| Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1953 Dissolving the "Grand Alliance" The US and USSR rapidly found themselves in a new military and diplomatic rivalry even before the final surrender of Germany in 1945. They did manage one last act of cooperation in the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, also in 1945. It would be too easy to dismiss the origins of the Cold War in terms of blame on either Russian or American policymakers. An alternative approach is to see how the post-World War II standoff between these two powers may well have been inevitable. "Lessons" from their recent history guided the two superpowers toward confrontation. The first lesson both Russians and Americans learned in common from the European experience of trying to buy peace from Hitler: "No More Munichs!" Britain's and France's appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s (culminating in the ironic Munich Peace Conference of 1938) taught the former allies to fear compromise with the enemy. They believed that Germany's cynical exploitation of Britain's and France's peace efforts illustrated why one must stand up to one's opponents. Thus, if appeasement is bad, aggressive confrontation is good. The other two lessons from the recent past each nation learned separately. The Soviet Union -- Western Europeans repeatedly invaded Russia throughout her history (I812, 1914, 1941) by passing through Eastern Europe. The Russian lesson learned from World War II was to close the door in Eastern Europe. This was easily accomplished since the Red Army was already in possession of much of the territory east of Berlin. USA -- After the trial by fire of the Great Depression, American leaders believed that economic prosperity was absolutely dependent on US access to global markets. Thus, they assumed that American economic interests would be best served by an open door in Eastern Europe and everywhere else. The new American foreign policy of Containment
George F. Kennan, "sovietologist" in the US State Department, advocated
developing a global foreign policy for the first time in American history outside
immediate war. He believed the USSR to be
inherently expansionist because the Russian Empire under both the czars and the Communists
had sought to expand. His warning that the US
ought to prepare itself to meet postwar Soviet expansion with a coherent planned response
formed the basis of the Truman Doctrine. Yet,
Kennan also argued for, and the Truman Doctrine rejected, an "asymmetrical"
approach where the US would know ahead of time where its vital interests were and were
not. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (1947) The British had gone broke trying to prop up the governments of Greece and Turkey that were each under attack from armed rebels supplied by Communist-bloc Balkan states. The British asked the US to assume the role of guaranteeing the viability of these two governments. President Harry Truman did not believe the American people would support such an expensive and unprecedented foreign aid package even to fight communism. Greece and Turkey were too far away, he reasoned. He needed to bring the threat of Communist aggression closer to home.
In his "Truman Doctrine" speech, the president warned that the US must stop communism in faraway places in order to stop its spread closer to home. In another setting, the president also announced a "Loyalty Campaign" within his own government. This would inadvertently help lay the foundation for the Second Red Scare. Named for Truman's Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Marshall Plan gave money to Western European countries in order to rebuild their war-ravaged economies. The Congress appropriated $12 billion for this massive program hoping to accomplish two goals. One was to thwart the rising popularity of western Europe's Communist parties. The other was to make western Europe into a prosperous consumer of American goods--a trading partner must be able to trade. The Communist parties in France and elsewhere enjoyed voter admiration because of the heroic role played by many French Communists in the underground French resistance to German occupation during WWII and also because of the economic deprivation of a suffering working class fostered a warm response to the Communists' radical ideology promising swift and profound change. Europe had been the world's chief consumer of American made goods before the war. If Europe remained too poor to begin consuming again (or became Communist and closed their markets to the US) American leaders feared a return to the overproduction, weak demand and monetary deflation of the Great Depression. The formation of rival alliances Soon after the formation of the United Nations the US and USSR discovered that since each would veto the other's proposals that each would have to go outside the UN to establish formal mutual defense treaties. Warsaw
Pact. The USSR and East Germany made up the
strength of the Warsaw Pact which also included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
several smaller eastern European states. Korea, 1950-1953 The victorious Allies after WWII had established the 38th parallel as the dividing line between US-Russian occupying forces after the expulsion of the defeated Japanese Army in 1945. The US set up a pro-American government in the South and the Russians set up a Soviet-style government in the North. Here the Cold War became temporarily hot when North Korea's Communist-led government decided to forcibly reunify that nation by crossing the 38th parallel in June 1950. The North Korean's took most of South Korea before being stopped. The US hurriedly got a UN resolution condemning the invasion during a period of Soviet absence. (The Soviets were boycotting Security Council meetings to protest the UN's refusal to recognize the Communist government of Mao Zedong in China.) Acting under the authority of the UN resolution, President Truman ordered Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the US Pacific forces to respond. After several setbacks, the United Nations forces in Korea pushed the North Koreans and their Chinese allies back across the 38th and a permanent cease-fire (but no formal peace treaty) was established which continues into the present. Meanwhile, Truman had fired MacArthur for violating the Constitutional preeminence of the President as Commander-in-Chief after the general had publicly complained about Truman's unwillingness to go beyond the UN resolution and destroy the North Koreans and attack the Chinese. MacArthur had favored the use of nuclear weapons against the latter. |
