Cold War (1945 – 91): Causes

This entry is a subentry of Cold War (1945 – 91).

The Grand Alliance of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union was the indirect creation of Adolf Hitler. Only such a challenge as Nazi Germany could bring together the world's leading capitalist democracy, the world's greatest colonial empire, and the world's major Communist state. Relations between the Anglo‐Americans and the Russians, moreover, had been marked by ideological clash and distrust since the Bolshevik Revolution. The Western powers had intervened in the Russian civil war against the Bolsheviks, and the United States had refused to recognize the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1933. Prewar diplomacy, particularly Western appeasement of Hitler and rejection of collective security with the Soviet Union, followed by the Nazi‐Soviet Pact in August 1939, led each side to be wary of the other's intentions and motives.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set forth two parallel strategies for postwar peace. The first was the continuation of the Grand Alliance. Best symbolized by the United Nations, this path sought continued cooperation with the Soviet Union, great power control over different spheres of influence, and incorporation of socialist economies into a world trade system. The other strategy was based on American power, the “open door,” policy, and unilateral planning. It was best represented by the development of the atomic bomb, which Roosevelt refused to share with the Russians. Though Roosevelt wished for continued cooperation with the Soviets, he was also willing to hedge his bets and keep his options open. Underlying both approaches was Roosevelt's tactic of delaying the major decisions on boundaries, governments, occupation policies, and reparations and reconstruction aid until the end of the war, when American power would be at its height. With his characteristic optimism, Roosevelt believed that time would allow the conflicts in these approaches to be worked out.

The Yalta Conference in February 1945 appeared to expose the problems and contradictions of Roosevelt's two‐track approach. The Allies clashed over the composition of Poland's government, and could not reach firm agreements on the crucial questions of the occupation of Germany and postwar reparations and loans. Roosevelt, believing any truly representative government in Warsaw would be anti‐Soviet, accepted a vague compromise that allowed the Soviet‐imposed government to maintain control without technically violating the agreement. Four zones of occupation were established for Germany, and $10 billion was adopted as a working figure for German reparations to the Soviet Union, with the details to be settled later. Still, Roosevelt saw the common desire to prevent a resurgence of German power, along with Soviet needs for postwar reconstruction, to be firm roads to continued cooperation among the Big Three (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR). He believed that concessions to Soviet security concerns in Eastern Europe were necessary in the short run until the West could demonstrate its good faith through American economic aid and guarantees against German remilitarization. Once Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was persuaded that the West did not intend to allow Germany again to threaten Europe's peace, and that it would assist the Soviet Union in its recovery, Moscow would no longer need to dominate its neighbors. The Soviet Union would find its security protected within the collective arrangements of the United Nations Security Council.

Roosevelt's hopes of resolving the contradictions of his policy died with him on 12 April 1945. The new president, Harry S. Truman, was by all accounts unaware of Roosevelt's plans, generally uninformed about foreign policy and military matters, and therefore initially reliant upon a set of advisers that included Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and Truman's choice for secretary of state, James Brynes. This group tended to take a harder line toward the Soviet Union than had Roosevelt. Truman believed in cooperation, but he thought it should be on American terms. He stated that he did not expect to get his way every time, but he did believe “we should be able to get eighty‐five percent.” In his first meeting with the Soviet foreign minister, V. M. Molotov, in late April 1945, Truman used blunt language in accusing the Soviets of failing to carry out their promise of establishing a democratic government in Poland. In July, when Truman learned of the successful testing of the atomic bomb, he wrote privately that he now had an “ace in the hole,” which he could use to end the war in the Pacific and in negotiations with the Soviets. The unilateral approach was winning out over cooperation and negotiation.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did indeed add to Soviet distrust of the United States, but Soviet leaders in the Kremlin continued in 1945 to seek cooperation with the West. The reasons for this were compelling. The devastation of the Soviet Union by the Germans was unprecedented. Over 20 million Soviet citizens died during the war, and over 1,700 cities, 70,000 villages, and 31,000 factories were destroyed. To ensure more secure borders, rebuild, and prevent a future resurgence of German strength seemed to demand continued good relations with the United States. Only Washington could ensure Soviet security through its occupation policies and provide funds for reconstruction. Cooperation, for Stalin, was a means to ensure the Soviet sphere of influence, control Germany, and secure vital economic aid.

Yet, from Washington's perspective Soviet actions in Eastern Europe more and more came to be seen not as necessary steps for security but as aggressive actions that threatened American plans for postwar peace and prosperity. From the outset of World War II, officials in the Roosevelt administration were determined that the United States would seize its “second chance” (the first chance had been lost after World War I) to shape the postwar world in such a way as to promote American interests and peace. It was an article of faith for advocates of American internationalism that the United States had an obligation to accept responsibility for postwar leadership and to see to it that the world adopted American ideas of self‐determination, free trade, arms limitations, and collective security. These were not only good for the United States but beneficial to all nations. With isolationism discredited, the objective was to maintain the principles of the Grand Alliance as set out in the Atlantic Charter. The United States had fought the war in part to protect self‐determination and open trade.

It was therefore necessary to combat spheres of influence and closed trading systems. No one nation or group of powers could be allowed to establish a competing system to the one the U.S. government envisioned for the world. Truman and his advisers believed that political and economic freedoms were interrelated and necessary for American prosperity and international peace. Any restrictions of trade or exclusive economic spheres would lead to a repetition of the 1930s. As Truman declared in 1947, “peace, freedom, and world trade” were inseparable; “the grave lessons of the past have proved it.” Limiting a Soviet sphere of influence was perceived as necessary to postwar peace. This understanding led to great fears among American officials that if they did not respond to Soviet actions, the United States would find itself once again in a world of trade blocs and international competition. To compel the Soviets to accept American interpretations of agreements, the Truman administration denounced Soviet behavior in Poland, Romania, and elsewhere, threatened action over Soviet involvement in Iran, and held up economic assistance until the Soviets demonstrated their willingness to cooperate on American terms. Truman, believing he had either the power to force Soviet compliance or the ability to achieve American goals without the Kremlin's cooperation, was convinced by the end of 1945 that it was time to “stop babying the Soviets.” “Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language,” he said, “another war is in the making.”

The arrival of George F. Kennan's Long Telegram from Moscow in February 1946 served to provide coherence to the developing hard line against the Soviets. Kennan argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by a combination of traditional Russian desires to expand and by Marxist ideology that taught there could be no cooperation with capitalist states. There was therefore no room for compromise and negotiation. The Soviets would take advantage of all sincere efforts at peace and only honor agreements when it was expedient to their goals. He portrayed Stalin as acting on a coherent design, rather than as a man responding to events in the interests of his nation. The obvious conclusion for Kennan—and the one drawn by the Truman administration—was that the Soviets had no legitimate grievances. There was thus no need to try to understand and meet Soviet concerns. Rather, a policy of opposition and the containment of Soviet power was necessary.

A few weeks later in Fulton, Missouri, former British prime minister Winston S. Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech sounding the call for an Anglo‐American alliance against the Soviets, whom he said had established a dictatorial regime behind an “iron curtain” from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.” Problems seemed to be multiplying around the world, and from the White House it appeared that more often than not the source of the difficulties was the Soviet Union. In Asia, revolutionary nationalist movements, often headed by Communists, were fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires, while civil war between the Nationalists and Communists resumed in China. In Europe, economic recovery was slow, food and other essential goods short, and Communist parties, particularly in France and Italy, were gaining ground. Truman's advisers warned him that time was running short. The Soviet strategy, they argued, was to weaken the position of the United States in Europe and Asia to create confusion and collapse. The threat was not necessarily a military one, but a political and economic challenge.

Other apparent challenges appeared in Turkey and Iran. In 1946, the Soviets pushed for access to the strategic Dardanelles Straits while simultaneously delaying the removal of troops from Iran's northern provinces.

The event that spurred Truman to action was the British government's announcement in February 1947 that it was pulling out of Greece. It could no longer afford to finance the Greek royalist forces in their civil war against a Communist‐led rebellion. Rather than viewing the war as a civil conflict revolving around Greek issues, American policymakers incorrectly interpreted it as a Soviet effort. Secretary of State Dean Acheson told congressional leaders that the “Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost” in an effort to expand into the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The United States alone could stop this. In March 1947, the president announced the Truman Doctrine. It “must be the policy of the United States,” Truman declared, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” This was followed in June by the Marshall Plan (1948–52), a pledge of economic assistance to Europe to stimulate recovery and trade.

By 1947, U.S. policy was predicated on the containment of the Soviet Union. In its efforts to establish a postwar order based upon American institutions and ideals, the Truman administration came to see the Soviet Union as a threat to U.S. interests. In the late 1940s, containment and anticommunism were globalized to include Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Competing security and economic demand in Europe shattered the Grand Alliance and brought about the Cold War.

[See also Russia, U.S. Military Involvement in, 1917–20; Russia, U.S. Military Involvement in, 1921–95.]

Bibliography

• John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947, 1972.
• Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State, 1977.
• Thomas Paterson, On Every Front: The Making of the Cold War, 1979.
• Fraser Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, American and the Origins of the Cold War, 1986.
• Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan, 1987.
• Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, 1992.
• Lloyd Gardner, Spheres of Influence, 1993.
• Carolyn Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944–49, 1996