Download Name: Hour: ______ Ideological Foundations of the Cold War After

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Hour: ____________
Ideological Foundations of the Cold War
After meeting Josef Stalin at the Potsdam conference in July 1945, President
Harry S. Truman wrote in his diary: "I can deal with Stalin. He is honest-but smart
as hell." Not a year later tempers flared on all sides as Stalin spoke about the
ultimate collapse of capitalism and President Truman instructed his Secretary of
State James Byrnes to stop "babying the Soviets." Diplomacy between the two
countries quickly degenerated into mutual distrust, military and nuclear buildup,
and cold war. This state of cold war would span nine presidencies and nearly fifty
years.
While ideology cannot entirely explain the origins of the cold war, it may help
explain why the cold war became so enduring and contentious. Both nations held
dramatically different worldviews, nurtured by their domestic values. The Soviet
Union envisioned a world-wide global revolution leading to a Communist utopia.
The United States believed in democracy and private enterprise. As their World
War II coalition melted away in the face of growing political disagreements, the
rhetoric of both nations turned shriller and argumentative, making faith in
negotiations and treaties virtually non-existent.
In February of 1946, George Kennan, of the American Embassy in Moscow and
an expert on Russia, wired the longest telegram in State Department history. The
"long telegram," as it became known, expressed doubt about the possibility of
direct, armed conflict with the Soviet Union. Kennan believed the greater Soviet
threat arose from its support of Communist parties and other subversive
elements worldwide. He argued that the strategy to deal with this threat should
be to strengthen Western institutions and an American commitment to assist
endangered nations. One month later in the small town of Fulton, Missouri,
former British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill spoke of an "iron curtain"
having descended across Eastern Europe, creating a "Soviet sphere" of
influence just as Kennan warned against.
In July 1946, President Truman asked Clark Clifford, his special counsel, to
prepare a report concerning U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. Clifford's report
discussed agreements observed or broken by the Soviet Union and Soviet
foreign policy and its effect on the United States. The report also underscored
Moscow's determination to expand its military power and obtain the atomic bomb.
In direct contrast to Kennan's long telegram, the report stressed the importance
of expanding military readiness to deal with the increasing Soviet military threat.
In 1947, Kennan wrote an article for the journal Foreign Affairs entitled "The
Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the pseudonym "X". In the article,
Kennan restated many of the points made in his long telegram, and first
articulated his idea of containment. Kennan believed the West needed to
maintain a steady, firm policy to keep the Soviet threat in check and wait for what
Kennan believed was inevitable: the downfall of the Soviet Union. This strategy
became the inspiration behind U.S. aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan,
and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Two years after Kennan outlined his ideas about containment, the entire nation
was shocked by the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in August 1949.
President Truman responded by approving development of the hydrogen bomb
and ordering a complete review of U.S. national security policy. The report
rejected Kennan's view that the Soviets were not militarily prepared to attack the
West, and argued that in order for containment to be more than a bluff, the
United States must be sufficiently prepared for armed conflict. It recommended a
massive military buildup and increased foreign aid.
The Cold War raged on through the remainder of the Truman presidency with
occasional flare-ups such as the invasion of South Korea and charges of
Communist spies in government. Through the accusation of U.S. spying during
the Eisenhower administration, the Cuban missile crisis and the construction of
the Berlin Wall in the Kennedy administration, and the alternate arms reductions
and increases in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, the Cold War remained
active well into the 1980s. The Cold War effectively ended with the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991.
1. Both the United States and the Soviet Union held dramatically
different “worldviews”. What were the domestic values of each
country?
2. Outline Kennan and Clifford’s opinions on how to combat the Soviet
Union.