The Cold War was the sustained political and military tension between the Soviet Union and the United States that began in the aftermath of World War II. The Cold War inevitably began after a series of multiple events that piled on one another to create this state of opposing ideologies and thus divide. A sense of mutual hostility began to brew between powers in the United States and the Soviet Union with Americans’ increasing fear of communist attack, Truman’s dislike of Stalin, USSR’s dislike of US’s threatening atomic bombs and capitalism, and the broken promises made at the Yalta Conference. Ultimately, however, I personally believe that the Soviet Union placed the foundation of the war into place, which played the largest responsibility in developing the Cold War to its extent.
In the Novikov Telegram, the Soviet Union’s growing distaste towards the United States is evident, obviously feeling threatened and uneasy with the nation’s growing influence and power exhibited through World War II. Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Novikov states that the American foreign policy “is characterized in the postwar period by a striving for world supremacy,”, and thus all of its forces “... the army, the air force, the navy, industry, and science” are all committed to expand on this American goal of expanding its boundaries. He then makes an accusing remark towards the United States’ participation during World War II, stating that the nation’s delayed entrance to the war was a tactic to crush its already weakened enemies, and thus claim easy victory.
This critical view towards the United States did not only reside among the Russians. In a letter to President Truman, Secretary of Commerce and former Vice President Henry A. Wallace criticizes the image the United States has built towards the rest of the world, as if “only paying lip service to peace at the conference table,” and thus making the threat that the Soviet Union feels inevitable.
The overarching matter however, was not the threat that USSR felt nor the hypocritical stance the US was portraying to the rest of the world. The core issue of the Cold War was the extreme tension between Communism and Democracy itself, all ignited by the Soviet Union’s rather determined and aggressively approach to fiercely spread communist ideologies and power throughout several borders. Soviet Russia was indeed setting “an iron curtain” across the world, as Winston Churchill puts, desiring “indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” With the Soviet Union’s obvious plan to expand, I believe that the US was put in the position of inevitably having to find a way to stop and contain Communist influences. In the Truman Doctrine Speech, President Truman explains that "totalitarian regimes [of the Soviet Union] forced upon them [Eastern European nations] against their will," and Soviet Union were the ones that deliberately violated the agreements made at the Yalta Conference. It is thus very clear that the basis of the Cold War stemmed immediately after World War II because Soviet Union put forth a plan that made it necessary for America to ensure the safety of "freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries."
Bibliography:
http://www.thenation.com/article/179119/cold-war-again-whos-responsible
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1881.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/causes%20of%20the%20cold%20war.htm
http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/MapColdWarNation1959.png
http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/cold-war-graphics-640.jpg
http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib/21/media-21922/large.jpg
http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media//02/79602-050-AA3D0C14.jpg
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