ORIGINS OF COLD WAR

Origins of Cold War

Origins of Cold War

The Cold War's origin is still the subject of contentious debate, with some revisionist historians placing it as early as the 1919 Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. While this school identifies the Cold War's principal cause as Soviet insecurity, more traditional scholars focus on Moscow's aggressive post-World War II foreign policy. Soviet suppression of Polish democratic elections in 1946 and Stalin's speech in February of that year forecasting worldwide struggle against the West were soon followed by Winston Churchill's speech in March decrying the “Iron Curtain” descending across Europe. Action followed words as both sides pressed for advantage in a series of crises.

During the war, Soviet action presaged its postwar stance: Soviet troops, which had entered Iran with British forces in 1941 to forestall Axis influence, refused to withdraw in accordance with the agreed timetable. Using military leverage, the Soviets pressured Tehran for territorial and economic concessions until Western powers coaxed the Soviets to reduce their forces. Simultaneously, a communist insurgency pressured the Greek monarchist government and its British sponsor. Following a February 1947 warning from economically strained London that it could no longer defend Athens, Pres. Harry S. Truman declared that the United States would, “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This “Truman Doctrine” became part of a larger framework for addressing the Soviet threat.

A junior American State Department official provided that first widely accepted outline of a coherent American policy. George Kennan's 1947 article in Foreign Affairs, “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” crystallized American policy in the early Cold War. Kennan held that, just as a shark must move forward or die, Moscow was compelled to expand to justify domestic totalitarian repression. If the West prevented ...