrine of Containment was fully enunciated by George Kennan, this fact alone helped, perhaps more than any other, to ensure that the United States and the Soviet Union would be locked in conflict throughout much of the next thirty years. As a result of the doctrine of containment, the United States realized and underscored it had a solemn duty to actively engage the Soviet Union’s expansionary practices in whatever theater they manifested themselves. As one can see from a review of history, this effected American involvement in a series of brush wars and full scale military conflicts that spanned nearly every continent. Korea and Vietnam were of course the prime examples of what containment theory meant with regards to the way in which the United States and its allies sought to engage with the Soviet Union.5 As stated, this doctrine of containment meant that there was no choice but to militarily, economically, and diplomatically engage the Soviet Union at each and every single turn. This effected a self fulfilling prophecy of conflict between the two superpowers in which the Cold War only escalated as each attempted to spread their form of governance and political system in far flung regions of the world while all the time attempting to subvert, undermine, and overthrow the competition’s designs within the same region. It should be noted that this continuous struggle between the two not only further served to escalate tensions during the Cold War but also served to reduce the overall likelihood that any lasting understanding may pass between the two. In effect every conceivable arena of competition became a zone in which both competing interests worked and employed all powers available to subvert and aggressively engage the other in attempting to weaken the position of the respective rival. Although this is often explained from the Western perspective of attempting to “make the world safe for democracy” and/or actively encouraging democratization around the globe, a cursory study of many of the governments in which the United States actively aligned itself and supported clearly shows that the United States and her allies were more than willing to support devious, corrupt, abusive, totalitarian regimes in an effort to ebb the flow of communism in various regions around the world. In this way, the Soviet experience can be seen as one in which they noted that the United States was willing to ally itself with any and every partner imaginable that was antithetical to the desires of the Soviet Union or the spread of communism. As such, the understandin between the two parties successively decreased. Evidence of such a policy can be seen in the way that the United States actively supported a corrupt military junta in South Vietnam under the leadership of Nguy?n Van Thi?u, a known human rights abuser, Augusto Pinochet, in Chile, and a series of un-democratic puppet governments in South Korea.6 Although Westerners are all too familiar with one side of the situation in regards to the Cuban Missile Crisis, they are not aware of some of the causal factors that helped to precipitate it.7 Whereas a common image is conjured of Kennedy imploring Khrushchev and exorcising elements of restraint within the Soviet leader, the larger truth hinges upon the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis itself was a Soviet response to the fact that the United States had surreptitiously been installing tactical nuclear capabilities within Turkey, a NATO ally. In this way, Khrushchev and the Soviets were merely responding to an American escalation to the Cold War by matching this aggressive stance with one of their own. By seeking to install nuclear defensive/offensive capabilities within Cuba, a Soviet ally, the Soviet Union attempted to balance the uneven nature that the United States had effected by installing nuclear capabilities on the southern border of the Soviet Union. Similarly, a great emphasis has been placed upon the development and subsequent nuclear arms race that existed between the two powers during much of the Cold War. Although the conflict would doubtless have originated regardless of these mechanisms, the fact that both parties were now capable of outright destroying each other and the rest of humanity in the process added a unique and interesting development which has been discussed, analyzed, and studied ad nauseam.8 However, one point that is not often considered by Western scholars is the fact that the United States was the first and only country that has used nuclear weapons in an offensive manner. Rather, the lion’s share of the focus has been concentric upon the fact that Soviet espionage was responsible for “stealing” key secrets from the United States Manhattan Project as well as those projects associated for creating and testing the hydrogen bomb only a few brief years later. Due to the fact that an uneven balance was affected between the two powers during the early phases of the cold war, the Soviet Union actively sought to catch the West and develop its own nuclear arsenal. The development, testing, and threat of use of this arsenal defined the remainder of the Cold War years. Furthermore, the deployment and strategic stationing of nuclear capabilities as defined with respect to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such actions only served to foment a degree of mutual distrust and feelings of an upcoming offensive action on the part of both participants. From such an understanding, the Soviet Union’s acquisition of atomic capabilities and rapid expansion and diffusion of these capabilities across the regions that it held sway over is evidence of the fear and uncertainty that defined the Soviet power structure.9 From a Soviet perspective, the leadership had pure and historically verifiable evidence that the United States can and would use nuclear power to vanquish their enemies just as had been done with Japan in 1945. From the United State’s perspective, the aggregate expansion of the Soviet nuclear forces only served as proof positive that the intention of the Soviet Union was to use these weapons in an offensive manner in order to completely annihilate the United States. From this incomplete and patently incorrect method of analysis, it is simple to see why such an escalation necessarily took place between the two powers. Naturally, from the diverse situations that have been described, one can see that an emerging trend of utter distrust and aggression emerged as a construct of the way that the Cold War was being prosecuted. One of the results of this continual lack of trust among these parties was the fact that each resorted to high levels of propaganda to relate the ways in which their populace viewed and reacted to the many diverse news items and current affairs that defined their current world. The prevalence of propaganda within the Soviet Union is a well known fact as researchers have been studying its forms and effects for several decades now; however, the effect of systemic propaganda within the population of the American people has received a greatly reduced level of attention.10 However, with respect to the evolution an growth of the Cold War this factor is of extreme importance. Although the effect of Soviet propaganda can be understood as a means to differentiate the public’s image of the enemy, the use of American forms of propaganda served a slightly different purpose. In the United States, election cycles presented a veneer of democracy as candidates would seek to differentiate themselves based on policy views and ways in which they would engage/chose not to engage, and further seek to strengthen the United State’s position against Soviet “aggression”. As such, the propaganda in the United States had the additional power to influence the way in which the country chose its leadership. Furthermore, such a distinct power of propaganda necessarily expressed itself in a way that it could not within the Soviet Union. The purpose of this assignment has not been to ascribe blame to the causal factors in what transpired during the Cold War, it has been the intention of this author to categorize these actions from as nearly a non-biased standpoint as possible. Due to the fact that one must understand the nuances of paranoia, nationalism, and the effects of perception, it is nearly impossible to come to a determination that is entirely free and devoid of any biases. However, it is this author’s belief that both sides contributed in an equal manner to the distrust, hatred, and paranoia that was so indicative of this particular period of world history. Rather than attempting to find a balanced approach which could guide the process of confrontation in a more nuanced and balanced means, both sides automatically assumed that each and every action was intent on affecting the downfall of its respective system. Furthermore, due to the fact that both sides instituted policies and strategies that actively sought to engage the other in a negative sense at each and every turn, the level to which compromise and diplomacy could have been further used to engage in a meaningful dialogue without resorting to militarist actions was greatly reduced. References Allison, G. (2012). The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50. Foreign Affairs, 91(4), 11-16. Komska, Y. (2011). Ruins of the Cold War. New German Critique, (112), 155-180. Major, P., & Mitter, R. (2003). East is East and West is West? Towards a Comparative Socio-Cultural History of the Cold War. Cold War History, 4(1), 1-22. O’GORMAN, N. (2009). "THE ONE WORD THE KREMLIN FEARS": C. D. JACKSON, COLD WAR "LIBERATION," AND AMERICAN POLITICAL-ECONOMIC ADVENTURISM. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 12(3), 389-427. Our Vietnam, And the Soviets' - New York Times. (n.d.). The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/15/opinion/our-vietnam-and-the-soviets.html Roman, L. G. (2004). States of insecurity: Cold War memory, "global citizenship" and its discontents. Discourse: Studies In The Cultural Politics Of Education, 25(2), 231-259. Rosenberg, M. (1972). Beyond conflict and containment; critical studies of military and foreign policy. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Books distributed by Dutton New York. Soviet Challenges U.S. Right to Blockade; Interception of 25 Russian Ships Ordered; Cuba Quarantine Backed by United O.A.S. (n.d.). The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/19/home/crisis-24.html Swift, J. (2009). THE SOVIET-AMERICAN ARMS RACE. History Review, (63), 13-18. Whalen-Bridge, J. (2002). Some Versions of the Cold War. American Literature, 74(3), 619. Read More