Was the Cold War a clash of ideologies or a clash of superpowers?

rubrick:

1. evaluate the interpretations of historians on specific topics

2. prepare their essays adequately using a range of secondary sources for this particular assignment

3. produce a coherent argument indicating planing and organization of material on the basis of reasoned discussion leading to appropriate conclusions

4.express their ideas clearly and precisely, avoiding vagueness, ambiguity and repetition.

“ historiography so which ever point you choose to argue you have to take in consideration the traditionalist view, revisionist and post-revisionist views.

not to tell you how to do your job but the historiography point is crucial to a good grade on the essay”

Body of the essay is below!

The end of the Second World War marked an end to an era of international relations and the beginning of a completely new power dynamic across the world. Europe lay in ruins following the brutal fighting amongst European powers, and the victors had paid significant costs to achieve their victory. The Second World War could be viewed as one of the biggest catastrophes in human history, and many politicians from many countries were looking for a way to bring the world to a new type of stability that would impede an event like the Cold War ever happening again. What ensued following the Second World War would perhaps be the most significant global configuration of world powers that still leaves a clear legacy to this day. Given the impact that the post-war organization of world powers had on the world, many historians have analyzed and reinterpreted numerous times the events that occurred. The Cold War took place amongst significant changes in the world political structure, with many peoples of the world seeking independence from colonial powers, as well as the popularization of political ideas that were considered very radical. Given the surge of radical ideologies that occurred during the Cold War period, the history of the event has had biased elements from all sides who identified with particular sides of the conflict. A critical question about the conflict lies on discovering exactly what the causes of the conflict known as the Cold War were, whether it could been avoided or whether it was unavoidable, and the very nature of the conflict. A critical question pertaining to the nature of the Cold War conflict was whether it was primarily a conflict of ideologies or whether it could be described as a conflict of superpowers. This essay will argue that the ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union did not necessarily need to clash, but the competition between the ideologies ensued as a result of conflicts of interest amongst the two major world superpowers which both sought to rearrange the world order in a way that would create stability and safety for their people.

Despite their reluctant collaboration through the Second World War, the fall of Germany eventually lead to the significant deterioration of affairs between the Americans and the Russians. The first recountings of these events by historians were generally very one sided, either portraying one side as the clear aggressor and wrongdoer, and these early traditionalist histories of the Cold War often had a strong ideological tendency towards one side or the other. The strong ideological tendencies of early traditionalist recountings can be exemplified by the Pro-Soviet English historian Edward Carr, who wrote a fourteen volume series, A History of Soviet Russia from 1950 to 1978[footnoteRef:2]. Carr’s writing had strong ideological elements: he calle*d the Soviet Union’s recuperation of its former territories an “astonishing achievement” for Lenin, and claimed that Stalin’s achievement to industrialize Russia significantly outweighed the heavy human costs that came with it, going as far as calling Stalin an “emancipator”[footnoteRef:3]. Early traditionalist accounts that were pro-American also were equally ideological and biased in portraying who was the wrongdoer in the Cold War, as few historians would be willing to challenge the official United States account of the Cold War. American historian Thomas Bailey portrayed the Soviets as aggressors who imposed communist totalitarian regimes as well as violating numerous treaties that were made following the war[footnoteRef:4]. It makes sense that early historical accounts of the war were very ideological. Both the United States and the Soviet Union highly relied on ideological arguments to co-opt or intimidate their populations into supporting their geopolitical objectives. In the United States, political commentators probably had significant reason to fear government entities such as the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Given the above mentioned situation, many geopolitical commentators perhaps had an easier time following along with the narrative of a particular government than trying to portray the conflict in another light. Nevertheless, these traditionalist historical recounting attributing the cause of the Cold War conflict mostly to ideological differences ignore the many pragmatic and non-ideological geopolitical concerns that the two world powers had following the end of the Second World War. [2: Hughes-Warrington, Marnie Fifty Key Thinkers On History, London: Routledge, 2000, ISBN 0-415-16982-8. 24-25 ] [3: Ibid 25] [4: Brinkley, Alan (1986). American History: A Survey. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-075-55075-4. pg798]

As the Cold War went on, many citizens of the United States as well as other countries became discontent with the state of American foreign policy, and started to openly question and criticize the existing historical narratives pertaining to the nature and cause of the Cold War conflict. This school of thought, known as Revisionism, challenged many of the ideological, Traditionalist foundations of Cold War history and sought to bring to light how the United States was an aggressor as opposed to a country fighting an expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. The Revisionist school viewed the Cold War abandoned the ideological foundations of Traditionalist accounts and instead either portrayed the United States from an ideologically leftist perspective or as an aggressor who acted based on a Soviet Union that acted in opposition to its political and economic interests. An early historian categorized as a member of the Revisionist school is William Appleman Williams. Williams’ most famous historical work, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, in which he portrayed the United States as being significantly more responsible than the Soviet Union for bringing about the Cold War,