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Cold War
Ministry of education, science and culture
High College of English
Graduation Paper
on theme:
U.S. - Soviet relations.
Student: Pavlunina I.V.
Supervisor: Kolpakov A. V.
Bishkek 2000
Contents.
Introduction. 3
Chapter 1: The Historical Background of Cold War. 5
1.1 The Historical Context. 5
1.2 Causes and Interpretations. 10
Chapter 2: The Cold War Chronology. 17
2.1 The War Years. 17
2.2 The Truman Doctrine. 25
2.3 The Marshall Plan. 34
Chapter 3: The Role of Cold War in American History and Diplomacy. 37
3.1 Declaration of the Cold War. 37
3.2 Ñold War Issues. 40
Conclusion. 49
Glossary. 50
The reference list.
51
Introduction.
This graduation paper is about U.S. - Soviet relations in Cold War
period. Our purpose is to find out the causes of this war, positions of the
countries which took part in it. We also will discuss the main Cold War's
events.
The Cold War was characterized by mutual distrust, suspicion and
misunderstanding by both the United States and Soviet Union, and their
allies. At times, these conditions increased the likelihood of the third
world war. The United States accused the USSR of seeking to expand
Communism throughout the world. The Soviets, meanwhile, charged the United
States with practicing imperialism and with attempting to stop
revolutionary activity in other countries. Each block's vision of the world
contributed to East-West tension. The United States wanted a world of
independent nations based on democratic principles. The Soviet Union,
however, tried control areas it considered vital to its national interest,
including much of Eastern Europe.
Through the Cold War did not begin until the end of World War II, in
1945, U.S.-Soviet relations had been strained since 1917. In that year, a
revolution in Russia established a Communist dictatorship there. During the
1920's and 1930's, the Soviets called for world revolution and the
destruction of capitalism, the economic system of United States. The United
States did not grant diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union until 1933.
In 1941, during World War II, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union then joined the Western Allies in fighting Germany. For a time
early in 1945, it seemed possible that a lasting friendship might develop
between the United States and Soviet Union based on their wartime
cooperation. However, major differences continued to exist between the two,
particularly with regard to Eastern Europe. As a result of these
differences, the United States adopted a "get tough" policy toward the
Soviet Union after the war ended. The Soviets responded by accusing the
United States and the other capitalist allies of the West of seeking to
encircle the Soviet Union so they could eventually overthrow its Communist
form of government.
The subject of Cold War interests American historicans and journalists
as well as Russian ones. In particular, famous journalist Henryh Borovik
fraces this topic in his book. He analyzes the events of Cold War from the
point of view of modern Russian man. With appearing of democracy and
freedom of speech we could free ourselves from past stereotype in
perception of Cold War's events as well as America as a whole, we also
learnt something new about American people's real life and personality. A
new developing stage of relations with the United States has begun with the
collapse of the Soviet Union on independent states. And in order to direct
these relations in the right way it is necessary to study events of Cold
War very carefully and try to avoid past mistakes. Therefore this subject
is so much popular in our days.
This graduation paper consist of three chapters. The first chapter
maintain the historical documents which comment the origins of the Cold
War.
The second chapter maintain information about the most popular Cold
War's events.
The third chapter analyze the role of Cold War in World policy and
diplomacy. The chapter also adduce the Cold War issues.
Chapter 1: The Historical Background of Cold War.
1.1 The Historical Context.
The animosity of postwar Soviet-American relations drew on a deep
reservoir of mutual distrust. Soviet suspicion of the United States went
back to America's hostile reaction to the Bolshevik revolution itself. At
the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson had sent more than ten
thousand American soldiers as part of an expeditionary allied force to
overthrow the new Soviet regime by force. When that venture failed, the
United States nevertheless withheld its recognition of the Soviet
government. Back in the United States, meanwhile, the fear of Marxist
radicalism reached an hysterical pitch with the Red Scare of 1919-20.
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered government agents to arrest
3,000 purported members of the Communist party, and then attempted to
deport them. American attitudes toward the seemed encapsulated in the
comments of one minister who called for the removal of communists in "ships
of stone with sails of lead, with the wrath of God for a breeze and with
hell for their first port."
American attitudes toward the Soviet Union, in turn, reflected profound
concern about Soviet violation of human rights, democratic procedures, and
international rules of civility. With brutal force, Soviet leaders had
imposed from above a revolution of agricultural collectivization and
industrialization. Millions had died as a consequence of forced removal
from their lands. Anyone who protested was killed or sent to one of the
hundreds of prison camps which, in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's words,
stretched across the Soviet Union like a giant archipelago. What kind of
people were these, one relative of a prisoner asked, "who first decreed and
then carried out this mass destruction of their own kind?" Furthermore,
Soviet foreign policy seemed committed to the spread of revolution to other
countries, with international coordination of subversive activities placed
in the hands of the Comintern. It was difficult to imagine two more
different societies.
For a brief period after the United States granted diplomatic
recognition to the Soviet Union in 1933, a new spirit of cooperation
prevailed. But by the end of the 1930s suspicion and alienation had once
again become dominant. From a Soviet perspective, the United States seemed
unwilling to join collectively to oppose the Japanese and German menace. On
two occasions, the United States had refused to act in concert against Nazi
Germany. When Britain and France agreed at Munich to appease Adolph Hitler,
the Soviets gave up on any possibility of allied action against Germany and
talked of a capitalist effort to encircle and destroy the Soviet regime.
Yet from a Western perspective, there seemed little basis for
distinguishing between Soviet tyranny and Nazi totalitarianism. Between
1936 and 1938 Stalin engaged in his own holocaust, sending up to 6 million
Soviet citizens to their deaths in massive purge trials. Stalin "saw
enemies everywhere," his daughter later recalled, and with a vengeance
frightening in its irrationality, sought to destroy them. It was an "orgy
of terror," one historian said. Diplomats saw high officials tapped on the
shoulder in public places, removed from circulation, and then executed.
Foreigners were subject to constant surveillance. It was as if, George
Kennan noted, outsiders were representatives of "the devil, evil and
dangerous, and to be shunned."
On the basis of such experience, many Westerners concluded that Hitler
and Stalin were two of a kind, each reflecting a blood-thirsty obsession
with power no matter what the cost to human decency. "Nations, like
individuals," Kennan said in 1938, "are largely the products of their
environment." As Kennan perceived it, the Soviet personality was neurotic,
conspiratorial, and untrustworthy. Such impressions were only reinforced
when Stalin suddenly announced a nonaggression treaty with Hitler in August
1939, and later that year invaded the small, neutral state of Finland. It
seemed that Stalin and Hitler deserved each other. Hence, the reluctance of
some to change their attitudes toward the Soviet Union when suddenly, in
June 1941, Germany invaded Russia and Stalin became "Uncle Joe."
Compounding the problem of historical distrust was the different way in
which the two nations viewed foreign policy. Ever since John Winthrop had
spoken of Boston in 1630 as "a city upon a hill" that would serve as a
beacon for the world, Americans had tended to see themselves as a chosen
people with a distinctive mission to impart their faith and values to the
rest of humankind. Although all countries attempt to put the best face
possible on their military and diplomatic actions, Americans have seemed
more committed than most to describing their involvement in the world as
pure and altruistic. Hence, even ventures like the Mexican War of 1846 - 48
- clearly provoked by the United States in an effort to secure huge land
masses - were defended publicly as the fulfillment of a divine mission to
extend American democracy to those deprived of it.
Reliance on the rhetoric of moralism was never more present than during
America's involvement in World War I. Despite its official posture of
neutrality, the United States had a vested interest in the victory of
England and France over Germany. America's own military security, her trade
lines with England and France, economic and political control over Latin
America and South America - all would best be preserved if Germany were
defeated. Moreover, American banks and munition makers had invested
millions of dollars in the allied cause. Nevertheless, the issue of
national self-interest rarely if ever surfaced in any presidential
statement during the war. Instead, U.S. rhetoric presented America's
position as totally idealistic in nature. The United States entered the
war, President Wilson declared, not for reasons of economic self-interest,
but to "make the world safe for democracy." Our purpose was not to restore
a balance of power in Europe, but to fight a war that would "end all wars"
and produce "a peace without victory." Rather than seek a sphere of
influence for American power, the United States instead declared that it
sought to establish a new form of internationalism based on self-
determination for all peoples, freedom of the seas, the end of all economic
barriers between nations, and development of a new international order
based on the principles of democracy.
America's historic reluctance to use arguments of self-interest as a
basis for foreign policy undoubtedly reflected a belief that, in a
democracy, people would not support foreign ventures inconsistent with
their own sense of themselves as a noble and just country. But the
consequences were to limit severely the flexibility necessary to a
multifaceted and effective diplomacy, and to force national leaders to
invoke moral - even religious - idealism as a basis for actions that might
well fall short of the expectations generated by moralistic visions.
The Soviet Union, by contrast, operated with few such constraints.
Although Soviet pronouncements on foreign policy tediously invoked the
rhetoric of capitalist imperialism, abstract principles meant far less than
national self-interest in arriving at foreign policy positions. Every
action that the Soviet Union had taken since the Bolshevik revolution, from
the peace treaty with the Kaiser to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact and Russian
occupation of the Baltic states reflected this policy of self-interest. As
Stalin told British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden during the war, "a
declaration I regard as algebra ... I prefer practical arithmetic." Or, as
the Japanese ambassador to Moscow later said, "the Soviet authorities are
extremely realistic and it is most difficult to persuade them with abstract
arguments." Clearly, both the United States and the Soviet Union saw
foreign policy as involving a combination of self-interest and ideological
principle. Yet the history of the two countries suggested that principle
was far more a consideration in the formulation of American foreign policy,
while self-interest-purely defined-controlled Soviet actions.
The difference became relevant during the 1930s as Franklin Roosevelt
attempted to find some way to move American public opinion back to a spirit
of internationalism. After World War I, Americans had felt betrayed by the
abandonment of Wilsonian principles. Persuaded that the war itself
represented a mischievous conspiracy by munitions makers and bankers to get
America involved, Americans had preferred to opt for isolation and
"normalcy" rather than participate in the ambiguities of what so clearly
appeared to be a corrupt international order. Now, Roosevelt set out to
reverse those perceptions. He understood the dire consequences of Nazi
ambitions for world hegemony. Yet to pose the issue strictly as one of self-
interest offered little chance of success given the depth of America's
revulsion toward internationalism. The task of education was immense. As
time went on, Roosevelt relied more and more on the traditional moral
rhetoric of American values as a means of justifying the international
involvement that he knew must inevitably lead to war. Thus, throughout the
1930s he repeatedly discussed Nazi aggression as a direct threat to the
most cherished American beliefs in freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
and freedom of occupational choice. When German actions corroborated the
president's simple words, the opportunity presented itself for carrying the
nation toward another great crusade on behalf of democracy, freedom, and
peace. Roosevelt wished to avoid the errors of Wilsonian overstatement, but
he understood the necessity of generating moral fervor as a means of moving
the nation toward the intervention he knew to be necessary if both
America's self-interest-and her moral principles-were to be preserved.
The Atlantic Charter represented the embodiment of Roosevelt's quest
for moral justification of American involvement. Presented to the world
after the president and Prime Minister Churchill met off the coast of
Newfoundland in the summer of 1941, the Charter set forth the common goals
that would guide America over the next few years. There would be no secret
commitments, the President said. Britain and America sought no territorial
aggrandizement. They would oppose any violation of the right to self-
government for all peoples. They stood for open trade, free exchange of
ideas, freedom of worship and expression, and the creation of an
international organization to preserve and protect future peace. This would
be a war fought for freedom—freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom
of religion, freedom from the old politics of balance-of-power diplomacy.
Roosevelt deeply believed in those ideals and saw no inconsistency
between the moral principles they represented and American self-interest.
Yet these very commitments threatened to generate misunderstanding and
conflict with the Soviet Union whose own priorities were much more directly
expressed in terms of "practical arithmetic." Russia wanted security. The
Soviet Union sought a sphere of influence over which it could have
unrestricted control. It wished territorial boundaries that would reflect
the concessions won through military conflict. All these objectives-
potentially-ran counter to the Atlantic Charter. Roosevelt himself-never
afraid of inconsistency-often talked the same language. Frequently, he
spoke of guaranteeing the USSR "measures of legitimate security" on
territorial questions, and he envisioned a postwar world in which the "four
policemen"-the superpowers-would manage the world.
But Roosevelt also understood that the American public would not accept
the public embrace of such positions. A rationale of narrow self-interest
was not acceptable, especially if that self-interest led to abandoning the
ideals of the Atlantic Charter. In short, the different ways in which the
Soviet Union and the United States articulated their objectives for the
war—and formulated their foreign policy—threatened to compromise the
prospect for long-term cooperation. The language of universalism and the
language of balance-of-power politics were incompatible, at least in
theory. Thus, the United States and the Soviet Union entered the war
burdened not only by their deep mistrust of each other's motivations and
systems of government, but also by a significantly different emphasis on
what should constitute the major rationale for fighting the war.
1.2 Causes and Interpretations.
Any historian who studies the Cold War must come to grips with a
series of questions, which, even if unanswerable in a definitive fashion,
nevertheless compel examination. Was the Cold War inevitable? If not, how
could it have been avoided? What role did personalities play? Were there
points at which different courses of action might have been followed? What
economic factors were central? What ideological causes? Which historical
forces? At what juncture did alternative possibilities become invalid? When
was the die cast? Above all, what were the primary reasons for defining the
world in such a polarized and ideological framework?
The simplest and easiest response is to conclude that Soviet-American
confrontation was so deeply rooted in differences of values, economic
systems, or historical experiences that only extraordinary action— by
individuals or groups—could have prevented the conflict. One version of
the inevitability hypothesis would argue that the Soviet Union, given its
commitment to the ideology of communism, was dedicated to worldwide
revolution and would use any and every means possible to promote the
demise of the West. According to this view—based in large part on the
rhetoric of Stalin and Lenin—world revolution constituted the sole
priority of Soviet policy. Even the appearance of accommodation was a
Soviet design to soften up capitalist states for eventual confrontation.
As defined, admittedly in oversimplified fashion, by George Kennan in his
famous 1947 article on containment, Russian diplomacy "moves along the
prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile, wound up and headed in
a given direction, stopping only when it meets some unanswerable force."
Soviet subservience to a universal, religious creed ruled out even the
possibility of mutual concessions, since even temporary accommodation
would be used by the Russians as part of their grand scheme to secure
world domination.
A second version of the same hypothesis—argued by some American
revisionist historians—contends that the endless demands of capitalism for
new markets propelled the United States into a course of intervention and
imperialism. According to this argument, a capitalist society can survive
only by opening new areas for exploitation. Without the development of
multinational corporations, strong ties with German capitalists, and free
trade across national boundaries, America would revert to the depression
of the prewar years. Hence, an aggressive internationalism became the only
means through which the ruling class of the United States could retain
hegemony. In support of this argument, historians point to the number of
American policymakers who explicitly articulated an economic motivation
for U.S. foreign policy. "We cannot expect domestic prosperity under our
system," Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, "without a
constantly expanding trade with other nations." Echoing the same theme,
the State Department's William Clayton declared: "We need markets—big
markets—around the world in which to buy and sell. . . . We've got to
export three times as much as we exported just before the war if we want
to keep our industry running somewhere near capacity." According to this
argument, economic necessity motivated the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall
Plan, and the vigorous efforts of U.S. policymakers to open up Eastern
Europe for trade and investment. Within such a frame of reference, it was
the capitalist economic system—not Soviet commitment to world
revolution—that made the Cold War unavoidable.
Still a third version of the inevitability hypothesis—partly based on
the first two—would insist that historical differences between the two
superpowers and their systems of government made any efforts toward postwar
cooperation almost impossible. Russia had always been deeply suspicious of
the West, and under Stalin that suspicion had escalated into paranoia, with
Soviet leaders fearing that any opening of channels would ultimately
destroy their own ability to retain total mastery over the Russian people.
The West's failure to implement early promises of a second front and the
subsequent divisions of opinion over how to treat occupied territory had
profoundly strained any possible basis of trust. From an American
perspective, in turn, it stretched credibility to expect a nation committed
to human rights to place confidence in a ruthless dictator, who in one
Yugoslav's words, had single-handedly been responsible for more Soviet
deaths than all the armies of Nazi Germany. Through the purges,
collectivization, and mass imprisonment of Russian citizens, Stalin had
presided over the killing of 20 million of his own people. How then could
he be trusted to respect the rights of others? According to this argument,
only the presence of a common enemy had made possible even short-term
solidarity between Russia and the United States; in the absence of a German
foe, natural antagonisms were bound to surface. America had one system of
politics, Russia another, and as Truman declared in 1948, "a totalitarian
state is no different whether you call it Nazi, fascist, communist, or
Franco Spain."
Yet, in retrospect, these arguments for inevitability tell only part of
the story. Notwithstanding the Soviet Union's rhetorical commitment to an
ideology of world revolution, there is abundant evidence of Russia's
willingness to forego ideological purity in the cause of national interest.
Stalin, after all, had turned away from world revolution in committing
himself to building "socialism in one country." Repeatedly, he indicated
his readiness to betray the communist movement in China and to accept the
leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. George Kennan recalled the Soviet leader
"snorting rather contemptuously . . . because one of our people asked them
what they were going to give to China when [the war] was over." "We have a
hundred cities of our own to build in the Soviet Far East," Stalin had
responded. "If anybody is going to give anything to the Far East, I think
it's you." Similarly, Stalin refused to give any support to communists in
Greece during their rebellion against British domination there. As late as
1948 he told the vice-premier of Yugoslavia, "What do you think, . . . that
Great Britain and the United States . . . will permit you to break their
lines of communication in the Mediterranean? Nonsense . . . the uprising in
Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible."
Nor are the other arguments for inevitability totally persuasive.
Without question, America's desire for commercial markets played a role in
the strategy of the Cold War. As Truman said in 1949, devotion to freedom
of enterprise "is part and parcel of what we call America." Yet was the
need for markets sufficient to force a confrontation that ultimately would
divert precious resources from other, more productive use? Throughout most
of its history, Wall Street has opposed a bellicose position in foreign
policy. Similarly, although historical differences are important, it makes
no sense to regard them as determinative. After all, the war led to
extraordinary examples of cooperation that bridged these differences; if
they could be overcome once, then why not again? Thus, while each of the
arguments for inevitability reflects truths that contributed to the Cold
War, none offers an explanation sufficient of itself, for contending that
the Cold War was unavoidable.
A stronger case, it seems, can be made for the position that the Cold
War was unnecessary, or at least that conflicts could have been handled in
a manner that avoided bipolarization and the rhetoric of an ideological
crusade. At no time did Russia constitute a military threat to the United
States. "Economically," U.S. Naval Intelligence reported in 1946, "the
Soviet Union is exhausted.... The USSR is not expected to take any action
in the next five years which might develop into hostility with Anglo
Americans." Notwithstanding the Truman administration's public statements
about a Soviet threat, Russia had cut its army from 11.5 to 3 million men
after the war. In 1948, its military budget amounted to only half of that
of the United States. Even militant anticommunists like John Foster Dulles
acknowledged that "the Soviet leadership does not want and would not
consciously risk" a military confrontation with the West. Indeed, so
exaggerated was American rhetoric about Russia's threat that