greater.
The question is, when Cold war began and when it ended. M. McCauley
thinks it “began in 1947 and ended shortly after Cuban Missile Crisis of
1962”. (1995) If the Cold War was perceived as a sort of friction between
socialism and capitalism, it began in October 1917 and ended with the
collapse of the USSR in 1991. (McCauley, 1995)
Anyway, the first impressions of upcoming Cold War could be seen before
the end of World War II, immediately after Jalt’s Conference and its
consequences are possibly still alive. Many authors whose perspectives
I’m about to discuss, see the Cold War as a period of time which had to
occur due to disorder in world politics arisen after World War II and “the
need to re-shape political configuration of the globe” (McCauley, 1995)
when great powers lost their strength militarily as well as economically.
Former great powers of the Axis, such as fascist Germany, Italy and
Japan have been crucially destroyed, what, naturally, created a vacuum.
Many foremost thinkers consider that it was this vacuum created after
WW II, which has been assumingly the most important factor which
started the race between US and USSR.
The United States of America are considered as a capitalistically-oriented
economy with its values of pluralistic free-market which come with it.
USSR has been more pessimistic, free market, since Lenin got into
power, has been considered as a method of destroying working class,
communism was based on.
According to this fact, the main cause of the Cold War seems to be clash
of ideologies, what inevitably means clash of two great powers. Therefore,
the world has changed from being multi-polar to being bi-polar.
Both of these powers persisted in trying to prove its point that its system
is the only worth fighting for, by attracting “vacuum states” to join their
“spheres of influence” by offering “rewards”, such as Marshall plan,
which consisted in financial aid offered by the US aimed to rebuild the
country’s economy. Obviously, each help was determined by the
conditions, so the country which accepted the plan, had to follow
economic system of the “creditor”.
Spheres of influence lost its clarity and as each country tried to
dominate, to become hegemony, arms race continued for a long years,
“due to great powers’ reliance on nuclear weapons and the USSR’s aim to
overwhelm US strategic superiority, which for over a decade constituted
a kind of de facto nuclear monopoly”. (D.H. Allin,1998) This was
accompanied by massive propaganda and espionage nobody could have
ever seen before, and that was the point when the US proved
communism cannot compete with capitalism because of USSR’s financial
insufficiency causing economy’s collapse thereafter.
It is hard to make any verdict on a such a complex topic. The topic raises
an obvious question, whether it was inevitable to happen and whether
the causes may be justified. I believe, as the history of each conflict tells
us, the friction caused by an ideology which “justifies” our inability to
tolerate different ways of thinking and living, the innermost want to
dominate and to control, has got to be resolved. It could have been
resolved by an open battle which would show us “who is stronger and
more potent”, though after nuclear war nobody would be alive or it can
be resolved by long-term no-weapon war as the Cold War actually was.
Since the human being developed nuclear weapon, which was the
scariest and most influential method how to protect its own interests and
how to satisfy them during Cold War, history changed. We cannot expect
any more fighting in its real meaning as we could have seen before, the
future of battling is in propaganda, espionage, information technology
and in pressure, so it will be even quieter and even more dangerous.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Dana H. Allin: Cold War Illusions, MacMillan, 1998, London
John Lewis Gaddis: We Now Know, Oxford University Press, 1997, Oxford
Martin McCauley: The Origins of the Cold War 1941-1949, 2nd ed., Longman, 1995, London and New York
Cold War: Postwar Estrangement http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/coldwar.html