The Roman strategist Flavius Renatus once said, “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” or “If you want peace, prepare for war.” It has been a standard of politics for well over 2000 years, certainly before 375 A.D. when the idea was officially written into the Roman Legion’s handbook. The modern idea of defense preparations and spending is not a new concept. Looking back throughout time competition, militarization, and conquest have been at the root of many great conflicts. The Punic Wars, the Mongol wars, the Hundred Years War, and the Napoleonic Wars are all examples of terrible conflicts fought between the great powers of their era. However, none rivaled the sheer destruction that was to come to pass in the 20th century. Warfare had come of age.

Between the conflicts of World War I, World War II, and the Cold War the modern nations could find little peace. The two World Wars were easily the most devastating conflicts in all of history, but they were only precursors to an even more dangerous conflict between the two most powerful states of the modern world and arguably the most powerful nations ever. The Cold War: the rivalry, mistrust, and often open hostility just short of war between the United States and the Soviet Union. What was the cause of this tension? Many have debated and analyzed American foreign policy of this period to attempt to reason why. Three main views have come to dominate the academic discussions: Orthodox, Revisionism, and Post-revisionism. Each position makes valid claims about the conflict and each is factual from a certain point of view. Mutually exclusive as they seem, many threads of the Cold War can be woven into each of these positions.

The first opinion to rise to dominance was the Orthodox view. In this opinion the blame for the Cold War is placed solely on the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. At the end of World War II the Soviet Union was in sole possession of Eastern Europe. Orthodox’s argue that Stalin did not live up to the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, specifically, to let the Eastern European countries to hold free and fair elections after the war. He imposed pro-Soviet regimes throughout the region and brutally suppressed all dissent against the puppet communist governments. Stalin’s view of Communism as a worldwide social revolution rather than just an experiment within the Soviet Union led to widespread fear of his expansionist tendencies . The United States felt obligated to defend the world from being unwillingly dominated by violent communist forces, both within and without their countries. The United States decided that it must, in President Truman’s words, “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. ” (Ambrose, Brinkley, 1997, p. 82) In addition to this declaration the United States generously instituted the Marshall Plan to help the countries of war-torn Western Europe.

In Secretary of State George Marshall’s words, the United State needed to prevent “economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character,” and should “provide a cure rather than a mere palliative,” for the European countries. (1997) In addition, to confront the Soviets expansion and protect her allies, the United States formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with much of Western Europe, which pledged mutual defense and treated an attack on one as an attack on all. The alliance relied on United States military backing and, at least at first, sole possession of the atomic bomb to deter the Soviet Union from overrunning Europe. (Targ, 2008). Combining that alliance with National Security Council Report 68, which stated “Any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin could be established,” (Hoffman 2008) the United States set itself against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to follow the policy of containing communism and defending democracy, freedom, and capitalism throughout the world.

The Orthodox view has been considered by many to be idealistic and naïve. After the loss of the Vietnam War many historians became disheartened with the policy of containment and NSC 68. The new generation of historians saw the United States as more of a hegemonic power that only was out to protect its economic interests abroad no matter the cost to native populations. This new view of American foreign policy became known as the Revisionist opinion. In this retrospective view the “American Empire” and the Soviet Union were economic rivals and were bound to come into conflict regardless of their ideologies. It has been argued, from this perspective, that the Cold War actually started in 1917 with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and the Western Power’s attempts to overthrow the fledgling communist government in “a half-hearted occupation of Russian territory that lasted from 1918 to 1920.” (Gaddis, 1997) They also argue that America has always been an empire, ever since the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase and “Manifest Destiny.” This desire did not stop after spanning across North America. As Stephen Kinzer illustrates in his book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change, the acquisition of overseas colonies starting with Hawaii and then Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippians turned America’s continental empire into a global one. (2006)

Revisionists believe that after World War II America was primarily concerned with its economic interests, especially in securing open door policies throughout the world. It was also creating a global capitalistic order through the Bretton Woods Institutions: The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and through the General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), which became the World Trade Organization in 1995. (Targ, 2008) They argue that the absence of post-war peace agreements was primarily the United State’s fault in that it tried to confront and contain the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II, not to mention America had an atomic monopoly until 1949 and used it as leverage against the U.S.S.R. The Soviet Union was only looking to its security concerns when it installed friendly governments in Eastern Europe, where it had fought off two-thirds of the invading Nazi army. She was attempting to avoid being surrounded by her former Allies. They go so far as to say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed only to impress the Soviets rather than cause the unconditional surrender of Japan. Overall, the Revisionists view the Cold War as more of an economic and political confrontation between two superpowers and how they influenced and controlled their respective worlds through force and diplomacy rather than an altruistic battle on the part of the United States.

In many respects the Orthodox and Revisionist approaches are both different ends of the same spectrum. Orthodox’s view the United Stats as a staunch defender of freedom and attacks the Soviet Union for its expansionist policies. Revisionists blame the United States for dominating its will on the post-war international system. By 1972 a new opinion rose to prominence. Spawned from the Revisionists and given definition by John Lewis Gaddis in his book The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947, the new style of thinking came to be called Post-Revisionist. Post-Revisionism agrees with neither of the first two views and instead tries to strike a balance between them. They agree with most Revisionist claims about America dominating the post-war world and encircling the U.S.S.R. but also hold that the Soviet Union’s expansion into Eastern Europe was a threatening move to the Western World. The Soviets did not hold to their Yalta agreements or want to compromise upon the Eastern European disagreement. Both nations took a confrontational approach to the situation. However, in the Post-Revisionist opinion, all of the above actions were results of tensions that had been building since the dawn of the twentieth century. John Lewis Gaddis, “Victory would require…difficult adjustments for Russians and Americans because so many legacies of distrust now divided them.” Between the difference in their ideologies, the Soviet drive to spread communism across the globe, Soviet memories of the allied invasion in 1918, and America’s view of Stalin’s pact with Hitler, “It was too much to expect a few years of wartime cooperation to sweep all of this away.” (Gaddis 1997)

All three of the views are intertwined in Cold War history. They all try to explain the breakdown in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. While the Orthodox’s hold that the United States was only trying to defend its allies and stop Stalin’s expansion into Europe there is much evidence to refute this. In turn the Revisionists believe that it was primarily the United State’s desire to dominate the international scene and pursue its business interests that cause the Cold War. Post-Revisionism acknowledges the revisionist’s claims but rejects its overall findings. It takes two to fight, as the old adage goes, and that goes for superpowers as well. The United States did indeed try to dominate the post-war world and in that spread capitalism and ensure friendly foreign governments, even if they were dictatorships. The Soviet Union, though, violated the Yalta agreements including free and fair elections at war’s end. The Soviets were expansionistic as well. As John Gaddis stated, for the Soviets, “World politics was…an extension of Stalin’s preferred personal environment: a zero-sum game.” (1997) Russia was just as likely to confront America, as she was to confront them it. Stalin “came to see the Soviet Union itself as the center from which socialism would spread and eventually defeat capitalism.” (1997)

One of Stalin’s secret agents even confessed years later that “the idea of propagating world Communist revolution was an ideological screen to hide our desire for world domination.” (1997) The United States, however, were not blameless in causing confrontations. President Truman adopted a “get tough” policy advocated by Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Harriman. He warned that the west was facing a “barbarian invasion of Europe,” and wanted to secure at least 85 percent of what the United States wanted from the Soviets. (Ambrose, Brinkely, 1997, p. 58) Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal also wanted to take the confrontational approach. He said, “If the Russians were to be rigid in their attitude we had better have a showdown with them now rather than later.” (1997, p. 59) This attitude caused the Soviets to become even more paranoid and the dual polices of containment and massive retaliation were just as detrimental to the international situation. Slowly but surely it looked as if World War Three would commence. If the United States had not possessed the atomic bomb starting in 1945 and if the U.S.S.R. had not developed one by 1949, the balance of the world could have spiraled rapidly out of control.

The Orthodox and Revisionist opinions, while detailed and thought out, simply miss key facts of the pre Cold War era. Ever since 1900 Russia and America have been contesting each other’s interests. They were rivals over open trade in Manchuria. The United States wanted open markets where Russia wanted exclusive trading rights. The desire for territorial world domination on behalf of the Soviets and economic world domination on behalf of the Americans led to an inevitable conflict. However, it was not until after World War II where the old powers had fallen and the two new superpowers had enough strength to exert control of their respective blocs. The Cold War cannot be the fault of one or the other for it was preordained. The Soviets would not give up the territory they had won from the Nazi’s and the United States would not lose its economic influence in those countries and throughout the world. The failure of both sides to reach an understanding of the other was the true cause of the Cold War.

The French historian and politician Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1835 that, “There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans….Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.” This statement, eerily accurate, also ultimately defines the post World War II circumstances. One might imagine that a violent conflict between the Soviets Union and the United States would have been nothing short of apocalyptic. The Orthodox and Revisionist idea were primarily founded on a belief that one side or the other was responsible for the Cold War. This simple is not true. Post-Revisionist accurately describe the volatile state of affairs. America’s approaches to Russia, combined with the Soviet expansionistic drive, left little in the way of compromise. The two nations’ ideological views were completely incompatible. Democracy versus dictatorship, capitalism versus communism; each nation had set its course. While minor deviations were possible, the clash between the two titans was unavoidable.